One of the first sets of baseball cards I was obsessed with was the Topps Turkey Red set. I loved that the cards looked like faux paintings. (My Mom had one card signed by a player at Orioles Fan Fest, we think it was Brian Roberts, it may have been Nick Markakis who commented on how cool the cards looked).
So first off, this card is a blast from the past, remember Mike Pelfrey? This was also a parallel card, the normal border for the card is grey. Red borders are the most common parallel, one per pack. Anyway, hope this card brought you back to a simpler time.
If you are a long time reader of this site, you know that pretty much every spring, in a very unscientific way, we collect the projections for Mets players from a variety of sources, average them together and create a conglomerate projection for the upcoming season (which we then return to at the end of the season).
Rather than doing that again for every player, we are going to go through some players a group at a time and look at their data. I’ve restricted it to players I’m anticipating seeing a larger portion of play time. I also had to remove some players that are no longer with the Mets (wishing you the best Jacob Rhame!)
Anyway, today we start the first of three posts for pitchers. Pitchers are going to work a little differently. If you checked out the hitters projections (part 1, part 2), I only showed the final conglomerate projection and the 60 game version. But when I did the pitchers in the Spring, only Innings Pitched and WAR were cumulative stats, so I’m taking the incorrect view that the rest of the stats should be the same (that simplifies a lot that shouldn’t be simplified) so I’m going to show all the data again with the original sourcing.
(Citations: BP projections come from the Baseball Prospectus Annual, a must read for all baseball fans and can be purchased here. ESPN comes from their fantasy baseball projections and can be found here. Both ZiPS and Steamer are found on FanGraphs. ZiPS can be found here, Steamer can be found here. BR comes from the Baseball Reference for this specific player and is linked earlier in the article)
At the start of the season I thought that the Mets success would be aligned to how well Brad Brach performs, he was a sneaky, under the radar resigning who could have a huge positive impact. He still has not reported to camp yet, so his projections here may be a mute point.
Really the only new thing to consider is how much time will pitchers see on the mound. Plus, with more pitchers on the roster overall time on the mound compared to a 60 game stretch in a regular season, will be less as well.
In the stats above, we have a lot of what the Mets success hinges on. Jacob deGrom is the best player on the team and the Mets need him to be that, again. The bullpen was the weakest part of the team last year. Here we have the projections of the three most important players in the pen: Diaz, Familia and Betances. Let’s see what happens at the end of July.
Today’s baseball card of the day is from the Topps 2007 Updates and Highlights Set. It’s a base card from a set that featured highlights from the season (as the name suggests), All-Stars, traded players, and players making their debuts.
The 2007 Topps set went with a black border which looked sharp, but also made it difficult to keep cards in mint condition – it made chipping a lot easier to see. Beltran obliviously had a normal base card earlier in the season.
If you are a long time reader of this site, you know that pretty much every spring, in a very unscientific way, we collect the projections for Mets players from a variety of sources, average them together and create a conglomerate projection for the upcoming season (which we then return to at the end of the season).
Rather than doing that again for every player, we are going to go through some players a group at a time and look at their data. I’ve restricted it to players I’m anticipating seeing a larger portion of play time.
Marisnick and Smith are trickier. They should both see some increase in playing time due to the DH (Marisnick seeing more time in the outfield, Smith could get additional starts in favorable matchup’s with Yoensis getting most of the DH reps). Working against Smith – the inclusion of the DH changes his pinch hitting role slightly.
Personally, I found this a useful exercise in managing expectations for players who hit 10-15 homers a year.
If you are a long time reader of this site, you know that pretty much every spring, in a very unscientific way, we collect the projections for Mets players from a variety of sources, average them together and create a conglomerate projection for the upcoming season (which we then return to at the end of the season).
Rather than doing that again for every player, we are going to go through some players a group at a time and look at their data. I’ve restricted it to players I’m anticipating seeing a larger portion of play time.
The player I’m wary about is Cespedes. Projections were struggling to project his playing time back in the winter and early spring. If he is healthy, he could see an uptick in playing time due to the DH. I think it’s worth bumping him up to 125-150 PA’s.
The original articles for each hitter, and sourcing material can be found with the following links: Alonso, Cano, Cespedes, Conforto and Davis.
If the baseball season happens, and that is still a big if, we are going to have to change our minds to think about baseball stats in 60 games, specifically the cumulative stats.
Without getting into advanced metrics, which are way better for comparing how a hitter is doing, how do we judge power on homer numbers? 20 home runs is good, 25 great, 30 is even better. But what does that mean for a 60 game season?
This is even more important for pitchers. 32 starts is a healthy season. 200+ innings means you hit your potential. How does this translate into a 60 game season?
One way to figure this out is to look at some Mets hitters and pitchers from 2019 and take their stats from 162 games and average it down to 60 games. This mimics a scale down of the amount of time they get to rest. For pitchers, it may over project, as I’m assuming many pitchers will be on a shorter pitch count at the start of the season and if that goes on for 3 starts, that’s 25% of the season.
Here are the stats!
So Pete Alonso’s rookie setting 53 homer season would be reduced down to 20. Michael Conforto, a solid, All-Star caliber hitter, would hit around 12 bombs. Jeff McNeil, who just sprayed the ball all over the place last year would be down to 60 hits.
A pitcher making all their starts looks to go about 12 times. 70 innings for a starter would be hitting max efficiency (although that is probably overblown for a pitchers for the reasons outline above). deGrom led the league in strikeouts last year and that gets scaled down to 94, so its going to be a major accomplishment if someone breaks 100 (or they are starting more 12 times). A reliever like Lugo who saw a lot of action should expect to get into about 20 games.
This was helpful for me to envision what a 60 game season looks like and I hope it helps you too.
For the record, I don’t think the 60 game season is going to happen the way the MLB owners intend it to. I’ve also miscalculated and underestimated capitalistic greed by the owners before. So in reality, I don’t think the 60 game season is going to happen in a way that almost any other country on Earth would permit it to happen.
It’s July 7th, the Mets are going to play a 60 game season of baseball. They played 20 Spring Training Games this year, they are scheduled right now to play two summer spring training games against the Nationals and then it’s go time.
This creates an interesting situation for the Mets. Since the Mets play most of their normal spring training games against a handful of teams: Marlins, Cardinals, Nationals, and Astros and since the Mets are playing only eastern teams in the regular season, they are going to see a lot of the same players this year.
Putting Spring Training and the Regular Season together, the Mets will see the Marlins 15 times over 82 games and the Nationals 13 times over 82 games. Or 18% of their games against one team, and just shy of 16% of games against the other.
Of course, this means nothing. But if you find yourself getting overly familiar with the Marlins and Nationals rosters this year, there’s a reason why.
I always fall for minor league cards. When I visit a Mets farm team for the first time that season, I pick up a team set. I generally buy 1-2 boxes of baseball cards per year and the first (sometimes the only) box I’ll buy is a minor league set.
Mike Piazza was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2016 and the Mets finally retired his number later that same July. It was the first time that I attended three home games in a row and it was so worth it.
The Sunday game was bobblehead day, with explosive lines around the stadium.
Mets Memorabilia 3/23: Mike Piazza Bobblehead from his Number Retirement celebration weekend at Citi pic.twitter.com/p9WUCWKpYj
A long time ago I used to post a Mets baseball card of the day. With nothing else baseball wise happening right, it feels like a good idea to do that again.
Do you remember Josh Satin? Some of my earliest memories of Mets Twitter comes from the 2011-2013 time frame just as Twitter was really taking off and #MetsTwitter was becoming a place for Mets fans to hangout (starting the transitioning period from facebook groups and blogs).
