Jose Reyes Lost It Quickly
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SLOWING "FAST TWITCH" AND HIGHER FB VELOCITY INTERSECT? SOMETIMES, AN UGLY COLLISION OCCURS.
Mack posted the pitch velocity chart (below) the other day, which shows that 98+ MPH pitches in baseball have quintupled. It is why hitting major league pitching gets harder and harder. It is why I believe, for instance, that Juan Soto hasn’t hit .300 since 2021.
that suggests to me two things:
1) Prospects-wise, then, I better be darned sure that any high level hitting prospects I would draft have enough fast twitch and pitch recognition skills to catch up to 100 MPH heat - or those picks will become MLB busts.
Codify @CodifyBaseball
MLB Pitches Thrown At 98+ MPH:
2008: 11,301
2009: 13,785
2010: 14,807
2011: 13,826
2012: 15,615
2013: 17,169
2014: 19,922
2015: 28,093
2016: 28,949
2017: 25,499
2018: 25,621
2019: 27,561
2020: 10,747*
2021: 33,287
2022: 38,274
2023: 40,803
2024: 40,725
2025: 51,597
2) Veteran hitters' ability to catch up to increasingly high heat is a concern.
Remember, 98+ MPH pitches in baseball (per the chart above) doubled since Alonso and Nimmo joined the big leagues. And...old guys' bats often slow down JUST ENOUGH year by year to cause production to diminish. THAT was Stearns' fear.
Remember happy Jose Reyes? Mr. Fast Twitch?
After hitting .285 at age 32, he hit .267 at age 33.
in 2018, at age 35, he hit .189, and his career stopped twitching. He got old fast.
Putting on my David Stearns pants, he probably thinks this:
If Pete wanted 2 years, he'd still be here. Still twitching. But he wanted 5.
Next.
Pete will be 31 years, 4 months old on opening day. Nimmo? 32 years old.
Me? Years 3 through 5, I suspect, will be ugly for a slowing Pete.
Ditto Nimmo and the last 3 of his remaining 5 years (34-36 years old).
I have pointed out over the years in articles how many good hitters just fell off a cliff in their early 30s, or at least started a notable downward slide. It is a real phenomenon.
It does not impact every good hitter the same way. It sure hasn't hit Aaron Judge.
But it does impact a very high % of them.
98+, coupled with devastating sliders, are hard for old guys to hit.
Go younger. Kyle Tucker, Fernando Tatis, anyone?
A really young (and very talented) Carson Benge, anyone?
One more point....
I will say it until I am blue in the face, in case the Mets Front Office ever reads this stuff, but younger Mark Vientos can reasonably replace Pete at 1B...
IF...MARK GETS MUCH MORE AGGRESSIVE ON STRIKE ONE.
NO MORE TAKING FAT FIRST PITCHES.
WHY?
Mark is absolutely dreadful when he gets to two strike counts. As I recall, without looking it back up, when his at bats ended on 2 strike counts, he hit .136 - and that represented over half of his 2025 at bats.
Solution?
Swing a lot more agressively early in counts, so there are a lot fewer 2 strike counts.
Result? Higher average, more power for Mark.
Let other guys, like Juan Soto who are good at walking, work walks.
Mark is NOT that guy.
25 comments:
Tom, you are calling out a huge problem for the legacy core over the next 3-5 years. Just when our young pitching matriculates. Can’t have 3-4 36-38 year old players on the field / payroll (at fat salaries) & expect to win.
Tom, Vientos was swinging at first pitches in the 2024 playoffs because he was feeling good. He needs to find his Swaggy. Someone gave him an appropriate nickname.
The Padres came out to say Tatis is untouchable, whatever that means. In fact, there are now whispers of the Mets trading Lindor…
I don’t understand how they don’t even offer a contract. To me, that is insulting. Did they want to be begged? Offer a 4/$110 after he accepted DH more and see where it goes. Did they want him off the team that badly?
Stearns is taking heat, in part, because he is doing baseball senility planning, meaning guys' baseball performance very often deteriorates with age.
fans will scream at the Mets as Pete and Edwin have big years in 2026. But, will they have big years in 2027? Less Likely. 2028? Far less likely. That is reality.
I have probably referenced, in my articles over the years, 100+ guys who severely declined after age 31. It is reality. And facing so much high heat in today's game exacerbates it. If average pitcher velocity were 3 miles per hour slower than in today's game, I would have been all for re-signing Pete.
Pete has one cost advantage over many players...his cost per game is lowered by playing virtually every game. If he has missed 1 or 2 games in the last 5 seasons due to rest and not injury, it is a lot. Some guys miss lots of time, yet are paid similarly to Pete, who goes 162. We will all miss that.
I suspect so, Gus. I think it is because they were concerned with steep decline after 2027. But maybe sitting him a half dozen games a year to get refreshed would have counteracted that. Pete, to me, never looked tired. And he'd return to play a week before other guys would from the same injury. I think he realized you can't hit 500 HRs if you are missing games.
Hi Tom, I knew they couldn't keep a good man down.
Let me start off by respectfully saying I agree with pretty much everything you write about. There is however a hole in not only your reasoning, but also most Met fans.
As the Mets just traded several aging veterans with the concern of them fading in a few years. But doesn't Lindor, Tatis, Soto and possibly Tucker/Bellinger fit into the same category?
These guys would be signed until they are 38-40 years old. I know Soto is young, but he is signed to age 40 or 41. Wouldn't we be in the same boat as we are now.?
Bingo! I think their direction has shifted. Stearns must remake the team his way or he will not survive. The real question is: given it’s NYC will he be doomed no matter what. I believe he will fold a playoff-caliber team next season while setting up for the longer term as well.
Gus, I was just looking up when Lindor's contract would end in trying to respond to Tom's article. The first the that came up, was that Lindor was signed until 2031, but the interesting thing was they said Lindor was a member of the Red Sox.
I have not seen that anywhere else to be honest, so I don't think there is anything to it. It's funny I just mentioned that yesterday.
If they do actually trade him then this will actually be a reset year and not very pretty.
I'm sure this is going to piss Mack off (sorry Mack) but if they Lindor than this officially becomes Soto's team. All that shite I raged about 25+1 becomes a reality.
Joe, when you give someone that contract, you have to expect that. That’s why the Yankees made Judge the Captain upon giving him that deal. He essentially becomes that. Soto is his own person and that’s fine. Lindor comes from Cleveland where everything is “team”. I think players need to be “team” but they need their space too. I can tell you that Cafe Lindor pisses me off. Do that during the winter! But, if that helps him to wind down a bit during the year, that can help his tension release.
Speaking of Judge, his continuation of excellence into age 34 is eyebrow raising.
Late bloomer. Hate to admit it but he's a great physical specimen. We could use a few of those.
Tom, that catches up to you. It caught up to Ripken. Alonso needs to DH at least once a week to keep the legs fresh. But, now that ship has sailed. If I knew that he would be ok with DHing, I’d offer him 4/$110. If I didn’t care about the money, id go higher AAV. The Orioles’ offer would have been difficult to swallow.
The Soto contract, the Guerrero contract, the Pujols contract, the Cano contract, the Rendon contract, althe Kris Bryant contract, the Nimmo contract to a lesser extent, all will look like Prince Fielder’s contract eventually. And you know who the agent was that did all of them?
Hmmmmmm, maybe.
What about the anti-Alonso, Arraez?
Tom, propose we become a front office for a post. Would we trade trade for Skubal and if we re-sign him, how many years would we go for? Because you can’t do one if you won’t do the other one.
One thing is clear, Gus…Skubal won’t be a Met next year if they don’t trade for him now. He will be a Dodger. Koufax/Kershaw/Skubal.
if they trade for him they absolute CANNOT trade McClane and Benge in the deal and they must extend him him and not let him hit free agency, otherwise this is a huge waste of capital on what's going to be essentially a reverse of 2024 (good enough to make a run carried on pitching and hoping a bunch of role players or your players develop to plug the whole in the lineup).
Really don't want to give Tong up as well. I know his debut was uneven but I think he's special and want to see him develop and pitch for a long time.
I'd be okay with Sproat and Williams headlining our deal (give them choice of Senga / Peterson as a ML piece), choice of acunua, vientors and maricio, and 2-3 other non Benge, Tong, Mclane players. A huge package but worth it IF we extend
Stearns is doing the heavy lifting now, which is never popular, but necessary. Don't think for a minute that SC isn't on board with what is taking place, either.
Second generation contracts are almost always a negative when analyzed after the term is over (especially for players in the latter half of their careers....i.e. 30+).
The Mets need to ignore the noise and stay the course. Plenty of runway left between now and the 2026 season.
Mike, I agree.
My problem is, like as with Soto, now Boras will have all the advantage…
Interesting to look at a macro and a micro implications of what the data shows, under any plausible interpretation of it: Micro is: how to construct a team? Macro: How does baseball itself as a sport change? Re: latter. Axioms: 1. Player bat speed invariably declines with age, and does so at an increasing rate. 2. Number of pitchers throwing fastballs at or above speed that players can catch up to and do damage with. 3. Physically, pitching at that speed is more than a body can handle for extended period of time. If we only had 1.&2, it would follow that there is a point at which the curves intersect, and a range both before that time (ages) and after where baseball would look similar to what it does not in terms of intersection between hitting and pitching. Re: former. This would imply that GMs could rationally figure out roughly how to construct a team of both pitchers and hitters not wildly different from how they do it now.
Now add the Axiom 3. This adds a cross cutting dimension. Rate and length of injury among hard throwers. Consider three different approaches to dealing with this:
1. Increase the number you have of hard throwers you have available; 2. Reduce risk by increasing number of pitchers who rely on other stuff, especially stuff that the data would show is less likely to cause injury.
3. Try to figure out the optimal mix of two.
Now think of how all these intersect and add the following: Every GM has to adopt a strategy about how to approach team construction that is based on assumptions about what other GMs are doing? Of course there is some data, which is of the form, what have they done till now. But that is colored by what information was available to them, did they take it into account, and how did they weigh it?
Game theory identifies what is called a dominant strategy: this is a strategy that I should adopt no matter what others are doing. It also defines a strategy that is based on the idea of a Nash equilibrium: (remember, A Beautiful Mind, the story of John Nash). A Nash equilibrium basically exists when it is not rational for you to change your strategy unless a sufficient number of others do. Example. If your prefered goal is to go out with your friends for night and you have choice between Mets game and Opera, then it is not rational for you to choose the Mets game if everyone else is choosing Opera, and vice versa. Everyone has the same set of preferences. Rarely are there dominant strategies or Nash equilibrium; and I venture to say that in baseball there is none. A bad approach for a GM is to try to work on the assumption that there is a dominant strategy: something he or she should adopt no matter what anyone else does. In a sense it is somewhat chaotic, what I prefer to think of as fluid and adaptable. That's why plans must be revisable and adaptable.
But this is all a formal way of trying to make clear and precise what we all see and that is: it's damn hard to figure out how to construct your team at any given time, but at the same time, if you can work through these issues rationally, with discipline and if information is asymmetical (you know how to get more and more useful information, and how to use it than others), you have a window of being able to exploit those differences. But the results are often not immediate -- e.g. long contracts are still popular and you are only going for shorter ones because you appreciate the fact that for most players and pitchers, the years of peak performance are between say 27-32 and others are continuing to offer contracts that extend into the late 30s, so you are going to lose all those competitions.
And roughly, by my lights, this is where the Mets are now. They are adopting a strategy trying to exploit knowledge of the sort the article presents in the face of behavior by their competitors that is unaffected by those facts. And there is bound to be bumps in the road when you do this. On the other hand, your plan has to be somewhat adaptable, especially if you promise the fan base you can win now and later, and so you have to wisely pick one or two exceptions, i.e. sign a player to a longer contract beyond the optimal age knowing that the latter years won't look great, but you more heavily weight the early years. IMHO, I believe collectively the mets leadership knows this even if they wouldn't express it in the semi formal way I am laying it out here, and they are just trying to figure out which uncomfortable contracts for which players are the right ones. Alonso obviously not. Soto obviously yes. Tucker (for me a NO; not enough versatility and no one area of genuine excellence); Bellinger (for me, a definite maybe because high floor, great versatility which provides insurance in case you are wrong about your prospects). Bregmann( for me, don't know enough about his expected decline and how long the contract is for) . Add one thing, the decreasing marginal value of the dollar over time helps. You are paying with cheaper dollars later.
Sorry, i know my comments are invariably long, but I come from a world where you are required to provide an argument or evidence for what you say. No doubt I could do better. REally sorry. My next one will be better. See below
Re: Vientos at first; The guy can't field, period. You may want to experiment with him there. I understand. But that's something that makes most sense when you have insurance in case you are wrong -- either because his fielding is terrible and he doesn't offset with good hitting. And that is part of the argument for Bellinger. Not only really good in his own right, but maximal insurance at wide range of positions where you want to consider using some of your younger players
So you are not just paying Bellinger for what he does (the numbers and the defense). You are paying him for the insurance he provides which allows you to take measured risks elsewhere
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