Extended Camp:
Fernando Martinez (30 DXL)J.J. Putz (60 DXL)Dear Mets fans: Step away from the ledge. Your pal, Will. That said, the news did get worse for the Mets, as they dropped Martinez onto the DL with a strained tendon behind his knee. He joins Jose Reyes there with a similar problem, one that's not unlike the issue that kept Kevin Garnett out of the playoffs for the Celtics. As with Reyes, there's no solid timeline for when he'll be back, since this is one of those issue that's so rare as to be poorly understood. While the injuries aren't identical, their similarity is troubling. One injury is bad luck, two is coincidence, and more than that is pattern. At two, there's a lot to be done on trying to figure out the why, but little is often found from that small a data set. The Mets are likely to take a very hard look at a lot of things this offseason; their conditioning program is going to be near the top of that list. To balance all the bad news, there is at least some good news on Putz, as he's a couple of weeks ahead of schedule after his surgery and could be back about the same time that Billy Wagner is ready. That could make for a solid bullpen, if there's anything left to save by then.
The Herd:
Another solid outing by a starting pitcher — another win.
One night after Nelson Figueroa gave up three hits over eight innings in a 3-1 win, Tobi Stoner yielded just one hit in seven innings as the Buffalo Bisons beat Pawtucket, 1-0. Friday night’s game was played before 8,283 at McCoy Stadium.
Stoner (2-2) retired 21 of the 24 batters he faced and threw strikes on 73 of 105 pitches. It was the third win in a row for the Herd.
“I was pounding the strike zone,” said Stoner. “Personally, I felt my velocity was back. I went back to pounding the zone instead of [nibbling]. I wasn’t trying to paint the corners on every pitch. I went right at the hitters tonight.”
Reliever Kyle Snyder pitched a 1-2-3 eighth but had to pitch himself out of a jam in the ninth inning to earn his first save. The PawSox loaded the bases with two outs before Snyder struck out Bubba Bell
B-Mets:
A breakout game Friday night by Caleb Stewart wasn't enough to give the Binghamton Mets their second consecutive victory.
The New Britain Rock Cats scored the game's final six runs to beat the B-Mets, 10-7, in the opener of a four-game weekend series at New Britain Stadium.
The B-Mets led 7-4 midway through the fourth inning, but New Britain scored runs in four consecutive innings.
The B-Mets (31-55) have lost five of their last six games.
Stewart, a 2007 Eastern League All-Star who has missed most of this season with a strained oblique muscle, had one of his best games of the year. Stewart, a right fielder, was 3-for-5 with a double and three RBIs.
It was the 19th game of the season for Stewart, who was hitting .153 coming into the game. He doubled his RBI output for the season.
Alonzo Harris set the tone from the leadoff spot. The rest of the Kingsport Mets followed accordingly.
Harris finished 3-for-5, including a solo home run in the fourth inning, and the K-Mets closed the workweek with a series- clinching 10-9 victory over the Elizabethton Twins at Hunter Wright Stadium on Friday night.
“This is a big boost,” K-Mets manager Mike DiFelice said. “To come out after a tough loss last night and get a win is huge.
“If you win a lot of series, you’re going to end up with more wins than losses. We’re trying to take this season one inning, one game and one series at a time.”
The upward-moving Mets (6-12) managed to stop their division rivals, who lead the Appalachian League’s West Division at 14-4, for a second time in three nights via timely hitting and solid defense.
Just over the course of this season, Francoeur's ZiPS rest-of-season projection is .304 wOBA, which seems pretty generous the way he's been hitting. By contrast, Church is projected at .344, an actually respectable number. Over a projected 280 PA for the rest of the year, that's eleven runs difference in offense. Factor in that nearly every defensive metric likes Church better in rightfield than Francoeur and you have a loss of 1.5 wins over the course of the season. Using the conservative estimate that 1 WAR is equivalent to 4 million dollars, that's 6 million lost just this season. Factor in that Francoeur is actually making $575,000 more than Church this season, Minaya has essentially flushed 7 Million dollars and any hope of a playoff run down the toilet. He's seemingly done the impossible: make this bunch of scrubs a few wins worse.
And that's just the damage for this season! Minaya will probably plan on Francoeur being the rightfielder for the coming years, just to prove he was right about his "upside". Has anyone been paying attention? The real reason the Mets don't make the playoffs despite having four of the best players in the National League: terrible complementary players in important positions. Francoeur is the offensive black-hole of rightfielders. Minaya is seemingly perfecting his own model for making non-contender teams. I seriously think he looked at the back of his baseball cards, saw Francoeur's averages and RBIs from past seasons and made the trade. Can anyone point out OBP on the scoreboard to Mr. Minaya?
I can try to reach at Francoeur’s upside and what he brings to the table over Ryan Church, the man he was dealt for, but it’s beyond my outstretched arms. He’s five years younger than Church, so there’s that. Oh, and he stays healthy enough to remain in the lineup so he can cost his team wins.
Cost his team wins, you ask? How could that be possible for a guy we heard so much about a few years ago, when he burst onto the scene with the Braves in 2005?
Check it out: According to Fangraphs.com, over the past two years, Francouer has cost the Braves about two wins that they could have recouped with a replacement-level (read: easily available) right fielder. That’s not a difficult thing to do when you’re a starting corner outfielder in the Major Leagues with an on-base percentage below .300.
No comments:
Post a Comment