Paul Articulates – The need for speed

Now that the world series has come to conclusion, things begin to happen very rapidly in the baseball off-season.  Saturday the season ended, Sunday all the players who could became free agents, Friday free agents can sign with another team.  GMs are burning through phone batteries and agents are burning through calculator batteries.  There is a flourish of activity going on right now behind the scenes.

With all this activity going on, the Mets will be positioning themselves for some significant improvements.  There is a coaching staff to hire, there is a pitching staff to strengthen, and there are some high priority free agents to deal with right away.

Don’t expect to see the news happen quite so rapidly, though.  As we know from prior years the commitments come much more slowly than the other steps.  The free agents and their agents are carefully weighing the offers and using time as a lever to capture the best possible deal.  

Over the last month or so, the front office has been developing a vision for the 2026 team.  They have collected the strengths and weaknesses of the 2025 team and brainstormed the ways to solve the problems from last season with moves in the coming months.  Of course nothing ever goes according to plan because there are too many external influences, so I am sure there are plenty of contingency plans.

My hope is that one of the approaches they are pursuing is the addition of speed to the lineup.  Speed is a multiplier in this game.  It turns singles into doubles, slicing line drives into triples, double play grounders into force outs, and dribblers into hits.  Even though the 2025 Mets stole 147 bases with one of the best success rates in baseball, they did it more with savvy than with speed.  Antoan Richardson had a lot to do with that, and unfortunately he doesn’t look like a favorite to return next year.

The Mets have several players who are not fleet of foot.  Even players who used to hold their own in sprints are getting older and losing a step.  Last year’s roster only had two or three players who could be considered fast, and the top two, Acuna and Taylor were not everyday players in the lineup.

Speed generates offense. Speed equals range on defense.  Speed creates chaos in the opponents’ play by forcing them to overplay positions and rush throws.  In a pitcher’s park like Citi Field, speed can compensate for a lack of power.

It may seem that small ball has been eliminated from baseball by all the focus on power pitching and power hitting.  Not true.  I found it kind of ironic that you hardly ever saw a sacrifice bunt or a safety squeeze in the regular season, but in this year’s playoffs those strategies suddenly resurfaced when teams realized that one more run was so critical to get that all-important win.  Soon enough, teams may realize that all the games are all-important wins.  

Look at the 2025 Mets.  One more win in any of the 79 games that did not go in their favor would have given them that coveted playoff spot.  Twenty-six games last year were lost by one run. A manufactured run by utilizing speed could have easily tipped the result in several of those games, sending the Mets to the playoffs.

By now I am sure you are wondering how in a single off-season a team can suddenly develop the weapon of speed?  Well, the good news is that some of the pieces are already there.  LuisAngel Acuna is both fast and has very good base-running smarts.  Some of the upcoming young players like Jett Williams, Nick Morabito, and Carson Benge have plenty of speed.  

The Mets could add a corner outfielder, corner infielder, and/or a DH that has speed.  The team does not have to be fast in positions 1-9, and in fact that would not work to their advantage as there is still a mandate for power on any team.  So if the supplements to the weak spots on defense and the holes in bench depth provide the speed to mix with the power players on the roster, the result could be the generation of more runs.

On your mark, mister Stearns!