213 Miles From Shea

The Mets signed Arquimedes Carminero back on January 3rd as a free agent. He was signed by the Marlins in 2005 and made his debut in 2013. He was acquired by the Pirates in 2015 and traded to the Mariners in August of 2016.

This is where his biography changes a bit. He was released by the Mariners in December of 2016 and spent 2017 and 2018 playing in the Dominican Winter League (only 6 games in the last two years) and for the Yomiuri Giants in the Central League of the NPB.

2017 NPB: 63.1 IP, 2.42 ERA, 1.247 WHIP
2018 NPB: 18.2 IP, 5.79 ERA, 1.768 WHIP

2016 MLB: 60.2 IP, 3.56 ERA, 4.88 FIP, 1.650 WHIP, 5.70 DRA, -0.5 WARP
MLB Career: 3.83 ERA, 4.37 FIP, 1.40 WHIP, 4.74 DRA, 0.1 WARP

Arquimedes has an uphill battle to make the Mets. It’s been a couple years since he’s been in the majors and after a very successful year in Japan he’s coming off one where he struggled. The Mets are hoping though to create some depth in the minors that aren’t all rookie flamethrowers. Unless he has a stunning spring training, he’s not going to break camp on the roster. He becomes an interesting back up plan though when injuries roll around if the Mets need to call-up a pitcher and they don’t want to use one of their young guys options.

At the least, his signing represents a new push for depth in the Mets system.

For the last several years we have walked through every Non-Roster Invitee in Mets camp. It’s one of my favorite article series because I learn so much about the Mets depth chart throughout the weeks leading to Spring Training and the month leading to Spring Training games. Right now the Mets have given out 21 invites to camp, and that list could grow.

Today we’ll start with Luis Avilán, who has a shot of making the roster. Avilán is a left handed pitcher and before the Mets signed Justin Wilson to a 2-year deal, the only lefty in the Mets pen was Danny Zamora.

Luis was signed by the Braves in 2005 as a free agent and made his debut in 2012 against the Mets where he faced one batter and struck him out. Luis has also been involved with two different three way trades. First in 2015 where he went to the Dodgers along with Arroyo and Jim Johnson and then another three way trade last January where he was traded to the White Sox. He became a free agent in November and signed a deal with the Mets on the 10th of January.

Phew! Now let’s get to the stats.

Career Stats: 3.09 ERA, 3.25 FIP, 1.22 WHIP, 4.22 DRA, 2.0 WARP
2018 Stats (CWS/PHI): 45.1 IP, 3.77 ERA, 3.12 FIP, 1.37 WHIP, 4.88 DRA, 0.0 WARP

So his career line looks line. He took a step back last year, specifically with WHIP. This is the area I’m most concerned about. Before 2017 his WHIP was never above 1.19 and since then it’s been 1.37 and above (this has occurred with a spike in DRA). If he doesn’t have this spike, he’s probably signing a deal similar to Justin Wilson.

Luis Avilán will be 29 this year. He needs to be better than Zamora to get a spot on the roster and even with that he will have to fight to get on the active roster to make it out of camp. If he doesn’t impress in camp, he probably stays with the Mets organization, maybe tries it with another team. If he does impress in camp, but not enough to force his way into the Mets bullpen, then he will almost definitely go sign with another team.

Avilán was a smart signing by the Mets to continue to build bullpen depth. Let’s see what happens

Last year we wrote up 15 previews for players given non-roster invites to Spring Training. They ran the gambit from highly-touted prospect, sneaky surprise prospect, veteran depth to Tim Tebow. At some point in the next couple of weeks we’ll go over the new non-roster invites but before we turn the page to 2019, let’s take a look at who was brought in last year. Out of the 15 non-roster invitees we profiled last year, 7 made it to the majors and 9 are still with the Mets.

Tim Tebow
At this point last year, Tim Tebow was a joke invite. However, Tebow didn’t have a terrible year last year in the minors and the way the Mets were blowing through outfielders thanks to injuries (not just at the major league level, in Vegas also), there was a non-zero chance that Tebow would have made his major league debut last year. Alas he broke his hand and ended his season. He had 298 PA’s in Binghamton and ended the season hitting .273/.336/.399. Thanks to the Mets signing a whole bunch of outfielders on minor league deals this year, we expect Tebow to be back in Binghamton and much farther back on the depth chart then he was last August.

Kevin Kaczmarksi
Kevin Kaczmarksi made his major league debut with the Mets last year, which we thought would only happen if something went terribly wrong with the Mets, and something did, they just ran out of outfielders. Kevin played in 4 games getting 5 plate appearances getting a walk and nothing else. In Vegas last year he hit .300/.372/.375 compared to his career line of .296/.377/.410. The additional signings this year of players on minor league deals puts some traffic in front of him. He’ll almost definitely start the season in Syracuse.

Matt den Dekker
 If there ever was an opportunity for den Dekker it was last year. The Mets re-acquired the outfielder they traded to the Nationals after he spent a season with Detroit. When he got his shot last year, he went hit-less in 18 AB’s, collecting 2 walks thus posting an OBP of .095. He is currently a free agent.

Zach Borenstein
The Mets signed Zach Borenstein to a minor league deal in November of 2017 with an invitation to Spring Training. He played the whole season at Las Vegas, getting 572 PAs posting a .248/.357/.477 line (career line .277/.355/.498). He just signed another minor league contract, this time with the Cubs, last week.

David Thompson
A common theme for the Mets, David Thompson missed significant playing time last year due to injury. He may have had a path to a bench spot this year, but the Mets are bursting with corner infielders. Last year over 66 AB’s he hit .258/.329/.379 for Vegas. The year before he hit .263/.325/.429 in Binghamton (and .328/.371/.569 in the Fall League).

Phillip Evans
For a second straight year, Phillip Evans got some playing time with the big league squad. At the end of 2017 he hit .303/.395/.364 in 38 PA’s. In 2018 he hit .143/.217/.143 over 23 PA’s. He became a free agent at the end of the season and like Borenstein signed a deal with the Cubs.

Ty Kelly
Fan Favorite Ty Kelly found his way back to the Mets last year by way of a minor league deal and made it back to the majors. He got 12 PA’s with 1 hit and 1 run and is currently a free agent.

Peter Alonso
Peter Alonso is the first player on this list we expect to see in Queens this year. Before the Mets signed Jed Lowrie, Alonso was competing for a spot on the Opening Day Roster. He still is, but there are a lot of major league infielders ahead of him right now, so there’s reason to keep him down in the minors to get an extra year of playing time. However, he was a monster last year hitting 36 homers with a .285/.395/.579 slash line and should have been called up, but this is the Mets.

Patrick Mazeika
Mazeika hit .231/.328/.363, a significant drop from his career line of .290/.392/.424. It was also his first full year in Binghamton and I imagine catching in April in Binghamton must be incredibly tough on your body. He’s still in the Mets organization and has another non-roster invitation for 2019. Ali Sanchez is the Mets catcher prospect to watch, Mazeika has the inside track for back up catcher if the Mets have dive into their depth chart.

Jose Lobaton
Speaking of having to dive into catching depth, the Mets signed Jose Lobaton to a minor league deal in case something happened to Plawecki and d’Arnaud and of course something happened to d’Arnaud so Lobaton got some playing time in Queens. In 57 PA’s he hit .143/.246/.224. Last week he signed a deal with the Mariners

Adonis Uceta
Adonis Uceta dealt with an injury pretty early on in the season and it really messed with his playing time. He posted a 4.26 ERA over 16 games and 25.1 innings.

Corey Taylor
Corey Taylor pitched in Binghamton and Las Vegas last year, posting a combined 3.12 ERA over 66.1 innings from 45 games (3 starts). His WHIP was higher than his career numbers, 1.432 vs 1.312. Taylor has received another non-roster invite for the upcoming season. The new bullpen gives him a blocked path but a good start in Syracuse and who knows what happens.

Drew Smith
Smith was traded to the Mets from the Rays for Lucas Duda in 2017 and earned a non-roster invite last season. He did well enough in the minors to earn a spot in the Mets bullpen last year and he got some work in, appearing in 27 games pitching 28.0 innings posting a 3.54 ERA, 3.66 FIP and a 1.429 WHIP. He is a success story from the NRI crew last year.

Matt Purke
Matt Purke did not have a good season in Las Vegas posting a 7.14 ERA over 38 game sand 46.2 innings. He was signed as a free agent from the White Sox at the end of the 2017 season and he is still currently a free agent.

PJ Conlon
The man with an amazing sense of humor made his major league debut with the Mets last year, appearing in 3 games, makign two starts allowing 7 runs over 7.2 innings. Because of how the Mets handled the situation, they had to put him through waivers, so he ended up becoming a Dodger. But then the Dodgers a few days later had to put him on waivers and the Mets got him back. He has another non-roster invite for the upcoming season.

Every spring I collect several projections sources and average them together to do a meta-projection. Last year I pulled projections from Baseball Prospectus, ZiPS, Steamer, ESPN, and Baseball Reference. For the last 4-5 weeks we’ve gone through a lot of Mets players seeing where projections were correct, underestimated or overestimated playing ability. The Mets mid-season tear-down, injuries, and a off-season trades made this journey into one filled with good byes.

We say good bye to this series of articles today with our last entry – Michael Conforto! So much next year is centered around Conforto. Let’s see how he fared compared to his projections.

2018 Average Projections: 503 PA, 415 AB, 109 H, 25 HR, .266/.355/.502
2018 Actual: 638 PA, 543 AB, 132 H, 28 HR, .243/.350/.448
From July 20th On: .273/.356/.539

On the whole Conforto performed below expectations, hitting about 20 points below the projected line, 5 points below the on base line (which is barely statistically significant) and slugging over 50 points his projected line.

That being said, his second half of the season is above the projected line in every category. No individual projection from last year (see them here) projected Conforto to struggle. The Mets are hoping that doesn’t happen again and the Conforto we had in the second half is the Conforto we get all year.

For a while last year it looked like Conforto was going to struggle to make 20 homers, he ended two shy of 30. Let’s see what he does next year!

Every spring I collect several projections sources and average them together to do a meta-projection. Last year I pulled projections from Baseball Prospectus, ZiPS, Steamer, ESPN, and Baseball Reference.

Going into last season, Yoenis Cespedes was a critical part of the lineup, the lineup only worked if Cespedes was his normal self. However, Cespedes was dealing with two major heel issues last year that it looks like the Mets wanted him to play through. That led to losing Cespedes for a good chunk of last year and probably half if not all of this year.

2017 Stats: 321 PA, 291 AB, 85 H, 17 HR, .292/.352/.540
2018 Average Projected: 519 PA, 487 AB, 131 H, 28 HR, .274/.332
2018 Actual:157 PA, 141 AB, 37 H, 9 HR, .262/.325/.496

Not surprisingly the projections were wrong about playing time (as they often are for injured players, even oft injured ones) and were a little too high on his slash line (as you would expect a player to be, playing through an undisclosed injury). You can read his projected stat lines here.

I’m curious as to how computer models handle his 2019 and his 2020 season. Next year they’ll have to handle if his July return time is correct (again, not likely only because it’s the Mets) and how much playing time he gets when he comes back (2/3 of 5 games a week?). Then, based on that, how does he project over a whole season in 2020, especially considering his age.

I guess we’ll find out in a few weeks!

Every spring I collect several projections sources and average them together to do a meta-projection. Last year I pulled projections from Baseball Prospectus, ZiPS, Steamer, ESPN, and Baseball Reference.

Wilmer Flores, from tears, to a multitude of walk-off’s, will go down in Mets lore history. You already know by now the Mets parted ways with him this off-season and that he signed a 1-year deal with the Diamondbacks. For the last several years, Mets fans have always joked with themselves, “is he good enough to start everyday” and for the last couple of years, there have been enough injuries where the answer has been “it doesn’t matter, he basically has to” until he gets injured.

2018 Average Projection: 446 PA, 316 AB, 96 H, 17 HR, .270/.311/.465
2018 Actual: 429 PA, 386 AB, 103 H, 11 HR, .267/.319/.417

All things considered, like haphazard playing time, the projections did remarkably well with Flores. You can see them here. They all missed his dip in power, which was notable and probably made Flores a role-player in the eyes of other teams this off-season rather than a starter. But Flores put up good numbers again and did well for a bench player.

More importantly for this article, he played close to his projected numbers. Now those numbers are not enough to push the Mets forward which is why he’s not a Met anymore. It’s just amazing that even with a dip in power, he seemed to always get hits when it counted.

Happy trails Wilmer! We’ll see you in September in Queens!

Every spring I collect several projections sources and average them together to do a meta-projection. Last year I pulled projections from Baseball Prospectus, ZiPS, Steamer, ESPN, and Baseball Reference.

Todd Frazier was billed as the key signing for the Mets last year. Their one signing that wasn’t a member of the previous Mets team, a signing that was going to push Cabrera to 2nd and save us from Reyes or Cabrera at third base.

2018 Projections: 562 PA, 494 AB, 109 H, 28 HR, .232/.321
2018 Actual: 472 PA, 408 AB, 87 H, 18 HR, .213/.303

No individual projection (you can see them here) was able to accurately predict the fall-off on Frazier’s numbers off his career numbers, let alone his projections. In fact, last year felt so abnormal that if Frazier was going to have normal playing time next year, he’d probably be a pre-season candidate for comeback player of the year, contingent of course on this slide being a fluke and not a trend.

Frazier this upcoming season is being pushed into a utility role with the Mets bringing in Cano and Lowrie who should be playing every day. It will be curious how computer projections try to square this for Frazier in 2019.

Every spring I collect several projections sources and average them together to do a meta-projection. Last year I pulled projections from Baseball Prospectus, ZiPS, Steamer, ESPN, and Baseball Reference.

Today we’ll look at former Met Asdrúbal Cabrera, who was finally traded in the 2018 tear-down. Last March we noted how Cabrera was the only veteran of value not traded from the 2017 Mets, despite being the only one who asked for a trade. He was only owed 8.5 million last year which seemed like a good deal.

2018 Average Projection: 545 PA, 477 AB, 125 H, 16 HR, .264/.326/.426
2018 Actual: 592 PA, 546 AB, 143 H, 23 HR, .262/.316/.458
2018 Mets: 407 PA, 375 AB, 104 H, 18 HR, .277/.329/.488

So Cabrera was outperforming his projections while he was on the Mets and started to underperform when he got traded to the Phillies. As a Met he was getting on base the predicted amount but was developing a lot more power (like 2016 Cabrera). The projection that got Cabrera closest was ESPN, which makes sense since they have a habit of overprojected established veterans. You can see the rest of the projections here.

With all of the Mets signings and trades in the infield this off-season, it’s clear that Cabrera’s time in New York is over (which is refreshing that the Mets aren’t signing all their old free agents like they’ve done the last couple of years. Cabrera was a big part of why the Mets made the 2016 Wild Card, thanks for the memories and for outperforming your projections last year!

When the Mets brought in Adrián González last year no one was really surprised. For some reason the Mets for years felt like a destined landing spot for González and it made even more sense for him in the twilight of his career as the Mets in the last 5 or years have become a final stop for players on their way to retirement.

González was supposed to help out Dom Smith, give the Mets a little more time at first base and provide a veteran presence.  Instead, the former All-Star and very good player had a bad time with the Mets on the field, and did not receive a proper send-off when he exited.

2018 Average Projection: 235 PA, 318 AB, 68 H, 8 HR, .262/.327/.415
2018 Actual: 187 PA, 169 AB, 40 H, 6 HR, .237/.299/.373

First, the PA’s are lower than his AB’s because the projection sites that do PAs saw him getting less playing time than the ones that only do ABs. You can see all of his projections here.

González surprisingly showed some pop in his short time with the Mets. Its surprising because the rest of numbers were a great decline from projections, which were more optimistic than his 2017 numbers (.242/.287/.355).

It’s sad that the end of his career will be a twisted Mets trivia question. Thankfully, I’m not sure many people will remember his quarter of a season with the Mets when they think about how good of a player he was.

Every spring I collect several projections sources and average them together to do a meta-projection. Last year I pulled projections from Baseball Prospectus, ZiPS, Steamer, ESPN, and Baseball Reference.

Jay Bruce came to the Mets last year as a major free agent signing, despite not making sense. The Mets just traded him the season before and then resigned him even though they needed a center fielder and Bruce is an extreme-corner outfielder. Then the Mets couldn’t get their first base situation right, so Bruce saw time there. But how did he do against computer projections?

2018 Average Projection: 557 PA, 521 AB, 119.5 H, 29.4 HR, .243/.313/.477
2018 Actual: 361 PA, 319 AB, 71 H, 9 HR, .223/.310/.370

Jay Bruce was battling injuries for most of last season, thus leading to a decrease in ABs but even with that his numbers took a massive slide, more so than the computers projected. The computers saw a drop (you can see that here), but he ended up hitting 20 points below average and fell over 100 points in slugging (although is OBP was strangely accurate).

Jay Bruce had a great year in 2017, he hit 36 homers, 29 for the Mets. It just wasn’t his year last year. We wish him the best!