213 Miles From Shea

Baseball box scores come back in our lives today!

The Mets kick off spring training this afternoon by hosting the Braves in St. Lucie. The more notable starting pitchers on the club will start seeing the mound tomorrow, today the Mets will peak into what depth options lie beyond (maybe hopefully but not getting too excited – instead of) Jason Vargas.

Lineup:
1. Jeff McNeil (LF)
2. Juan Lagares (CF)
3. Robinson Cano (DH)
4. Michael Conforto (RF)
5. J.D. Davis (3B)
6. Pete Alonso (1B)
7. Amed Rosario (SS)
8. Devin Mesoraco (C)
9. Arismendy Alcantara (2B)

Starting Pitcher: Walker Lockett
At the start of January the Mets traded Kevin Plawecki to the Indians for Walker Lockett and Sam Haggerty. It was the second time this off-season that Lockett was traded. Back on November 20th, he was traded from the Padres to Cleveland for Ignacio Feliz.
Drafted in 2012, Walker made his major league debut last season for the Padres where he went 0-3 over 4 games (3 starts) totaling 15.0 innings posting a 9.60 ERA, 7.03 FIP, 2.133 WHIP and a 7.2 K/9. In the minors he was a career 4.15 ERA pitcher over 7 seasons posting a 1.291 WHIP. Baseball Reference listed Walker as the #28 prospect in the Padres system back in 2017 (that book had Fernando Tatis Jr.as the Padres #17 prospect) giving him a grade of 40 and medium risk.

Things To Watch For In No Particular Order:

1. This will be our first look at Jeff McNeil in the outfield. After delaying his call up for weeks last year because they didn’t want to play Jeff out of position, the Mets with a glut of new infielders on the team will be forced to play Jeff out of position.
2. At second base is Alcantara. Although the Mets have a ton of infielders in camp on the roster and on NRI’s, Alcantara is neither, signing a minor league deal at the start of February. He’s a former prospect for the Cubs, but never could quite figure out major league pitching. There’s a good write up on him here.
3. The Mets have a ton of catchers in major league camp (Ramos, d’Arnaud, Nido, Mesoraco, Sanchez, Mazeika and Plaia). Mesoraco is on an NRI and has the best chance from the 4 NRI catchers to make the roster.
4. According to DiComo Hector Santiago will be pitching after Lockett. Santiago has quite a bit of major league experience and is in camp on an NRI. Since he’s not on the 40-man yet, this could be a hurdle for Santiago as he has to leap over 40-man pitchers Oswalt and Lockett to become starting depth. We wrote a profile on him a couple of weeks ago here, he’s coming off a season where tossed 102.0 innings with a 4.41 ERA, 5.12 FIP, 6.37 DRA, and a 1.52 WHIP. These are all increases from his career line of a 4.05 ERA, 4.86 FIP, 5.74 DRA and 1.37 WHIP.
5. This will also be the Mets first look at J.D. Davis, a questionable trade that sent away intriguing prospects Luis Santana and Ross Adolph. The Davis trade was even more confusing when Lowrie was signed the following week. But with the Lowrie injury, an opening has appeared for Davis. I imagine that he’ll be directly competing with TJ Rivera among others.

We are just so excited to have Mets baseball back in our lives today! We don’t care if the games are meaningless and we don’t care if by the 3rd inning it’s all players we have to search up online.

What are you looking forward to today?

Today we round out the outfield depth signings the Mets made this off-season with Rymer Liriano, the youngest between him, Blanco and Rajai Davis and the one with the least amount of major league experience.

Rymer Liriano was drafted by the Padres in 2007 and made his major league debut in 2014. He was traded to the Brewers in 2016 for minor leaguer Trevor Seidenberger and was selected off waivers by the White Sox in October of 2016. He signed as a free agent with the Angels before the 2018 season, was released midway through where he made his way back to the Brewers. He signed with the Mets in January.

2014 MLB: 121 PA, .220/.289/.266, 56 DRC+
2017 MLB: 46 PA, .220/.304/.341, 71 DRC+
2018 Minors: 404 PA, .253/.342/.472
2019 Baseball Reference Projections: 205 PA, .242/.315/.401

Baseball Reference projects him at barely average next season, which for an outfielder isn’t the greatest piece of news. It’s also been a while since he has seen significant major league playing time.

He had a decent, not great, last year in the minors and for the Mets who need players about his age (28) in the system to fill up roster spots, having Liriano as a depth piece makes sense. His age is an advantage compared to Blanco and Davis but his lack of playing time puts him on the outside looking in to get a roster or an emergency call-up during the season. The bottom line for the Mets its nice to have depth and that’s what Liriano represents.

Today we wrap up our projections review of catchers on the 40 man with the actual starting catcher for the 2019 Mets – Wilson Ramos!

The last two days we’ve looked at d’Arnaud and Nido. The former will be competing with Mesoraco for a back up role and Nido will probably be on the outside looking for the major league season.

But Wilson! He’s the focus here. The Mets got Wilson Ramos on a steal of a deal after Grandal turned down a 4 year offer from the Mets.

2018: 416 PA, 382 AB, 15 HR, .306/.358/.487, 2.7 WAR, 121 DRC+
Career: .273/.317/.439, 104 DRC+

Ramos put up a great year last year and his career DRC+ is better than anyone the Mets have on their roster (closest is Mesoraco at 100). Here are what the projection programs see in Wilson’s first year as a Met:

(Citations: Baseball Prospectus (BP) projections are from the Baseball Prospectus annual which can you can get here. It’s highly recommended. ESPN projections can be found here. ZiPS can be found here. Steamer can be found here. Baseball Reference projections (BR) can found on the players BR page which linked elsewhere on this article. )

Steamer and ZiPS, both fangraphs linked projections, see Ramos taking a step back of his career numbers in 2019. Everyone else see’s an improvement including a whopping 112 DRC+ (which is high off his average career mark) from BP.

It’s been a while since the Mets have had a reliably offensive minded catcher behind the plate. Even the ZiPS line would feel like an improvement over past years.

Tomorrow we’ll continue with new players with Robinson Cano!

Since around 2014/2015 it felt like the Mets were on a collision course with Rajai Davis. Around then he was just a slightly below average hitter, meaning that he was serviceable to run out in the outfield. He played a position the Mets needed and wouldn’t cost a crazy amount of money or a large prospect in a trade, all things the Mets brass would care about. But it never happened. The stars never aligned.

Then he got older which historically is the Mets time to pounce thus Rajai Davis, who will be 38 this season, is in Mets camp. Different than other years: in the Mets more recent history he would be competing for a starting job, he’s here as a depth piece on an NRI competing directly with Gregor Blanco. With that as a set up, having him in camp makes sense.

Before we get into his recent numbers, just some quick transaction history. He was drafted in 2011 by the Pirates int he 38th round and made his debut in 2006. He was traded 2007 to the Giants for Matt Morris and was selected off waivers by the Athletics in 2008. In 2010 he was traded to the Blue Jays for Danny Farquhar and Tyrstan Magnuson and would become a free agent in 2013. He then signed with the Tigers for two seasons (the first time that rumors on Twitter started that the Mets should bet interested in him. Since then signed with the Indians, then the Athletics (again) who traded him (again) this time to the Red Sox for Rafael Rincones. Then he signed with the Indians (again) before becoming a Met!

2017 Oakland: 328 PA, .233/.294/.353, 71 DRC+
2018 Cleveland: 216 PA, .224/.278/.281, 69 DRC+
Career: .262/.311/.379, 85 DRC+

If Rajai Davis was still hitting close to his career line, he would be competing for a starting job somewhere. His OBP has been declining since 2014 and his DRC+ has declined from 94 in in 2015 down to 69 last year, a number he has posted 3 times in his career (although not his worse). If he sees significant time in the majors this year his numbers will be close to his numbers the last two seasons.

Here’s why the Rajai Davis signing is good though. If he stays with the team, would you rather in case of an emergency the Mets pull up a random player like they had two last year (Jack Reinheimer/Kevin Kaczmarksi/Phil Evans) if they are still in contention? I would feel better in this case with Davis or Blanco on the bench (I mean, ideally I would feel better if this wasn’t a scenario we always had to plan for but it is the Mets).

As stated earlier, he’ll be in direct competition with Gregor Blanco. Let’s see what happens!

Day 2 of our look at projections for Mets players for the 2019 season! Yesterday we kicked things off with d’Arnaud and we continue with catchers on the 40-man with Tomas Nido, who right now looks to have the least amount of major league playing time out of the three catchers on the roster.

With d’Arnaud and Plawecki out for chunks of last year, Nido got some playing time, but couldn’t take advantage of it, especially once the Mets traded for Mesoraco and Plawecki got healthy.

2018: 90 PA, 84 AB, 1 HR, .167/.200/.238, -0.5 WAR, 58 DRC+
Career: .181/.210/.255, 61 DRC+

That being said, there are worse depth options than Tomas Nido. Remember last year when the Mets went through a Jose Lobaton phase? Not fun. Here’s what BP, ESPN, ZiPS, Steamer and BR think Tomas will do:

(Citations: Baseball Prospectus (BP) projections are from the Baseball Prospectus annual which can you can get here. It’s highly recommended. ESPN projections can be found here. ZiPS can be found here. Steamer can be found here. Baseball Reference projections (BR) can found on the players BR page which linked elsewhere on this article. )

Yesterday we saw d’Arnaud with the projected .704 OPS, which is basically average (emphasized by his 99 DRC+). Nido is projected to post an OPS about 90 points lower, a DRC+ of 91 or 9% worse than the average hitter. Considering his career DRC+ so far of 61 (39% worse than the average hitter), this is dramatic improvement.

Obviously the projections struggled with figuring out his playing time, you could have told me that before I wrote this article. If Nido gets 240+ PAs like Baseball Reference and ZiPS sees, then something went horribly wrong with the Mets this year.

Ultimately, I still believe Mesoraco on an NRI makes for an interesting spring. If he plays well either Mesoraco gets released to sign somewhere else/traded, d’Arnaud gets traded or maybe even the Mets try to move Nido (which right now is the least likely option).

The Mets signed Gregor Blanco back on 12/21 and it was a clear sign that the Mets were not going to hobble a major league roster together but they were going to methodically build a minor league system with depth to pull from when the team needs it. There have a been a several moments over the last couple of years where the Mets have needed an outfielder, but had no one to turn too, so any option was pulled out of Las Vegas to fill in.

Gregor Blanco is a fine option for the Mets to use if injuries rapt the major league squad. Before we go through his last couple of seasons, let’s take a look at his journey.

He was signed by the Braves in 2000 by the Braves and made his debut with the team. This is probably why his name is familiar with Mets fans, we have faced Blanco a lot. He was traded to the Royals in 2010 for Rick Ankiel and Farnsworth. The next season he was traded to the Nationals and was granted free agency. He was an early signing in the 2011 off-season and signed a long term deal with the Giants and stayed in SF for 2016. This is the mental image most of us now have of Blanco. He has bounced between the Diamondbacks and Giants since then.

His best two seasons were between 2014 and 2015 where he hit .265/.341/.350 followed by .260/.333/.374 posting a 98 DRC+ followed by a 103 DRC+. These are his two best seasons for Blanco, who has averaged a DRC+ of 85. (For comparison, this would make him a major league starter for the Baltimore Orioles right now, but he he’s here on a minor league deal).

2018: 203 PA, 2 HR, .217/.262/.317, 60 DRC+
Career: .255/.338/.348, 85 DRC+

A lot is going to have to happen for Blanco to break into the roster and to Queens by the end of camp. His main competition from NRI’s will be Rajai Davis who was a similar signing for the Mets. We should get a long look at Blanco this spring.

It’s that time of the year again! Conglomerate Projections! In years past we have used up 10 different projections, averaged them together (no matter how mathematically dubious of an idea that was) to make a single projection line for each player on the Mets. We slimmed it down for the second straight year for the projections that worked the best.

There’s a slight order to how we will proceed. We’re going to start alphabetically with catchers on the 40-man, followed by infielders, outfielders and players with NRI’s who have a high chance of making the team at some point this season. Then we repeat the same process with pitchers.

Baseball Prospectus (BP) projections are from the Baseball Prospectus annual which can you can get here. It’s highly recommended. ESPN projections can be found here. ZiPS can be found here. Steamer can be found here. Baseball Reference projections (BR) can found on the players BR page which linked elsewhere on this article.

So let’s start with Travis d’Arnaud! It was unclear what the Mets were going to do with Travis and Kevin Plawecki going into the off-season. They ended up tendering Travis a contract and trading away Plawecki. The Wilson Ramos signing makes Travis second on the depth chart and the Devin Mesoraco signing means that they could still potentially trade Travis. Here’s what the computers thought Travis would do this year:

Each program is correctly guessing that d’Arnaud will see a decrease in playing time (from both Wilson Ramos and his own injury history).

For comparison:
2018: 16 PA, 15 AB, 1 HR, .200/.250/.400, -0.1 WAR, 80 DRC+
Career: .245/.306/.406, 99 DRC+

Baseball Prospectus see’s him as basically being the exact same hitter that he has always has been. Everyone else has remarkable agreement on his batting average with not much different for his OBP. Projections are split on if he’ll hit for power worse or better than his career (but the spread is super low).

Ideally, Travis finds his power again and can be used as a source of pop late in games in a switch. The Mets are will probably like to use d’Arnaud max twice a week. While the projections are eerily close for him in 2019 and close to his career, he needs to survive spring first from Mesoraco and BWV who can still easily trade him.

The Mets welcome back an old friend, a former future second-basemen in Dilson Herrera to spring. The Mets famously didn’t pursue Daniel Murphy after the National League Champions 2015 Mets also had Dilson Herrera on the roster, but then traded Herrera away the next season.

Ultimately Dilson Herrera is wrapped up with a lot of interesting Mets stories. He was signed by the Pirates as a free agent in 2010. In 2013 he was traded with Vic Black for John Buck and Marlon Byrd. Expectations were high for him from the start and his best season in the majors was with the 2015 Mets.

But then Herrera wasn’t able to crack out of the minors with the 2016 Mets, and he was traded with Max Wotell to the Reds to Jay Bruce thus starting the Jay Bruce era. So Herrera is the scapegoat for the end of the Murphy era and kicks off a very confusing time with Jay Bruce.

Enough trivia and 6 degrees of separation, lets get into the numbers. Dilson Herrera finally got back to the majors last year:

2018: 97 PA, 87 AB, 5 HR, .184/.268/.414, 74 DRC+
2015 Mets: 103 PA, 3 HR, .211/.311/.367, 95 DRC+
Career: .203/.293/.394, 86 DRC+

Dilson is not with the Mets right now to solve any major issues. The Mets have so many infielders in camp. Dilson provides much needed depth for a team that seems to lose half of it’s roster every year. It’s easy to forget that the injury bug last year didn’t just effect the major league squad but also Las Vegas. The Mets need options to not rush position player prospects, many who will playing at low A ball this year.

We wish the best for Herrera and we’re glad he’s back. With the signing of Hechavarria recently we find it extremely unlikely that Herrera will make it on the roster after spring. We are also relieved that the roster has be built in such a way that if we need to reach deep for depth, there are players with major league experience to lean on, like Dilson Herrera.

The Mets this year are really filling out their depth, which is a great thing, and that’s what Danny Espinosa represents. He’s trying to get back to the majors since bouncing around the minors last year and a 2017 that saw him put up a 51 DRC+ with the Angels over 77 games, 52 with the Mariners over 8 game sand 48 over 8 games with the Rays.

Since 2010, the long time National who seemingly routinely played great against the Mets has the following DRC+ over time:

He’s a lifetime .221/.297/.378 hitter (.227/.309/.353 against the Mets, so not really a better player against the Mets) brings some stability to the Mets infield. Last year he hit .195/.239/.312 across the Phillies/Dodgers/Blue Jays systems.

The main thing working against Danny for breaking into the roster and printing a ticket to Queens is the sheer amount of players the Mets have in the infield now. Danny will need to have a better spring than Gavin Cecchini, TJ Rivera, JD Davis and newly signed Hechavarria who probably has the inside track to a roster.

I have memories of Danny Espionsa from years ago, back when it looked like he and Ian Desmond would become a dynamic duo for the Nationals. That’s faded for both of them in a lot of ways but it was hard to not yearn for that when I heard the Mets signed Danny. I want Danny to do well as a Met, it’s just going to be a difficult path to get there.

This is one of the stranger NRI preview articles to write, you already know Gavin! You’ve followed the team, you know their rosters for the last few seasons, you know the Gavin vs TJ Rivera race from a couple of years ago and now both players are on the outside looking in. But here we are, let’s preview him!

Earlier this season the Mets DFA’d Gavin Cecchini and he slipped back to the minors without being claimed by another team. This was a major step back for the Mets former first round pick who has been on the Mets roster for the last few seasons.

Gavin saw time with the big league club in 2016 and 2017, seasons that were filled with injuries and last year should have been another opportunity except Gavin couldn’t escape the injury bug himself and never made it up to Queens.

In his first season at 22 over 4 games and 7 PA’s Gavin was able to get two doubles. In 2017 he got a lot more playing time getting into 32 games and 82 PA’s slashing a .208/.256/.273 with a 68 DRC+. (Not Great).

Before his injury last year in 31 games and 123 PA’s he hit .301/.347/.469, which was pretty good (in 2017 in the minors he hit .267/.329/.380). The problem for Gavin is even if he was on the 40-man, the Mets are so crowded in the infield. He’s going to have to really impress this spring to fight his way back onto the roster.