IGT 10/9 Pads @ Mets WC Gm 3: Go Time

[batmagadanleadoff]

=Ceetar post_id=111022 time=1665421708 user_id=102]
I only mention Judge because I feel like this admin has had a certain attraction to the big name, the trendy guy, and he's certainly that. And i'm talking about next year, not this one.

[Ceetar]

because he's a large human being going into his age 31 season? because injury hasn't been uncommon for him? Because regression is almost baked in? Because it's baseball and one player is rarely the difference? Because it might be Judge instead of Brandon Nimmo who's really good?



I'm not saying he's going to be bad, I'm saying making him the major acquisition without addressing all the other issues is not enough to be confident at first place next year.

[batmagadanleadoff]

=Ceetar post_id=111027 time=1665422847 user_id=102]
because he's a large human being going into his age 31 season? because injury hasn't been uncommon for him? Because regression is almost baked in?

[Ceetar]

yes, and they should move on from McCann too, not doing so in August is part of the reason they're done. I'm just saying Judge is more likely to be a 5win player over 130 games than an 10-11 win one over 155. And that's just 2023, not 2026. Still, I'd be thrilled if they got Judge, I'm not sure he's the best fit for the remaining roster, but you make it work.



They're not coming to a team that won 101 games ,they're coming to the 2023 Mets. It's a fallacy to expect the same talent level to carry through year to year, never mind all the people leaving. I'm not assuming so much as saying, THERE IS A LOT OF WORK TO DO, and you can just say "we won a lot of games, we only need like one big acquisition" Maybe the better analogy is the Johan Santana trade. Great trade, great upgrade to a key spot, but maybe they didn't address the depth as much as they needed to.

[metsmarathon]

=Ceetar post_id=111032 time=1665424340 user_id=102]. Still, I'd be thrilled if they got Judge, I'm not sure he's the best fit for the remaining roster, but you make it work.

[Gwreck]

you're misreading me. I'm not saying the Mets need "better than reasonable hope" from their prospects. I'm saying Atlanta has a more complete talented player dev system, and a more consistent plan of promotion. Yes, they ended up doing even better than that, even faster. But they put them in positions to succeed, and the Mets promotions seemed like reactions to twitter pressure, desperate ,and could be argued put them in a position to fail.

Again, no doubt that Atlanta has had a better talent development system in place. Certainly that was a shortcoming of prior management, and it's also certainly too early to know if it's been improved. Any fair measurement of that is going to take several years.

I'm not saying Cohen is unwilling to expand the budget, i'm saying he's unwilling to expand it to compensate for the MANY players that are now free agents. He's said stuff about the budget not being unlimited ,which means it exists, which means decisions have to be made.

But this is based on supposition, that because there is a limit somewhere, that means enough won't be spent. There's no evidence for this claim.



They need to replace 3 starting pitchers, a closer, a centerfielder, a few other bullpen arms, and then add a hitter, and maybe some new bench pieces. The budget gap is not as big as it might seem. Many of the players to be replaced are already making close to market value on one-year deals. Take Diaz: he's at $10M this year. DeGrom would require some additional fresh money to resign but it's not coming from zero; he was already making $28M this year.



It's fine to take a pessimistic viewpoint, I guess, but there's no basis to for the idea that Cohen won't or can't spend sufficiently to make the team competitive.

And they've botched some of these decisions in the past, from draft to trade deadline to offseason. There is no indication that this team is up to the task. I hope so, but I don't think any of them have the track record to say "I trust Billy Eppler implicitly to put the best options in place"

This is a bit all over the place, and it plays both ways. Eppler has a 101 win team on the field. That's a success anywhere. His off-season acquisitions were a resounding success. I'll agree he underperformed at the most recent deadline but longer-term results are unclear given that prospects stayed put.



And if you want to claim the Rocker draft was botched, fine - but that can't count against Eppler. There's no basis to complain about the most recent draft and far too early to judge results.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Guest

[Lefty Specialist]

Yeah, I could probably find a way to cram Aaron Judge into my lineup. Somebody will offer him a stupoid amount of money. Question is will the Yankees match or exceed it.



I want James McCann gone. They overpaid to get him and they're going to have to overpay to get rid of him. But he's such a vortex of suck.



I may be in the minority, but if deGrom opts out of his contract I let him walk. He'll want ridiculous money for declining results.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Lefty Specialist wrote: I may be in the minority, but if deGrom opts out of his contract I let him walk. He'll want ridiculous money for declining results.

I'm not sure where I stand on this. But seeing deGrom in 2021 was about as awesome a baseball experience as I've ever witnessed. I'm starting to believe that deGrom has already decided that he wants to play elsewhere and that he even knows specifically where he wants to play. This is just a hunch, but it's based on the few public comments he does make once in a while, and also, what little some of his teammates have said publicly about this situation.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Guest

[Ceetar]

Nimmo's been hurt too, so it's not like you're trading health either. Judge has 121 more games, they both debuted in 2016. OBP is pretty close, Judge has a 163 vs 134 wRC+ edge (the over the fence thing, mainly) 36.5 fWAR to 17.9, just above twice, though a bunch of that's defense. Fangraphs dings Nimmo a little and credits judge, but he's mostly been RF versus Nimmo in Center.



Nimmo's been really good, we shouldn't lose track of that, though Nimmo's offensive year this year was his 4th best by wRC+, mostly because he didn't hit as many out as usual, and walked less. He/the Mets prioritized contact, and I'm not sure that was good. But we can save that for a Nimmo thread.



But if you expect an average career Judge, and you're replacing an average career Nimmo, you're not getting 11 more wins. You're getting a few. And you wouldn't want Judge in CF long term really, though again you make that work of course. (could say the same about Nimmo in CF), and the margin of error is less. 2018 they were very comparable, and 2020 (if you make anything of that garbage year) Nimmo was better.



I still think you should try to retain Nimmo really, and you've also got Marte and Canha. So you have to work in a DH if they're all healthy. That's fine though. you make that work, that's all I meant. It's really pitching where the Mets have both a lot of volatility and a lot of age.

[kcmets]

Lefty Specialist wrote: I may be in the minority, but if deGrom opts out of his contract I let him walk. He'll want ridiculous money for declining results.

I agree, minority of two and counting. Probably will get it's own thread

once the Wild Card hangover is in the dust...

[batmagadanleadoff]

you're misreading me. I'm not saying the Mets need "better than reasonable hope" from their prospects. I'm saying Atlanta has a more complete talented player dev system, and a more consistent plan of promotion. Yes, they ended up doing even better than that, even faster. But they put them in positions to succeed, and the Mets promotions seemed like reactions to twitter pressure, desperate ,and could be argued put them in a position to fail. Again, no doubt that Atlanta has had a better talent development system in place. Certainly that was a shortcoming of prior management, and it's also certainly too early to know if it's been improved. Any fair measurement of that is going to take several years. I'm not saying Cohen is unwilling to expand the budget, i'm saying he's unwilling to expand it to compensate for the MANY players that are now free agents. He's said stuff about the budget not being unlimited ,which means it exists, which means decisions have to be made. But this is based on supposition, that because there is a limit somewhere, that means enough won't be spent. There's no evidence for this claim. They need to replace 3 starting pitchers, a closer, a centerfielder, a few other bullpen arms, and then add a hitter, and maybe some new bench pieces. The budget gap is not as big as it might seem. Many of the players to be replaced are already making close to market value on one-year deals. Take Diaz: he's at $10M this year. DeGrom would require some additional fresh money to resign but it's not coming from zero; he was already making $28M this year. It's fine to take a pessimistic viewpoint, I guess, but there's no basis to for the idea that Cohen won't or can't spend sufficiently to make the team competitive. And they've botched some of these decisions in the past, from draft to trade deadline to offseason. There is no indication that this team is up to the task. I hope so, but I don't think any of them have the track record to say "I trust Billy Eppler implicitly to put the best options in place" This is a bit all over the place, and it plays both ways. Eppler has a 101 win team on the field. That's a success anywhere. His off-season acquisitions were a resounding success. I'll agree he underperformed at the most recent deadline but longer-term results are unclear given that prospects stayed put. And if you want to claim the Rocker draft was botched, fine - but that can't count against Eppler. There's no basis to complain about the most recent draft and far too early to judge results.

And don't forget -- Cano's contract comes off the books after next season. That's a huge chunk of money.

[batmagadanleadoff]

They also didn't truly address their holes at the deadline, making marginal bet around the edges, which mostly felt like shoring up a deep playoff roster...except the Mets didn't have a deep playoff roster, so their "this is a really good platoon guy, and gives us flexibility!" additions get overused, and they struggled.

Nobody ever said the Mets were flawless. What team ever was? For all their flaws (and their strengths outnumbered their weaknesses by a lot) the Mets still won 101 games. And they lost Marte for the last month of the season -- not to mention that he may have been playing compromised against the Padres in the playoffs. He was consistently tremendous before he broke his finger and a deserving all-star.



I'd like to believe that having Marte for the last four weeks would've made the difference between the Mets winning their division easily and finishing in second place.

[Ceetar]

Marte was absolutely compromised and the Mets chose to play him anyway. It was a desperate gamble, so much so that they put him 6th in case he exploded in the field in the top of the inning and they had to replace him. They were really sloppy with injuries, when they told us who was injured, all season.



The same with the garbage way they handled Álvarez. They seemed to call up Vientos based on twitter pressure. It's a concerning process, and it makes me question their decision making.



It definitely appeared losing Marte was the difference between the Mets being really good and not, but that's a fine line to walk. Players get injured. It seemed like when the Mets clicked, everything was fine, but when anything went wrong they could struggle. They didn't have enough power to overcomes games when the hits weren't stringing together, because like Marte was out, so when Alonso was on a cold streak and no one else was bopping, they were losing games.



And it's not like Marte's injury was out of nowhere. getting hit by pitches is part of his game!

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'm thinking the same. DeGrom's best days are behind him, and his biggest contract is ahead of him. That was also true of Max Scherzer and of Pedro Martinez and many other free agent signings. You kind of have to accept that that's the way it is, but for deGrom the balance between money and remaining productivity is probably very unfavorable.

[whippoorwill]

Marte's finger had to be killing him in that cold

[batmagadanleadoff]

Playoff baseball is a crapshoot. You might as well throw darts at your wall blindfolded to try and figure out who's gonna win any single series. The Dodgers are the undisputed best team in baseball over the last 10 years and its not close. They sign top tier MVP caliber free agents. They trade for top tier MVP caliber players. They've been developing the best players in baseball over the last 10 years. And they have no holes in their starting lineup. No James McCanns. They're a powerhouse. And they have one World Series crown to show for all of that. Just one. And in a 60 game Covid shortened season, no less. Just one World Series title. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's supposed to go like that. Because playoff baseball blah blah blah short series' between good teams blah blah yada and all that luck that pollutes baseball yada yada blah. It's a game of a lotta luck where the differences between two teams 10 games apart in the standings is way tinier than most people think. If less teams made the playoffs, I'm certain that the Dodgers would have several more titles. The only thing that I think the Dodgers should be favored to do this Fall is to not win the 2022 World Series. And it's not because they're not baseball's best team. They are. Easily. The Mets were tremendous this year. They won 101 games -- and with deGrom and Scherzer combined, missing close to an entire season -- and getting the kid glove hothouse flower treatment for a good chunk of their active stretches. That's how you measure a team -- by the 162 game regular season. Playoffs are just a spectacle. The regular season is William Shakespeare and the playoffs are Archie comics. It's a gimmick.

Here's another dumb article about playoff baseball. Expect more to come.



The Dodgers are proof that, in the postseason, nothing is guaranteed

Image without a caption

Analysis by Chelsea Janes



Excerpt:

The Los Angeles Dodgers were the best team in the majors all season. No one scored more runs or had a higher team on-base-plus-slugging percentage. No one allowed fewer earned runs. They were dominant. And they are done. [***] The Dodgers are the most dominant regular season team of the past decade. They have won 73 more regular season games in the past 10 years than anyone else. They have beaten their regular season opponents by more than 1,700 runs in that span, more than 700 more than the second-best Houston Astros, according to MLB.com. They have won just one World Series in that time, and it came in the 2020 covid-shortened season.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/dodgers-early-postseason-exit/https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/dodgers-early-postseason-exit/

It's a dumb article. It goes on and on about the usual lack of timely hitting and starters that weren't as effective in the playoffs as during the season. It speculates about whether the bye layoff was detrimental rather than an advantage. But it misses the point because it ignores the crapshoots and coinflips and lucky nature of playoff baseball. And that two or four games isn't enough of a sample to prove anything. It tries to come up with solutions to yield better playoff outcomes, i.e. winning playoff games, when it's a crapshoot and a coin flip and a coin flip, by its very nature, is all luck and luck is something beyond anyone's control. It can't be fixed because it's beyond anyone's control. Just like you can't control whether you're gonna be born into a fabulous wealthy family with resources and good values and connections in a major American city or whether you're going to be born in a third world town where you have to walk around barefoot all of the time because hardly anyone there has shoes and the only reading material you'll ever have access to is the Bible. It's luck because you have no control over that. And the Dodgers winning just one WS despite being the unquestionable best team in baseball over the last 11 years is like the most normal thing that could be. If this was the 50s, where only the pennant winners advanced beyond the regular season, the Dodgers would surely have won more titles over that time. But that's a bygone era.