Life is always about balance. Where there’s good news there’s often bad news to help correct the unexpectedly positive outcomes you were just cheering.
Take the New York Mets. They just polished off yet another series victory on Saturday to push them 4 over .500 for the first time this year and it came against the gargantuan opponents — the Los Angeles Dodgers. This latter day surge by the Mets saw them go 8-2 over their last 10 games and just 2.5 games out of first where (no surprise) the Braves are at the top of the division. They increased the lead over the 4th place Washington Nationals by 3 full games and over the 5th place Miami Marlins by 8 full games. Yup, things are sure looking up.
Until...
During one of this weekend’s game it was somewhat unsurprising to see Francisco Alvarez come out given the abuse he’s taken on his hand lately with three separate injuries. The fact he needed to be seen by clubhouse medical personnel was not the issue here. Everyone hoped for the very best possible news such as a sprain or an abrasion that might take a week or so to run most of its course and get Alvarez back to his number one catching position.
Unfortunately, the news coming out after more advanced scanning tests was not good. He’s requiring surgery on a ligament in his thumb. The word is that it’s a 6-8 week recovery, but considering how critical the hands are to both the catching skill set and the gripping of a bat, I’m more willing to believer closer to 10-12 weeks.
The short term solution for the Mets was the promotion of non-roster player Tomas Nido to take over what we assume are backup duties at catcher while Omar Narvaez assumes the primary role which is what he expected in 2023 when he signed his free agent contract to become a part of the Mets.
Mets fans, of course, know Nido even better than they do Navarez. During the Brodie Van Wagenen, Sandy Alderson and Billy Eppler tenures Nido was subbing for a variety of underperforming or injured catchers. He was always known for his glove more than his bat. His career numbers are not exactly eye popping when it comes to helping the club score runs. His batting average over parts of seven years is just .213. Over the course of 747 ABs he hit 13 HRs and drove in 74. Scale those numbers down by 30% to reflect what you might expect over the course of a full season.
By contrast, Narvaez is a little better with the bat while also sporting a good reputation with the glove. His career average of .254 is likely in the upper 10% of catchers league-wide. He’s had nearly 2000 ABs with 53 HRs and 203 RBIs. Divide by 4 and it’s slightly better than what you’d get from Nido.
The good news on the younger catcher is that he was off to a hot start in Syracuse. Hitting .350+ is great news in any league but it’s also a little hard to believe that now at age 30 he’s finally learned how to be consistently more productive at the plate.
The good news on the Narvaez side is that playing regularly might open other teams’ eyes to what he’s capable of doing. It may well be that the Mets try to peddle away the remainder of the more expensive paycheck for Narvaez as unless Alvarez is unable to recover ever again, he’s still the number one guy and Nido would be suitable as backup.
A dark side former Mets front office black cloud is the specter of DH-in-waiting J.D. Martinez. Granted, the slugging Alvarez had only popped a single HR in this early season, but he was projected to be a 30-HR threat this year. Consequently with his long ball on the shelf the Mets might be inclined to rush the recovery of Martinez to balance out the need to carry the Narvaez/Nido bats in Alvarez’s place. That move would put unnecessary pressure on Martinez to light up the HR and RBI totals, but more importantly it might hasten a recurrence of his back problems which have him temporarily sidelined. A 162 game season won’t be made dramatically better or worse if they instead exercise patience to allow the now 36 year old Martinez sufficient time to get fully healthy and ready for day-to-day insertion in the lineup.
8 comments:
And then Raley on the IL with a sore elbow. Joining him on the IL is 7 scoreless relief outings, a real blow.
Meanwhile, Houser is healthy. He also has allowed 16 runs in 19.1 innings. 36 runners (nearly 2 per inning) via hits, walks, HBP. Just 12 Ks vs roughly 95 hitters. Lousy, in other words. But healthy.
And, for Houser, sadly, no options left, if for any reason you would have wanted to swap him and Lucchesi. Key has a 2.57 ERA in 4 AAA starts. He most clearly would not be starting if Senga, Megill, and Peterson hadn’t gone down with Raley Syndrome.
Unfortunately Narvaez's reputation with the glove is clearly exaggerated. I have never seen a worse pitch framer. he can take a borderline strike and make it look so obviously out of the strike zone that there should be a whole new category/ description for this particular lack of talent. Hard for me to imaging anyone would enjoy throwing to him.
I kind of agree with Don S. I have not seen much defensively from Narvaez since he got to NY. He was certainly a big contributor to the 0-28 run on stolen base attempts.
I thought this article was going to be about Bucky. Maybe Nido should get the majority of starts given his defensive superiority.
I think between Narvaez and Nido, there is no pre-determined front runner. Whoever plays best plays most.
Narvaez made the team to try to get him going offensively, to make him tradeable,if all 3 catchers are healthy again. So, by July 1, Narvaez could be for sale to a team that needs a catcher badly.
He was DFA'd today. If he clears waivers, he'll get a ticket upstate.
IMO, it'll be a platoon, with Narvaez getting most of the plsying time unless Nido gets hot with rhe bat ehile Narvaez stuggles.
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