Remember1969: Remember's Ramblings May 2024

 

As I have been away from writing for some time, I have found it difficult to get back into it due to a lot of things, but I am going to try to jumpstart a resurrection of a somewhat regular schedule of the Ramblings.   This week's ramble has three topics.

 Topic 1:

At about 22% of the way through the season, Brandon Nimmo leads the Mets in RBI with 25.  With him being the normal leadoff batter, what does that say about the team? 

(1)   The middle of the order isn’t doing its job getting runners in?

(2)   The bottom of the order is doing a great job getting on base for the top to drive them in?

(3)   The top of the order isn’t doing well at getting on base for the middle of the order to drive them in?

My sense is that it is a full combination of all three.   Also, imagine how many ribbies Nimmo would have it he were hitting .287 instead of .227.    

Add your pontification below in the comments.

 Topic 2:

Who doesn’t like player comps?     It seems like everybody is compared to somebody else – if heard that Vientos is the new Schwarber, etc. (and Ohtani doesn’t compare to anybody).

I have chosen two hitters, neither of whom ever played for the Mets to be my comps.   The first is Fred McGriff who had 19 year career starting in 1986 which culminated with a Hall of Fame election in 2023.    The second is Chris Davis who played for 13 years from 2008 to 2020 for Texas and Baltimore and had some very fine years, but was not Hall of Fame worthy in the end.     

Now I am not going to compare them to each other – that would be a rather non-Mets exercise.   As you may guess, I am comparing these two former first baseman to our own Pete Alonso – which one will prove to be the better comp? 

Through their age 29 seasons, McGriff accumulated 228 home runs and 616 RBI while Davis hit 203 longballs to go with 549 ribbies.    Extrapolating just a bit, it seems as if Alonso will end up his playing days before his 30^th birthday almost even with McGriff needing just 27 more home runs and 99 more RBIs.  He’ll probably match the homers and fall just short on the RBI count.   

BUT. . . it is the years after 30 that we should wonder about:  

Chris Davis signed a 7 year $161M contract just prior the year he first played at age thirty and then proceeded to hit 38 homers, followed by 26, 16, and 12 before completely flaming out by age 34.   His batting average in that time topped out at .221 at age 30.   His age 33 year saw a historically bad statistical year with a .168 batting average over 522 plate appearances with just 16 home runs and 192 strikeouts, all for the tidy sum of  a $23M salary.

Fred McGriff on the other hand bashed his way to the Hall of Fame by hitting another 265 home runs after age 30, accumulating 595 plate appearances in his age 38 year and showing remarkable consistency throughout his final decade.   

So which player will make the better career comp by the time the Polar Bear is all done?   And will it all be with the Mets?    Here’s one fan hoping that McGriff’s numbers will be the template and yes, he will be a Met lifer.    The realist in me says that he will finish up somewhere between the two.   I am concerned about his streakiness and just going AWOL for two or three weeks at a time.  It remains to be seen how Boras approaches this off-season. 

Topic 3

Because I am a baseball fan in general in addition to being a Mets fan, I am going to deviate a bit and do a non-Mets, but still baseball topic for my last ramble. 

As I was glancing through the standings this morning (something I only do occasionally), I noticed that the Toronto Blue Jays are three games under .500.     This is pertinent to nothing, but how the heck can that team continually underachieve with the guys they have developed and the free agents they attract.   Building around Vlad Guererro Jr. seems like the thing to do, but there are a lot of players with big promise that just are not doing the job.    That team seems to be the Mets of the AL East.   Oh Yeah, Daniel Vogelbach is hitting .103 this season (but Justin Turner is at .270 with a .344 OBP and .787 OPS – not too shabby). 

And a final post script:    Anybody else looking forward to seeing how Paul Skenes does at the top level?  (The announcement of his call up has been made, but he has not yet made his debut at the time of this writing)