There are only two teams left to cover who won’t be playing in the actual tournament that starts in March, and today we’ll look at Great Britain, who really didn’t stand a chance in the same round as Canada.
Great Britain had a nice gray uniform set with a nice size typeface. I think their jersey looked nice, the hook on the R is what makes the front of this jersey, other wise it would be too plain. The hat is nice too, shown below:
In Part 2 of our trip around the team we will dive into the right side of the infield. I realize that we are going through the strengths of the team, so of course things look better right now, and statistically things really do look better. Over the next few days we’ll be able to see if offensively if the 2013 Mets will be better than 2012 or at the very least, won’t be awful.
Last year Ike Davis hit .227, mainly due to that awful start, but recovered to hit 32 homers, 26 doubles while scoring 66 times and stealing no bases (nothing wrong with that).
Last year PECOTA said that he would hit .268 with 20 homers, 26 doubles, 73 runs and 2 stolen bases. PECOTA couldn’t predict Davis’ awful start with the batting average (thus runs as well) and had doubles right on the mark, but really missed the mark power.
This year PECOTA says that he will hit .249 with 26 homers and 27 doubles while scoring 74 times with 2 stolen bases. MLB.com has Davis hitting .269 with 66 runs and 29 homers and 1 stolen base.
Last year Daniel Murphy hit .291 with 40 doubles, 6 homers and 10 stolen bases while scoring 62 times and posting a WAR of 1.2.
Last year PECOTA said that he would hit .288 with 11 homers, 36 doubles, scoring 72 times while stealing 7 bases. PECOTA nearly got his average, overestimated his strong power, underestimated his inside the park power.
This year PECOTA says that he will hit .280 with 35 doubles and 11 homers while scoring 69 times and stealing 8 bases. MLB.com has Murphy hitting .296 with 65 runs, 7 homers and 8 stolen bases. I agree more with the power numbers on MLB.com, however I would like to believe the PECOTA numbers.
Running Scoreboard:
Taking Wright and Tejada with Davis and Murphy, here is our running scorecard so far:
2012: 60 homers, 272 runs, 133 doubles, 29 SB’s
2013 PECOTA: 64 homers, 292 runs, 123 doubles, 33 SB’s
2013 MLB: 60 homers, 282 runs, 31 SB’s
It’s been a while since we went over the WBC 2013 uniforms, and with the tournament right on the horizon, there isn’t much time to finish this article series. Also, apparently teams now have BP jerseys, so updates we’ll be coming soon as well.
Germany was one of the teams that was knocked out during the qualifier round last year. It was their first time playing in the tournament. Germany wore all white uniforms with their country name over the chest in flag colors. The only down side to their uniform was the print across the front was pretty small (then again Germany in German also takes up a lot of room). Below is a picture of their hat:
Maybe its because I spent the better part of the off season lowering my expectations, but the PECOTA spreadsheets came out recently and I’m not disappointed entirely with what they say for the Mets. In fact, some of what they say is a lot better than what I thought.
In addition, the pick up’s in the bullpen help the team’s weakest area (after the Outfield). I underestimated how much time this article would take to write, so every day this week we will take a look at a different area. Today it’s the left side of the infield.
Last year, David Wright hit .306 with 21 homers, 15 SB’s, and 41 2B’s.
The 2012 PECOTA stats had him hitting .290 with 20 homers, 19 SB’s and 34 2B’s. So PECOTA over estimated his speed last year, but underestimated his average and doubles. They pretty much nailed his power though. What about 2013?
In 2013 PECOTA stats have him hittimg .278 with 22 homers with 17 SB’s and 34 2B’s. PECOTA also has him scoring 85 times (he scored 91 times last year). MLB.com agrees with stealing 17 bases and hitting 22 homers but believes he is going to hit more consistently with a .296 batting average. So the good news is David Wright is projected to be David Wright again next year.
Last year, Ruben Tejada hit .289 while scoring 53 times, hitting 26 doubles, 1 homer, and stealing 4 bases.
The 2012 PECOTA stats had Tejada hitting .257 while scoring 56 times, hitting 23 doubles, 3 homers and 7 stolen bases. In quick review PECOTA really undersold his batting average but got the runs and doubles pretty close.
In 2013 PECOTA says that Tejada will hit .260 with 64 runs while hitting 27 doubles while hitting 5 homers and 6 stolen bases. PECOTA feels that Tejada had blip with the average but is still counting on a bit of a power burst. MLB.com is a bit nicer. They feel that Tejada will hit .280 with 66 runs, 5 stolen bases and 2 homers.
The Running Scorecard:
During every part of this series, the area below will be updated to compare the offenses of the 2012 Mets and the projections for 2013. So far, David Wright and Ruben Tejada:
2012 Total: 22 homers, 144 runs, 67 doubles, 19 SB’s
2013 PECOTA: 27 homers, 149 runs, 61 doubles, 23 SB’s
2013 MLB.com: 24 homers, 151 runs, 22 SB’s
Want to hear a joke?
THE METS OUTFIELD. HAHAAAA.
But seriously, if nothing happens with Bourn, or even if something happens with Bourn (this article is being written on the morning of 2/9), the outfield has a lot of problems. It’s worth it to go though all of the possible outfield candidates, no matter how far away, because the depth chart is so incredibly shallow.
Juan Lagares is 23 years old (will turn 24 during Spring Training) and is on the Mets 40 – Man. He’s played with the Mets since 2006 at age 17. During his time in the Mets system he is a career .280 hitter with 2,322 AB’s, 28 homers, 115 doubles, 40 triples and 98 stolen bases. Last year he had 499 AB’s while scoring 69 times, with 141 hits containing 29 doubles, 6 triples and 4 homers. He walked 37 times and stole 21 bases. All of this led to a .283 BA, .334 OBP and a .723 OPS.
I highly doubt Lagares will break camp with the team as things stand right now. But if Kirk doesn’t work out, JV1 isn’t used, and den Dekker doesn’t impress, I don’t see the harm in giving Lagares a shot. He’s on the 40 man and his stats look very similar to a lot of other triple A players we tried to push into the majors last year. He’s young and if anyone gets injured could see his way to Queens by the end of the year, especially if impresses in camp.
Brandon Hicks, who was purchased by the Mets from the Athletics earlier this off-season, will be trying for a utility position on the Mets roster outside of camp. He has a few things going for him and some critical items against him.
On the positive side he can play short stop and third base, which makes him valuable for a late inning defense replacement.
Through age 26, he has had 90 at bats in the majors with only 12 hits (.133 BA) while scoring 16 runs, hitting 5 doubles and three homers while walking 8 times. So the positive: when he hits, he hits for power, some nice pop on the bench. The negative: he doesn’t really hit, at all. He didn’t really hit in the minors either. In six years, he’s hit .241, however the power game has always been there in the minors. Last year, in only 90 games, he hit 18 homers. The year before, in 104 games, he hit 18 homers. In 2009 (128 games) and 2010 (77 games) he had a bit of a power outage hitting 10 homers and 7 homers respectively. The previous years he had 19 and 20 homers.
The potential for power off of the bench is seductive, however the lack of consistent hitting is something to be concerned about. Hicks is the type of player for this team that could be memorable or completely forgettable. He can join this team or not out of camp and I’m not sure I would personally care.
In short, Hicks is an interesting player. He fills a defensive need and has some mysterious power. He just doesn’t hit. If he did hit though, he wouldn’t be a utility player, so there’s that.
And by awkward, I just mean awkward for people who want to write stories counting down to Spring Training.
I used to try to do that one year, every day go through a player profile, or an area of the team leading up to pitchers and catchers, but its messy. A lot of players come to camp early now, and not just pitchers and catchers but position players. Then when players don’t come early, like Tejada last year, it becomes a story about how the player didn’t come early!
So, Spring Training starts sometime this week, but it really already started with images of players in cages and on mounds.
Happy early but actually already started spring training season everyone!
We’re 9 days away from pitchers and catchers reporting, we’re in February and Ike Davis will be reporting to Florida on Wednesday, so baseball season must be right around the corner.
Topps has already released their 2013 Series 1 Cards and my first impression is a positive one. Here’s a picture of some of the cards I found in a blaster box (10 small packs – retail):
The card design is nice this year. 2011 just screamed, “HEY WE HAVE EXCLUSIVE BASEBALL RIGHTS SO HERE’S A GIGANTIC LOGO FOR EACH TEAM BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE CAN SHOW THEM” and 2012 had a pretty busy front. This year is fairly minimalist as you can see with the Lucas Duda, R.A. Dickey and Justin Maxwell card. I included the Maxwell card to show Topps updated the Houston logo. The glue to the set is this idea of “the chase”. Every card features the career stat that player is chasing. For example, on the back of the Duda card it reads, “Career Chase: With 29 home runs, Duda is 733 away from Barry Bonds’ all-time record of 762”.
I wasn’t too impressed with the majority of the inserts, “Chasing the Dream” and “Calling Card”. However one series looks awesome. Some packs have 1972 mini cards that look sharp and authentic. They are well done.
The parallel cards are fairly similar to previous years. You have the gold cards that are numbered to 2013, emerald cards (that I think are new for this year), black bordered, one of one’s etc. Joining them this year is a pink bordered and a camo border, which I think is rather hokey but whatever. For the second year in a row, if you buy retail packs at Walmart, you can get a blue set, at target a red set, and at ToysRus a purple set. This makes collecting the cards less linear than just retail vs hobby. The red parallel is pictured above, so I guess you can figure out I got these cards at Target.
If you get blaster packs, you can collect a manufactured relic series. A Matt Holiday manufactured patch card is pictured above.
Verdict: If you like the basic Topps set, you’ll like this set. The cards look clean and there are a lot of different parallel sets to collect.
Tejada’s team was eliminated in the qualifying round of this year’s tournament after disappointing performances in 2009 and 2006. Their uniform set was very similar to those years as well. The jerseys look the same as they did last time, which is a good decision, you can see them here and the hat below:
Chinese Taipei is playing in their third tournament, and as far as I can tell, they may be the only team this year coming out with uniforms that have the logo on one side of the jersey (sorta softball style). Now they haven’t released uniforms for sale, so for the picture we have to go off of the style guide. There is only one uniform so far and it looks like this:
It looks like they aren’t going for the underarm panels, so I guess their road uniforms will be gray. It’s a uniform that stands out purely because it’s so different than the rest of the teams.