Let us commence exchanging opinions and perspective on James McCann

[LWFS]

Sources: LWFS Family considering pupusas for tomorrow's dinner; at moment, not getting done; family could opt for something else if plans fall through-- chicken and rice is an option

[Fman99]

=LWFS post_id=51943 time=1607561008 user_id=84]
Sources: LWFS Family considering pupusas for tomorrow's dinner; at moment, not getting done; family could opt for something else if plans fall through-- chicken and rice is an option

[batmagadanleadoff]

This is the second best FA catcher? A guy with a career OPS under .700 and inconsistent power numbers? I'm unimpressed. Everybody saying that he's the second-best catcher available neglects to note that it ain't a win-place-show point-getting race. I mean, Ramos was the consensus "second-best" last time around. We don't get points for "meaningful signings;" we get runs created and prevented by whomever is in the lineup. Realmuto is, even after a career "year" from McCann, considered by those who know-- and idiots like me who cite cherry- picked stats like gospel--- to be head and shoulders above McCann, a pretty-okay platoon catcher before last year (unless you guys see something different in his plate approach, a la Murphy in 2015-16). McCann seems like someone you settle for, not someone you approach. If he's asking for four years-- keeping in mind that he's just about a year older than Realmuto-- that seems a TOUGH swallow. I'm not sure the who-else-we-can-afford fangames make it easier to swallow.

McAnn might be the second best catcher, but that doesn't even begin to tell the story because the gap between Realmuto and whoever the next best catcher is is enormous. This reminds me of when I played in a Strat-O-Matic league based on the 1985 season. I'm sure that I once told this story on this forum but I'll tell it again because it involves Gary Carter, 1985's best catcher and the best 1985 comp to J.T. Realmuto ---the parallels to the Realmuto/McAnn catcher FA dynamic are strong.





So I played in a draft Strat-o-Matic league based on the NL 1985 season with three other friends, all knowledgeable baseball fans who knew their way around a Strat-o-Matic set. As a memory refresher, 1985 was the year of the all-Missouri World Series. The Mets were great but the Cards -- Jack Clark and seven lead-off hitters, were even better. Darryl Strawberry, rate-wise, had the best season of his career but missed about a month and half of the season with injuries. Dwight Gooden was legendary, producing one of the best pitching seasons in modern baseball history. 1985 was Carter's first and best season as a Met.



Anyways, before our draft, we all wrote down our preferred draft pick if we lucked out and had the overall first pick, to be shared after the draft. I was the one who lucked out and got to pick first overall. And with the first pick, I drafted Gary Carter. Not Doc. Not Ozzie Smith who had his career year in '85. Not Willie McGee, of the .353 batting average and undeserving MVP award. Not Pedro Guerrero, 1985's best NL hitter. I picked Carter because he was the best catcher and the next best catcher wasn't even close to Carter. The gap between Carter and the next best catcher, probably Mike Scioscia, was huge. Scioscia had a good BA and OBP but very little power. And he could not stop the running game, crucial in an all-star draft league. Carter was not even close to being the best hitter of '85 and in fact, I generally batted him 7th in my lineups. But I had to have him because there was no other catcher who came close to Carter's performance.



After the draft, when everyone else turned over their cards to reveal who they would've drafted had they picked first, everybody's card came up Carter.



And that's the story of Realmuto/McAnn.

[MFS62]

There have been numerous reports that he is coming.

But as of now, he's just breathing hard.

Later

[MFS62]

According to SNY they still can't reach agreement.

https://sports.yahoo.com/mets-free-agent-james-mccann-172128507.htmlhttps://sports.yahoo.com/mets-free-agent-james-mccann-172128507.html



Later

[Centerfield]

I think Sandy will play it level-headed.



But Cohen has enough money to say "either take the current deal by 5 p.m., or I pull it and give Realmuto full asking". Maybe the personality too.

[G-Fafif]

It's done, per Heyman: James at 4 years, $40 million. Let us hope he comes of age in a Mets uniform.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Great. We just got a catcher who OPS+'ed under 100 for the first five years of his career, barely cracked 100 in his sixth season, and OPS+'ed 144 in the lunatic 2020 season of the coronavirus. I'm so excited. (Not).



Is Fred Wilpon still running things?

[batmagadanleadoff]

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=52072 time=1607794963 user_id=68]
Great. We just got a catcher who OPS+'ed under 100 for the first five years of his career, barely cracked 100 in his sixth season, and OPS+'ed 144 in the lunatic 2020 season of the coronavirus. I'm so excited. (Not).



Is Fred Wilpon still running things?

[G-Fafif]

Another James (Schapiro, a young man whose writing I recommend), has delved in.

According to Statcast, McCann's batted-ball profile has been consistently improving since 2018. His hard-hit rate in 2018 was 37.1%, which was around his career average at the time. In 2019, it improved to 44.2%. In 2020, it improved again, all the way to 47.8%. His walk rate was similar: it went from 5.7% in 2018 to 6.3% in 2019 to a career-high 7.2% in 2020. So, the million-dollar question (literally): can McCann keep it up? He's almost certainly not a .289/.360/.536 hitter, but can he sustain an OPS around .800, as he did in 2019? It won't be easy, as even that season, he had a .359 BABIP. But he's now spent two consecutive seasons — albeit one shortened one — hitting the ball noticeably harder than he had before. Maybe he's made a genuine improvement, or maybe it's a fluke — or maybe, as seems most likely, it's somewhere in between. McCann hasn't just improved on offense either. His framing, a hugely important skill at which Wilson Ramos was particularly bad, has been on an upswing just as he hits free agency. In 2019, according to Statcast, McCann's framing ranked dead last in the league. However, as The Athletic reported, there are nuances to the numbers. Statcast's framing algorithm, James Fegan wrote, “grade(d) him out as among the best in the league at framing strikes at the top of the zone.” However, “the 6-foot-3 McCann was losing larger quantities of runs on pitches at the knees.” But in 2020, something changed. McCann's strike rate improved to 51.4%, eighth in baseball. In 2019, his strike rates in the three areas across the bottom of the strike zone (bottom left, bottom middle, bottom right) had been 20.3%, 44.1%, and 13.9%. In 2020, they climbed to 38.1%, 61.8%, and 31.3%. His framing at the top of the zone suffered, but not enough to offset his gains at the bottom. Vast framing improvement: career development, or one-year fluke? It depends, again, on your level of optimism. Before the 2020 season, McCann worked out with former catcher and bench coach Jerry Narron, who has instructed catchers like Jeff Mathis, Jonathan Lucroy, and David Ross. He was there to work on one thing: framing. “Up to this point in my career I've never really had anyone who was able to explain to me why the scoring worked the way that it did as far as the framing metrics go and how to improve,” McCann told Fegan. “I'll definitely be monitoring it closer than I ever have.” When he returned to the field after his workouts with Narron, his framing seemed to have improved dramatically.

https://sheabridge.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-rorschach-testhttps://sheabridge.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-rorschach-test

[MFS62]

=G-Fafif post_id=52071 time=1607794741 user_id=55]
It's done, per Heyman: James at 4 years, $40 million. Let us hope he comes of age in a Mets uniform.

[Frayed Knot]

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=52073 time=1607795065 user_id=68]
What am I missing here? That Steve Cohen just saved himself an amount of money that he probably makes in interest in two days alone without having to get out of bed?

Edited December 12, 2020 by Guest

[G-Fafif]

I don't know how this is quantified, but I dig it.


https://twitter.com/jamesmccann34/status/1136701316196163588

Edited December 12, 2020 by Guest

[Benjamin Grimm]

Todd Zeile has said that Realmuto will cost $100 million more than McCann but that he's not $100 million better than McCann.



If the Mets get McCann and Springer and Bauer it will be an incredible off-season.

[LWFS]

Great. We just got a catcher who OPS+'ed under 100 for the first five years of his career, barely cracked 100 in his sixth season, and OPS+'ed 144 in the lunatic 2020 season of the coronavirus. I'm so excited. (Not). Is Fred Wilpon still running things?

On the plus side, he's also apparently https://247sports.com/college/arkansas/Article/State-of-the-Hogs-Strong-Tower-104793979/REALLY into https://sportsspectrum.com/the-increase/2018/04/05/the-increase-anything-is-possible-james-mccann/[url=https://sportsspectrum.com/the-increase/2018/04/05/the-increase-anything-is-possible-james-mccann/]Jesus.



I think I'd more readily buy the I-worked-on-this-and-that's-why-I'm-better-at-this explanation of the fluky-y improvement last year if he could actually explain what he was working on, specifically. (Like, say, Bauer. Or Murphy.) The underlying plate-approach numbers don't seem to reveal anything, in and of themselves.

[Fman99]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Todd Zeile has said that Realmuto will cost $100 million more than McCann but that he's not $100 million better than McCann. If the Mets get McCann and Springer and Bauer it will be an incredible off-season.

I agree with this, if this is your 3rd best acquisition and it means you didn't sign a catcher for 7-8 years, then, well, there you go.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Todd Zeile has said that Realmuto will cost $100 million more than McCann but that he's not $100 million better than McCann.

This just begs many more questions, the main one being -- if Realmuto's not $100M better than McAnn, then why will he cost $100M more than McAnn?



And tell Todd Zeile I said he was no fucking John Olerud.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Frayed Knot wrote: =batmagadanleadoff post_id=52073 time=1607795065 user_id=68] What am I missing here? That Steve Cohen just saved himself an amount of money that he probably makes in interest in two days alone without having to get out of bed?

Maybe that they talked to Realmuto and didn't get a good vibe, or that he told them he didn't want to play in NYC, or that he wanted a seven-year deal making this one look like the smarter of the two,

or that they were afraid if they waited too long for Plan A to come through they might lose out on Plan A and Plan B.



Or maybe they just plain fucked up and we can spend the next four seasons referring to McCann as Fakemuto.

[Frayed Knot]

Well, not overpaying is a good way to run things no matter what the particular motivation and overpaying could be in dollars or in years or consist of a combo of both, all

of which could make the McCann deal look better in the long run. Not that we Know Realmuto is going to get a deal that his next team will come to regret ... just throwing

that out as a possibility.



Personally I'm leaning towards the idea that Steve & Sandy wanted to put at least one signing on the board before too much time had passed and felt that waiting on one of

the catchers ran the risk of both winding up elsewhere leaving S & S to contemplate not just the drop off from Plan 'A' to 'B' but the one to whomever qualifies as Plan 'C'

[Centerfield]

=G-Fafif post_id=52071 time=1607794741 user_id=55]
It's done, per Heyman: James at 4 years, $40 million. Let us hope he comes of age in a Mets uniform.

[nymr83]

We dont know what Realmuto will get. More importantly, we also just dont know that he was willing to come to the Mets.



If I was a baseball player and I could make millions of dollars anywhere, if Miami called me up with the best offer I'd say "Florida? Fuck that"



I'll judge the Mets off season by hiw it looks as a whole, not by one guy whose motivations we cant know.

[batmagadanleadoff]

=nymr83 post_id=52114 time=1607827704 user_id=54]




I'll judge the Mets off season by hiw it looks as a whole, not by one guy whose motivations we cant know.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Will you please stop spelling McCann incorrectly. He's not a shoe salesman

[batmagadanleadoff]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Will you please stop spelling McCann incorrectly. He's not a shoe salesman

This is all part of my early onset of dementia. McAnn. Lindnor. Perdue, I used to be a spelling bee champ. I dunno what's going on anymore.

[nymr83]

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=52115 time=1607828338 user_id=68]
=nymr83 post_id=52114 time=1607827704 user_id=54]




I'll judge the Mets off season by hiw it looks as a whole, not by one guy whose motivations we cant know.

[batmagadanleadoff]

=nymr83 post_id=52118 time=1607831026 user_id=54] my emphasis is on YOU DON'T KNOW THAT REALMUTO WAS EVEN WILLONG TO COME HERE

[nymr83]

I'm not "over the moon" either. But they needed a catcher and this one seems fine. Lets see what else they do.

[MFS62]

... But they needed a catcher and this one seems fine.

Right.

As Casey Stengel said, "If you don't have a catcher, you're gonna' have a lot of passed balls".

And this one seems up to catching his share of pitches better than the guy he replaced.



Later

[Edgy MD]

Is this signing official yet? Are they holding off an announcement until they get Porter seated?

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Physical. Sandy said Wednesday or Thursday