213 Miles From Shea

Adrián Gonzalez was a surprise move for the Mets at the same as he was not a surprise move at all. Gonzalez was traded to the Braves as part of a salary cap shifting move by the Dodgers and then immediately dropped so the Mets got him for the league minimum. That part is not surprising, especially if your world Mets view is “the Mets are cheap”.

The move was surprising because 1) the Mets have are supposed to be developing Dom Smith and 2) right before picking up Adrián, the Mets signed Bruce saying that Bruce would spend some time playing first base too and 3) the Mets are still looking for at bats for Wilmer Flores.

Anyway, here are the projections for Adrián, who is coming off injury filled season.

There is quite a bit of variance in playing time for Gonzalez with Prospectus thinking he barely gets any playing time to MLB.com and Baseball Reference thinking he plays half the season. It does look like all of the programs think last year is a fluke* and that he bounces back a bit.

*Programs for a while have projected a decline in stats for Gonzalez, and these are still declines compared to career numbers. Last year was just extra bad. Now if he isn’t healthy then we should see a repeat of last year’s numbers.

I still don’t get the Gonzalez move at all and I rather Dom Smith put up numbers below his his projected average or Dom Smith put up Gonzalez 2017’s slash lines than roll the dice with Gonzalez.

If you’re poetic, then the Mets signing den Dekker for depth is a homecoming, a full circle affair. If you’re cynical, then den Dekker represents the Mets lack of creativity for depth and the front office is just chasing former Mets. Or if you like baseball stories and hate the Nationals, you are fully satisfied that it is now impossible for the Nationals to win the den Dekker for Jerry Blevins trade.

Matt den Dekker was drafted by the Mets in the 5th round of the 2010 draft. He debuted with the Mets in 2013 and over two seasons had two good seasons in the majors. He got traded right before the start of the 2015 regular season to the Nationals for Jerry Blevens and after the following season, he signed as a free agent with the Marlins and then later with the Tigers.

As a Met, in 237 PAs he hit .238/.325/.310 and was great with the club. Since then in 394 PAs he has hit .234/.316/.354. Additionally, he hit .250/.322/.441 in the minors between the Detroit and Miami system.

Matt makes perfect sense for the Mets as a defense reserve. How often the Mets need to lean on den Dekker will dictate how their season is going. If den Dekker is getting regular at bats this season, something has gone horribly wrong. This was a smart depth for the Mets and they deserve credit for it. Hopefully they don’t have to use den Dekker as an option though.

Asdrubal asked to be traded last year. He was the only veteran not traded. At the time, financially, it made sense. Cabrera is making 8.5 million this year which given his production on the field (or really, with the bat and not on the field) is a good value. Knowing what we know now about this year’s free agent situation the 8.5 million doesn’t sound as good as it did, but it is still a good deal.

Here’s what several different sources project for Cabera this season:

Cabrera is helped immensely by the Todd Frazier deal. It doesn’t pain me as much to see Cabrera in the field with Frazier as it would with Cabrera and Reyes trying to play something close to defense.

Offensively last year he came back down to Earth from his previous years but the average of his projections doesn’t see too steep of a drop. A 25 point drop in OBP would be significant, but .326 OBP from Cabrera sounds reasonable. If Cabrera performs better than his projections (an OPS north of .800, right ow its at a .752) then he will be a tremendous help to the Mets this year. Maybe having a more consistent lineup around him can make that happen.

I love baseball. I love eating.

For year’s my favorite food at Citi Field has been the Mex Burger at Keith’s burger.

Great bun, cheese, guac and jalapeno peppers. The only downside: the last couple of years the Mets have served Wise chips instead of kettle chips but still great.

And it comes with a Tootsie Pop!

Ty Kelly isn’t the only member of the 2017 World Baseball Classic Israeli squad with a Non Roster Invite to major league camp, meet Zach Borenstein! His most famous baseball feet to this point came in that tournament where he had the go-ahead single that put Israel in front of Cuba.

Borenstein, who will be 27 this season, is coming from the Angels organization where he has played since he was 20. Last year, his second full season in Reno (where he was still 0.4 years younger than the average player) he hit .279/.351/.573 over 433 PAs. In over 2600 minor league PA’s he has hit .283/.355/.502, so he can hit in the minors.

Ultimately Borenstein is a depth signing for the Mets they will hope they won’t have to dip into. The Mets are light on outfielders on their 40-man. The signing of den Dekker pushes Zach farther down the organization depth chart. It’s not impossible to imagine Borenstein sniffing the majors this year only because Travis Taijeron made it last year.

Yesterday we went of Jay Bruce’s projections and opened with a story all Mets fans of the last half decade know – the long and predetermined journey of Jay Bruce’s life to Queens. To a lesser extent, Todd Frazier is similar. He always felt like the type of the player the Mets would want if it wasn’t for David Wright. When things started to look real bad for David Wright a chorus started to rise for Frazier. Maybe it was because he felt less like a permanent replacement like a Longoria would have been. That way a hopeless dream of getting Wright back could stay alive.

Frazier is finally a Met. If you’re a cynic, it’s because the Mets are cheap and the market came to them. If you’re a Sandy supporter, it’s because he read the market and always saw this as an option. Whatever. Frazier is a Met and we don’t have to worry about an infield with both of Cabrera and Nunez now.

The projections see what many pundits say. The drop in batting average and OBP for Frazier was more fluky than anything else. Next year he should return closer to his numbers. The projections are almost in complete agreement over how many homers Todd will hit given at bats.

Frazier is a good addition to this squad. These projections don’t cover the real benefit of Frazier – his defense. If he puts up similar numbers to his career numbers and plays solid defense, the Mets will see a sizable net gain in performance.

David Thompson gets a non-roster invite for the Mets. The third basemen was drafted in the 2015 draft in the 4th round out of the University of Miami. After playing all of 2015 in Brooklyn, he split 2016 in Columbia and St. Lucie and followed that with a complete season last year in Binghamton and stint in the Arizona Fall League.

In Binghamton last year the now 24 year old slashed .263/.325/.429 over 529 PAs and .328/.371/.569 in 62 PAs in the AFL making his career line .261/.318/.415. The radical increase of his OBP from 2015 to 2016/17 (.268 vs .333/.325) is why I’m now paying attention to to Thompson. He seems to be getting more consistent as he plays longer. He was 1.3 years younger than the average AA player last year and half year older than the average AFL player last year to give some reference on his age.

Here’s the question for Thompson this year: does he hit at Triple A? He is going to really need to hit to stand out, especially with the Mets now having Frazier signed for two years + Cabrera/Flores to fall back on at the hot corner.

He’s an average prospect who has blossomed in the last couple of years, if he is going to make a move, it has to be now and spring would be a great time to show that he can play with higher level talent.

Phillip Evans has a non-roster invite for a second straight year for the Mets. The only difference this time for the 25 year old who was drafted in the 15th round of the 2011 draft: he actually made the majors last year.

We previewed him last year around this time. This was our critical takeaway:

Now there’s a lot of players in the way of Phillip Evans getting the bench spot (Reyes, Walker, Wright, Flores, Rivera and Cabrera) for three positions. I’m curious to see what happens if Evans is given time in the PCL. does he keep up the hitting? He hasn’t put numbers like he did last year at any other time.

Then we went on to make a really wrong prediction:

I am confident about this though: If Phillip Evans puts up similar numbers, or close numbers, to what he did in Binghamton last year, and somehow doesn’t make the 40-man by the end of the season, he’s going to have to be traded otherwise he’s going to get snatched in the Rule V draft.

Oops. When you’re wrong its only polite to admit it.

Last year in the majors Evans got 38 PA’s and hit .303/.395/.364. Last year he hit .279/.341/.418. Even though he took a step back in the minors in 2017 compared to 2016 in terms of raw numbers, he did it all at Triple A and was successful in an extremely limited outing in the majors.

So far this spring he has spent some time learning to catch, something he has never done, in order to stretch his value. He once again this season has the same issue he had last year. There are a lot of players on the active roster ahead of him for the infield. It will only get worse when TJ comes back. But if Evans keeps hitting, he’ll have to come up at some point.

It’s another season in Mets baseball land and it’s also another year of “The National League doesn’t have a DH? Where does Wilmer play?”. Let’s just jump right to the stats projections for 2018:

Wilmer had an odd year last year. He wasn’t worth that much in terms of wins but he still hit .271 (his OBP was only slightly higher, which provides insight into this WAR) and he had a lot of pop last year. But so did a lot of players. He was hampered due to bizarre injuries last year. But so did a lot of (Mets) players.

When looking at the stat projections, there is a wide set of projected PAs, probably due to when the data set was ran. For example, Baseball Prospectus, which was sent to print sometime in January happened before the Mets signed both Gonzalez, Reyes and Frazier. Before that it looked like Wilmer was going to get significant playing time.

The average of all of the projections have Flores putting up a similar slash line. With the Mets projected lineup, Flores coming off the bench and hits .271/.311/.465 would be perfect.

Guess who’s back?
Back Again?
Kelly’s Back.
Tell a Mensch.

Ty Kelly has been a member of many organizations since being drafted in 2009 by the Orioles. He was traded in 2013 to the Mariners for Thames, he then was traded to the Cardinals for Gaviglio. He was then selected off waivers by the Blue Jays and signed with the Mets in November of 2015. The Mets DFA’d him in April and he was selected off waivers by the Blue Jays and then was purchased by the Phillies. In January he became a Met again.

Last year we concluded the following about Kelly:

It will be a hard road for Kelly, there are a lot of players in front of him. He’ll also get a good amount of playing time since he’s heading off to play for Israel in the WBC.

And ultimately the Mets needed him early in the season, which led to the Mets having to DFA him which started Kelly’s 2017 journey around the majors. He only had 1 PA with the Mets were he struck out in 2017 and then for the Phillies he had 104 where he slashed .193/.260/.341 (thanks to two homers in 88 ABs). In the previous year for the Mets he hit .241/.352/.345 in 71 PAs.

The Mets shouldn’t have to rely on Kelly heavily at any point this year unless something goes wrong. This being the Mets, that’s completely possible as a lot went wrong last year. He’s a solid depth signing that gives the Mets flexibility without need to expose any prospects to the majors too early.