South Korea finally released their jerseys recently and I like them. Compared to the other countries, they look fresh, a little different. Take a look for yourself:
Normally I don’t like when white uniforms have two different tones of blue, but it works here.
The Mets defeated the Nationals this afternoon in Port St. Lucie with a final score of 5-3.
The main story from the game was Wheeler’s performance: 2.0 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 2 K, 1 WP. He looked really good and it was exciting to watch him pitch. Mazzoni added in two scoreless innings behind him (picking up the win) followed by two more scoreless innings from Gorski and one from Parnell (picking up the save). Also Ruben Tejada hit the only home run for the Mets (surprising source of power) off of Strasburg (also surprising).
Anyway let’s focus on the OF race. Stats from today’s game:
Duda 0-3, 2 K
Nieuwenhuis 1-3, R
Byrd 2-2, R, 2B
Brown 0-1, BB, K
Cowgill 1-1, R, RBI, BB
Baxter 0-0, BB
Valdespin* 1-2, R
For the most part, everyone (except for the player with the basically guaranteed spot) had a good day at the plate today. Byrd attacked the ball right away which paid off with one of two Mets extra base hits of the day. Cowgill showed aggression on the base paths coming home on a bobbled ball by first basemen Micah Owens. Brown misplayed a ball in the OF at one point.
Let’s see what tomorrow brings! The Mets go split squad tomorrow, so a lot of opportunity for OF’s to get some work in.
*Collins is working Valdespin as an infielder mostly in camp this year, I’m not ruling anything out yet
Japan pulled a fast one about two weeks ago and updated the font on one of their uniforms. Here’s what the set looks like:
Surprisingly, there is no hat released for Japan but I saw one mock up that has the hat looking like the white jersey font with the colors on the blue jersey. The “fast one” I referred to early comes from the Japanese T-shirts that have the blue jersey color schemes also with the white jersey type face. I guess we’ll find out next week.
Look, the Mets Outfield is the weakness this year. That’s not a shocker.
Luckily, with Spring Training games starting today, and by today I mean in a few minutes, we’ll start to get a look at who could possibly play and who could be a difference maker. Perhaps this OF won’t be as terrible as we think or comparably higher than our collective incredibly low expectations.
Without the extreme, which would be three OF’s hitting a homer every other game, it looks like the Mets will have at least one, possibly two platoons out on the roster this year.
Just by names reported in the news, the following is what I think the pole position for OF’s coming into day one:
1. Duda
2. Captain Kirk
3. Baxter
4. Cowgill
5. Byrd
6. Valdespin*
7. den Dekker
8. Brown
9. Lagares
10. Puello
11. Hoffman
In the first game, Duda, Kirk Byrd and Valdespin* (DH) will be getting the start. I’m excited to see how this goes! See you at the end of the game for the next part in this series tracking how our OF’s are doing.
*Could be a utility/backup IF this year.
Want to see the next uniform Jose Reyes will be wearing before Toronto? Take a look below:
The hat looks the same and they did a good job at least making all of the uniforms look different. I’m just not a fan of how small the typeface appears at least on these pictures.
The Mets start Spring Training starts today with an Intrasquad followed by the Nationals on Saturday, Michigan on Sunday, Astros on Sunday and the Nationals again on Monday. The following pitchers are slated to go:
Intrasquad: Gonzalez German, LaTroy Hawkins, Scott Rice, Collin McHugh, Elvin Ramirez, Greg Burke, Robert Carson, Brandon Lyon, Pedro Feliciano
Nationals: Shawn Marcum, Zack Wheeler, Cory Mazzoni, Dan Gorski, Jeurys Familia, Bobby Parnell
Michigan: Jon Niese, Dillon Gee, Brandon Lyon, Hansel Robles, Rafael Montero, Carlos Torres
Astros: Matt Harvey, Jeremy Hefner, Aaron Laffey, Pedro Feliciano, Scott Atchison, Josh Edgin
Nationals: Collin McHugh, Gonzalez German, Elvin Ramirez, Greg Burke, LaTroy Hawkins, Robert Carson, Scott Rice
In these first five games we get the sense that some of the relievers are starting to be put on a schedule to get regular work in, thus starting to shape up the bullpen race.
Pitching Highlights:
Intrasquad: I’m vary curious to get a first look at Greg Burke and Brandon Lyon. However, it is an intrasquad game so whatever.
Nationals: Wheeler is the big ticket item for Saturday, a game that will be televised on SNY/MLB Network. Overall, Saturday has the best pitching roster. We’ll get our first game look at Shawn Marcum and our probable closer Bobby Parnell. Also a look at bullpen contender Familia.
Michigan: Jon Niese, for the moment, is the front line starter the Mets have in terms of ability, years played and health (knock on wood). Dillon Gee is also going for a rotation spot. We’ll get first “game” action for Brandon Lyon and exciting prospects Montero and Robles. This is the second best pitching roster of the five games.
Astros: First game look at Harvey, which is exciting. Also a preview of a bullpen battle between three pitchers who could each land a spot (Feliciano, Atchison, Edgin)
Nationals: Out of all the games, this is the pitching lineup I’m least excited to see and it will be on SNY. There’s a serious bullpen battle in this game as well with Burke, Hawkins, Ramirez and Carson. In addition the Mets will be giving another look at Scott Rice.
In a surprising upset of Israel and South Africa, Spain made their way into the tournament and their Espana jerseys that look really nice too. They have a good looking typeface and color schemes. Take a look:
The strength of this kit is the consistent color and typeface through all uniforms and the hat.
This is the tough part for the Mets. Up to this point the PECOTA and MLB.com projections for the Mets offense next season have been positive. If the candidates for the Mets OF can cut a good percentage into last year’s production, then the Mets might have comparable numbers to last year.
First like yesterday, let’s roll a couple of players who are no longer with the Mets into one line to derive numbers. The numbers the Mets need to really pick up are from Hairston more so than Bay.
Hairston: .263 BA, 52, R, 25 2B, 20 HR, 8 SB
Bay: .165 BA, 21 R, 2 2B, 8 HR, 5 SB
Torres: .230 BA, 47 R, 17 2B, 3 HR, 13 SB
2012 Lost OF: 120 R, 71 2B, 31 HR, 26 SB
Because of all of the question marks with the Mets OF, we are going to do the next section different than the previous three. Usually we go through each player, look at their 2012 stats, their PECOTA projections for 2012 and 2013 followed by MLB.com. Since there are so many people who have played OF and can play OF, we are going to do this in sets. Here we are going to go through the 2012 stats of players who were with us last year. Then we will go over the PECOTA’s for next year and then MLB.com for next year. Finally we’ll total everything up and then add it to the running total. Also, I realized I skipped over Justin Turner earlier, so I’ll add him here.
2012 Stats of Current Mets
Turner: .269 BA, 20 R, 13 2B, 2 HR, 1 SB
Baxter: .263 BA, 26 R, 14 2B, 3 HR, 5 SB
Valdespin: .241 BA, 46 R, 9 2B, 8 HR, 10 SB
Kirk: .252 BA, 40 R, 12 2B, 7 HR, 4 SB
Duda: .239 BA, 43 R, 15 2B, 15 HR, 1 SB
2012 Remain OF: 175 R, 63 2B, 35 HR, 21 SB
2012 Total Mets OF: 295 R, 134 2B, 66 HR, 47 SB
Individual Avg Mets OF: 98 R, 45 2B, 22 HR, 16 SB
The above isn’t that bad for an OF last year that was all over the place, but it was in large part due to Hairston. Let’s do the same for 2013 Mets PECOTA projections.
2013 PECOTA Projections:
Duda: .251 BA, 48 R, 19 2B, 15 HR, 1 SB
Kirk: .235 BA, 39 R, 16 2B, 9 HR, 6 SB
Valdespin: .246 BA, 38 R, 12 2B, 8 HR, 17 SB
Baxter: .248 BA, 57 R, 21 2B, 10 HR, 10 SB
Turner: .259 BA, 29 R, 15 2B, 4 HR, 3 SB
Cowgill: .239 BA, 37 R, 15 2B, 7 HR, 9 SB
Byrd: .259 BA, 15 R, 8 2B, 3 HR, 1 SB
den Dekker: .230 BA, 35 R, 10 2B, 6 HR, 9 SB
2013 PECOTA Mets OF: 298 R, 116 2B, 66 HR, 56 SB
Individual Avg Mets OF: 99 R, 39 2B, 22 HR, 19 SB
2013 MLB.com Projections:
Duda: .257 BA, 50 R, 16 HR, 1 SB
Kirk: .258 BA, 53 R, 12 HR, 8 SB
Valdespin: .252 BA, 32 R, 6 HR, 13 SB
Baxter: .237 BA, 46 R, 5 HR, 9 SB
Turner: .263 BA, 18 R, 1 HR, 3 SB
Cowgill: NO PROJECTIONS
Byrd: .250 BA, 26 R, 5 HR, 3 SB
den Dekker: NO PROJECTIONS
2013 MLB.com Mets OF: 225 R, 45 HR, 37 SB
Individual Avg Mets OF: 75 R, 15 HR, 12 SB
The MLB.com projections are probably closer to what we would see for each OF for the Mets. PECOTA scaled back the AB’s for everyone but it still may be a bit high. However, these numbers, MLB.com and PECOTA are not as bad as I thought they would be. Let’s update our running score card:
2012: 131 HR, 606 R, 287 2B, 76 SB
2013 PECOTA: 152 HR, 639 R, 266 2B, 89 SB
2013 MLB.com: 125 HR, 578 R, 70 SB
Here’s the kicker. MLB.com projects the offense to be a little worse, PECOTA projects the offense to be a little better, where the difference looks to be due to the two projections not available for MLB.com. The offense numbers are not good, but they aren’t terrible. If anyone ends up playing better than the projection, then the Mets weakness won’t be a killer.
It looks like the offense will need the bullpen, and the bullpen looks to be much better this year than last year. This could be enough to give the Mets a chance to push towards .500. These numbers also suggest that if the Mets splurge next season on one or two OF’s, that could be enough to turn this team completely around.
Nicaragua is the last country we have to go over that didn’t make the March tourny. They were in the same round that favored Panama but was upset by Brazil.
Anyway, Nicaragua had away tops with blue print and a white outline, this was the best picture I could find, but it isn’t that good. Their hat is below:
I think the the typeface on the hat is quite nice.
Now we start the difficult part of the our preview journey. In the first two parts, all four players played a good deal of time last year with the Mets and project to start again this season. In this part, all three catchers we had last year are no longer with the team, so we need to go through the stats differently. First we will set up the “2012 Mets Catcher” to compare stats by taking the stats of Thole, Nickeas and Shoppach. Then we will look at MLB. and PECOTA for projections for d’Arnaud, Buck.
The 2012 Mets Catcher.
In 2012 the Mets had one catcher with pop, one catcher who would sometimes hit, and one catcher who was the butt of all jokes.
Thole: .234 BA, 1 HR, 15 2B, 24 R, 0 SB
Nickeas: .174 BA, 1 HR, 3 2B, 8 R, 0 SB
Shoppach: .203 BA, 3 HR, 2 2B, 7 R, 0 SB
2012 Total: 5 HR, 20 2B, 39 R, 0 SB
It wasn’t until I calculated those numbers above that I realized our catching situation last year was so bad.
Our first catcher this year will be John Buck who hit .192 last season with 12 homers, 15 doubles, 29 runs and 0 SB’s.
Last year PECOTA thought that Buck would hit .233 with 18 homers, 24 doubles, 62 runs and 1 stolen base.
This year PECOTA thinks that Buck will hit .225 with 9 homers, 11 doubles, with 27 runs and no stolen bases. MLB.com thinks Buck will hit .223 with 14 homers and 38 runs, also no stolen bases.
Our second catcher will hopefully see a lot of playing time this year, Travis d’Arnaud. PECOTA thinks d’Arnaud will hit .243 in his rookie season with 13 homers and 16 doubles while scoring 38 runs and not stealing any bases. MLB.com thinks d’Arnaud will hit .282 with 6 homers while stealing two bases and 33 runs. Interestingly huge difference between homers and batting average between the two projections.
Running Score Card:
Now we can look at the offense of the entire infield:
2012: 65 HR, 311 R, 153 2B, 29 SB
2013 PECOTA: 86 HR, 341 R, 150 2B, with 33 SB
2013 MLB.com: 80 HR, 353 R, 33 SB
Right now the numbers look like they are going up, this will probably change drastically after the OF.