In case you were away, the Mets missed the playoffs.
I know, I know, you’re shocked.
"WHAT????"
Oh, and 16 teams made the playoffs. Even the Marlins did.
Now you’re even more shocked.
I guess you didn't get the memo.
“Boy, the Mets must've really sucked,” you’d no doubt say.
As a team, yes, they sure did, that much I can tell you.
But some Mets players were not only good, they were good enough to be on a ticker tape parade team.
Quite a few actually. THE CREAM OF THE CROP.
Who were these stalwart lads?
Let me rank the sweet 16, starting with the most valuable, championship caliber dude, right on down to least valuable championship caliber fella.
Most teams would have been glad to have most any of these 16 in their Race for the Ring.
1) Dominic Smith: .316 average, .616 slug %, 32 XBHs, 42 RBIs in 177 at bats. .333 with RISP, and 32 RBIs in his 57 RISP at bats. Huge year. Mets MVP.
2) Michael Conforto: .322 in 202 at bats, 9 homers, 40 runs scored, 31 RBIs. Not as potent as Dom, but pretty Dom good.
3) Brandon Nimmo: 33 runs in 55 games, .284/.404/.484. He gets on base, usually more than 40% of the time, and with some pop. Some disliked his CF play, but he should have been in LF or RF, anyway, where he would have done fine.
4) David Peterson: when you go 6-2, 3.44, and you win 2 more games than deGrom in 3 fewer starts, I gotta rank him this year above Jake the Great.
5) Jake deGrom: great pitcher, great strikeouts, great ERA, just 4 wins in 12 starts, though. More Sigh than Cy in 2020.
6) Robinson Cano: his DL stint cost him some time, but he still hit .316 with 9 homers, 30 RBIs and a .544 slug in 49 games. The definition of “professional bat.” Some of you might want a boombox playing "Do the Hustle" in his locker stall, but he had a great offensive season.
7) Jeff McNeil: the Squirrel slumped a few times, but still hit .311/.383/.454. We should all slump like that.
8) Edwin Diaz: got beat by RBI Machine Ozuna in week one, which got many a Mets fan apoplectic, but most of the rest of the way Sugar was a strikeout machine, with an absurd 18 Ks per 9 IP, and an ERA under 2.00.
9) Andres Gimenez: the yout’ done alright huh? In 49 games, the dandy rook hit .263 with a surprising .398 slug %, and golden glove work.
10) Luis Guillorme: activate this LG appliance and watch it produce. His .333/.426/.448 was super-super, and the man who snatches bats made not a single error in his sporadic playing time.
I will say it again, reminds me of Wally World Backman.
11) Pete Alonso: power numbers ended up good, but he was deeper than in the doldrums most of the year. Still, he heated up the last week and would have been a real playoff asset.
12) Chase Shreve: a few relief outing stinkers, pushing his ERA up to 3.96, but otherwise very strong.
13) Justin Wilson: more shaky outings than I would have liked, but his mid 3s ERA was solid.
14) Jeurys Familia: read Justin Wilson, plus a little shakier. He and Wilson combined to go 4-1, which counts big on a sub .500 team..
15) Seth Lugo: destroyed in his last 3 starts, pushing his ERA to 5.15 to go with his 3-4 record. But his ERA before that was 2.43, and the guess by our beloved David Rubin is he wasn’t stretched out enough to go from the pen to the starting rotation, and David is seldom wrong.
16) JD Davis: at the very bottom of my championship ranking list, he just didn’t hit like he did in 2019 with just 19 RBIs in 190 at bats. He was, to sum it up, no Weepin' Wilmer Flores in 2020. I almost put him on the Bums List, the ones who caused the S.S. Met to hit an iceberg and sink.
Any team with those 16 fellas should have hoped that the rest of their roster was good enough for a deep playoff run.
Those 16 were probably as potent as almost any other team's Top 16, IMO.
But the rest of the roster?
Bums. "Bums, Alice...BUMS!"
Topic of the next article, in a few days?
THE BUMS WHO SANK THE 2020 S.S. METS CRUISESHIP.
6 comments:
Tom,
Don't agree with everything you say but can't argue much. Probably would have placed David Peterson and Gimenez ahead of Nimmo.
I see Nimmo as a guy that is great on a winning team that can use him correctly and not have to put him in CF. Is he a guy you build around? Maybe not like Conforto but maybe so. He's not an All-Star but one of those "good guy to have on your club".
Very few playoff teams could list a Sweet 16 as strong as this.
Mack, that is so true. I am guessing it is the strongest Sweet 16 the Mets ever had while not making the playoffs, at least in the current expanded playoffs structure. Obviously, the 1985 Mets were the best Mets team not to make the playoffs, but there were only 4 teams making the playoffs then, far fewer than the last full season in 2019.
John, I don't want to blame Nimmo at all for the Mets having to play him out of position. I think he would have been fine in LF. Kind of like blaming Smith for misplays in LF, when he is not a LF, but instead an excellent 1B playing out of position in LF.
Over the past 3 years, if you exclude the period of time in early 2019 that he tried to play with the bulging disk, his on base % is top 5 in all of baseball. I highly value him for that, especially since his power numbers are also quite good. He would have scored a lot more runs if guys hit with RISP.
How in the world is JDG #5? Had you’re archaic reasoning Tom been used by voters, he never gets his two Cy Young’s. Not his fault his team is Jekyll and Hyde. The guy had a sub 2.00 ERA until his last two starts. I think we’re spoiled.
Texas Gus, I penalized Jake a bit for continuing his pattern of 2018 and 2019: a win every 3 starts. We can resume this debate, which we've had in the past, but I weigh guys at least in part on key things...like, if you are a starter, how often do you get a W. Last 3 seasons, 76 starts, 25 W's. Most talented pitcher? Jake. Best at bring home the bacon? Not Jake.
Seaver, in his first Mets stint, started 361 games for some really weak hitting teams, and he somehow won 200 of them (56%). Different age, more complete games, but 56% vs. 32% while both pitched in challenging environments? As great as Jake is, something besides his team's weak support is amiss. 32% is just not enough.
Sticking even to today's game, I wonder if you could find any comparative, where a top flight current day pitcher wins just 32% of his starts over 3 years. For instance, Max Scherzer has won 34 of 72 over the past 3 seasons, while not pitching to nearly as low an ERA.
Ha Jake won 6 this year, he is probably, my # 2 behind Dom.
Post a Comment