We. Still. Need. Outfielders.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I didn't bring up the point.

[batmagadanleadoff]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I didn't bring up the point.

I know. I was just asking.

[Edgy MD]

So the issue that really matters is how this outfield is likely to do going forward.

I think the issue that really matters is finding a firstbaseman who hits like Jon Olerud. Or Rico Brogna. Or Dave Magadan.

Sold or not on Lagares, he has centerfield a lot more nailed down than anybody has first. The defense isn't merely better than Duda, it's been pretty exceptional with him out there, despite Byrd's belly and Young's propensity to play no-doubles defense 24-7. Whatever you think of our outfield, the positions most hurting the team day after day seem to me to be first, shortstop, and catcher.

Current standings by position represent the season and not where the team is now (thus, a still-low rating in center), but they're meaningful pictures I think, even if they represent offense only.

Third Base: First out of 15 Teams in OPS.
Second Base: Seventh out of 15 Teams in OPS.
Left Field: Seventh out of 15 Teams in OPS.
Right Field: 8th out of 15 Teams in OPS.
Catcher: 10th out of 15 Teams in OPS.
Center Field: 12th out of 15 Teams in OPS.
First Base: 13th out of 15 Teams in OPS.
Shortstop: 15th out of 15 Teams in OPS.

Funny to see the deadlastness of shortstop. Unlike first and center and even catcher, we haven't had a period of outright crisis there in 2013, just steady bland badness.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I'm always shocked to see there's any teams with less productive first basemen. How can that be?

[Edgy MD]

Every few weeks I'm tempted to investigate again. I'm like, "Surely there can't still be teams getting less production at fir... HOLY PETE! MAMIE, WOULD YOU COME LOOK AT THIS!!!"

[batmagadanleadoff]

So the issue that really matters is how this outfield is likely to do going forward. I think the issue that really matters is finding a firstbaseman who hits like Jon Olerud. Or Rico Brogna. Or Dave Magadan. Sold or not on Lagares, he has centerfield a lot more nailed down than anybody has first. The defense isn't merely better than Duda, it's been pretty exceptional with him out there, despite Byrd's belly and Young's propensity to play no-doubles defense 24-7. Whatever you think of our outfield, the positions most hurting the team day after day seem to me to be first, shortstop, and catcher. Current standings by position represent the season and not where the team is now (thus, a still-low rating in center), but they're meaningful pictures I think, even if they represent offense only. Third Base: First out of 15 Teams in OPS. Second Base: Seventh out of 15 Teams in OPS. Left Field: Seventh out of 15 Teams in OPS. Right Field: 8th out of 15 Teams in OPS. Catcher: 10th out of 15 Teams in OPS. Center Field: 12th out of 15 Teams in OPS. First Base: 13th out of 15 Teams in OPS. Shortstop: 15th out of 15 Teams in OPS. Funny to see the deadlastness of shortstop. Unlike first and center and even catcher, we haven't had a period of outright crisis there in 2013, just steady bland badness.

So outside of David Wright, the Mets are, at best, league average at every other position, and just as likely, at the bottom, among the worst. That, obviously, includes the outfield.

[Edgy MD]

The two sucker teams are Miami and Milwaukee, two teams that are currently watching firstbasemen they produced smack out Hall-of-Fame careers (although Miggy is back at third).

The top production at first belongs to Arizona, a team that, as recently as this spring, had a first basemen who was actually in a tossup with Ike over who was more worthy of an invite to the WBC.

[metsmarathon]

maybe slightly better than league average, as our home park seems to tamp down on offense a tad bit.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I'm always shocked to see there's any teams with less productive first basemen. How can that be?

Satin had a good two weeks and Davis just had a good two weeks, so that adds up to keep them from awful.

[Edgy MD]

So outside of David Wright, the Mets are, at best, league average at every other position, and just as likely, at the bottom, among the worst. That, obviously, includes the outfield.

I got nothing against middle-of-the-pack production, and am either happy to get it when it's from a young player who perhaps has something to offer on defense and maybe a spike or two in his future.

What's objectionable are the positions on the ass-end, and how they offset the hard-won victories of high-end talent like Wright and Harvey.

I hope you get the broader point.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Edgy MD wrote: So outside of David Wright, the Mets are, at best, league average at every other position, and just as likely, at the bottom, among the worst. That, obviously, includes the outfield. I got nothing against middle-of-the-pack production, and am either happy to get it when it's from a young player who perhaps has something to offer on defense and maybe a spike or two in his future. What's objectionable are the positions on the ass-end, and how they offset the hard-won victories of high-end talent like Wright and Harvey. I hope you get the broader point.

Get it? I can't agree or disagree because I don't even what it is. That the Mets had a good July? That we're set at outfield even though it's anchored by a right fielder who turns 36 this month and until this season, hasn't had a good campaign since the Bush administration?

[Edgy MD]

I didn't speak to you agreeing. I merely hoped you got it. Apparently not.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Edgy MD wrote: I didn't speak to you agreeing. I merely hoped you got it. Apparently not.

Apparently not. I cant agree or disagree if I don't even know what I might want to agree or disagree with. You can go back now to guard duty over the point of this conversation, which is apparently sealed inside of a mayonnaise jar inside of an Egyptian tomb, circled by evil spirits and buried 300 feet deep in somebody's backyard.

[Edgy MD]

Yes, I read that last time. This is getting redundant. I did not ask if you agreed or disagreed.

Communication is breaking down. Can the banks be far behind?

My point had been that the outfield prospects for the present and future had improved while other concerns lagged behind.

[ashie62]

Moreso when his body fills out Juan Lagares reminds me of a young Cesar Cedeno...In other words....Lagares my the the goods...

[batmagadanleadoff]

Did I tell you that there's $320M worth of Sterling-Wilpon debt due soon? Because I'll tell you again in case you didn't remember it the first 682 times I wrote it. Check out the bold, italicized text. You think Megdal reads this forum? We already noted that the Mets are league average at best at every position but 3B and that who cares what the outfield did last month: it's what they might do going forward that matters.



Another year in shackles for the Mets general manager
By Howard Megdal


Sandy Alderson. SNY

The July 31, 4 p.m. non-waiver trade deadline for Major League Baseball came and went, with a familiar result for the Mets: the buzz about potentially adding talent yielded nothing at all. This result will have an impact on the team's 2014 fortunes, and on the possibility that the astute front office team, led by Sandy Alderson, remains in place. Way back on May 27, Alderson talked up the possibility that the Mets would add talent in the summer period of baseball activity, with a Mets source pointing out, rightly, that "it�s hard to build an entire outfield in one offseason.� A few weeks later, on June 15, Alderson said this: "I do believe that over the next six months or so we will be in position to make some significant acquisitions, whether it's through free agency or trade. We're certainly looking forward to that possibility." Taking Alderson at his word, that means most of those six months, June 15-December 15, are now up. The Mets didn't add anyone through July 31, and the difficulty of getting a high-performing player through waivers takes us through the end of the season, then the playoffs, which run until the end of October. It'll be November before activity can resume, and Alderson will have one offseason to build what the Mets had feared was impossible to build in that time, an outfield. And that's something worth remembering: a talented front office, with a real, static budget at its disposal, can't just will a championship team into being. It's hard under the best of circumstances, when you don't have to fight internal battles just to make marginal upgrades. The Mets, to add payroll this winter, need to not only outbid 29 other teams for their preferred players, but do so while ownership somehow convinces JPMorgan Chase to defer a $320 million loan due against the team, and at the same time, let new spending on the team jump ahead of it in the credit line. So it's no wonder Alderson and his crew are getting tired of this game. The outfield isn't the only area in need of building. There's shortstop, where Ruben Tejada is marooned in Triple-A until, apparently, September. (Omar Quintanilla is not a long-term answer for them at the position.) Nor does it address first base, where Ike Davis, after returning from Las Vegas, is slugging a meager .322 in his first 73 plate appearances. But about that outfield, which Alderson was only recently telling fatalistic jokes about. "We've taken what seemed to be a fairly barren outfield at the beginning of the season and turned it over the last month into maybe the most productive outfield in baseball," Alderson said by way of explaining his inactivity on Wednesday. "So some positive things have happened. And we want to let that play out." Now look: the outfield has been better. But "maybe the most productive outfield in baseball?" Primary left fielder Eric Young Jr. and now-primary center fielder Juan Lagares have clearly been much better than what they replaced, and have been vital to the team's recent respectable form, and are at even league average O.P.S. at their positions in the National League this season. But unless we are using Lake Wobegon math, that's not the most productive outfield in baseball. Moreover, the concern isn't so much how they performed over the last month, but what it means heading into 2014. Alderson is much too smart to believe Eric Young, the 28-year-old with the 77 O.P.S.+ and below-average fielding, is as good as it gets. The approach-conscious Alderson and his staff will also be well aware that Lagares' solid output, more than sufficient given his elite fielding in center field, has come despite just five unintentional walks in his first 195 plate appearances, and a likely unsustainable .358 batting average on balls in play (.476 over these supposedly transformative last 28 days). The backup plan, if and when they cool off, are the same outfield options as before. Right field, meanwhile, was a major storyline of deadline day. The Mets have come a long way from Alderson's January interview, when he struggled, with good reason, to name which if his castoffs would start at the position. Now, the Mets have Marlon Byrd in right, and Byrd has been terrific for the Mets, second only to David Wright with a 133 O.P.S.+, leading the team in home runs and R.B.I. Still, Byrd is 35, and he's never before approached that level of production, even in what are typically a player's prime years. He's a free agent after the season, leaving the Mets with the unenviable options of offering him a qualifying offer expected to be more than $13 million for 2014, hoping he's found a new level of talent at this point in his career, or at least getting a draft pick as compensation if Byrd turned that offer down and signed elsewhere. (Reality: he almost certainly wouldn't.) Alternatively, they'll lose him for nothing. Even if you accept that keeping Byrd will improve attendance or provide the Mets with slightly more 2013 revenue, it would seem to be precisely within the purview of Jeff Wilpon's declaration last month that ownership was "ready to invest" to take that minor revenue hit to add to the 2014 talent base. But despite teams offering the Mets what Joel Sherman labeled interested teams' 10th-to-15th-best prospects, the Mets elected to hold on to Byrd, a player who gives them no on-field value after the next 57 games. A cursory glance at some 2010 Baseball America prospect lists yielded players within that range like Nolan Arenado of the Rockies, who forced his way to the major leagues earlier this year and is starting at third base, and Jason Kipnis of the Indians, who the Mets recently saw at Citi Field, in the All-Star Game. Sure, there were prospects in that range who missed, which is the nature of prospects. But when the best position player prospects the Mets have at or above Double-A are catcher Travis d'Arnaud, who missed much of the season with a broken foot, Wilmer Flores, a natural third baseman blocked by David Wright, and Cesar Puello, who looks likely to be suspended in the Biogenesis probe any minute now, adding some decent position prospects to come up with some answers at positions of need seems like more of an imperative than a luxury, cast aside for a slightly better 2013 finish. (At least it appears d'Arnaud, now back playing for Double-A Binghamton, may get the chance to play in New York, and show what he can do, as soon as John Buck's wife goes into labor.) And naturally, had the Mets really been concerned about being competitive in 2013, they could have spent more than $5 million, total, on a pair of major league free agents at the very end of last offseason. That was a critical offseason, too, according to Alderson, who expressed the need last August to add "an infusion of players, productive players," and then, constrained by ownership's financial bind, did nothing of the sort. The owners, of course, explained that that only happened because Alderson has chosen not to spend money to improve the team, which isn't something Mets decision-makers privately even pretend is true. That moment when last offseason went from one about preaching patience to a missed opportunity happened in the blink of an eye, if you followed the official line. So did this summer window. And so more time goes by, the Mets hiding behind some plausible deniability (sure, had they been at liberty to add significantly to payroll, trades for productive hitters aren't so easy to negotiate anyhow), and some not-so-plausible ("maybe the most productive outfield in baseball," or Fred Wilpon saying, to the puzzlement and anger of Alderson's camp, that "we haven't turned him down on anything"). We're 16 months out from Wilpon and his partners settling the litigation against them brought by the trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims, a settlement brought because the trustee determined, after a full examination of Wilpon's finances, that he and his partners were circling the drain financially, and couldn't pay the trustee even the pre-trial award of $83.3 million. That supposedly freeing moment has led to more of the same. Alderson has been steadily stockpiling pitching prospects and rebuilding the farm system, but without the ability to supplement by adding major league talent, his task of making the Mets into major-league contenders is an enormously difficult one. Back in the heady days of June, when the public statements of Mets management made it sound like a big-ticket acquisition, or even, you know, an acquisition of any kind was imminent, Alderson, who is only signed through 2014, said this to Newsday's David Lennon: "Was 2014 always a target year? Yeah," Alderson said. "It should be an important year for us." He surely meant it.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/sports/2013/08/8532472/another-year-shackles-mets-general-manager?top-featured-2

[nymr83]

theres plenty to be pessimistic about with thew Mets, but I don't think Juan Lagares is on of those things. Yeah he doesnt walkmuch and yeah the BABIP is unsustainable, but I think the defense and doubles power are enough to make him an average regular in center next year.

[ashie62]

Medgal actually makes enough money to live by getting people to read his rants?

[Ceetar]

Nymr83 wrote: theres plenty to be pessimistic about with thew Mets, but I don't think Juan Lagares is on of those things. Yeah he doesnt walkmuch and yeah the BABIP is unsustainable, but I think the defense and doubles power are enough to make him an average regular in center next year.

Yeah, it's gone on a little too long for me to doubt now. I was skeptical because of the unsustainable stuff, but he's even walking a little bit more, maybe that's a fluke, maybe not, but really if he can play CF like that and maintain a 90-100 OPS type game? I'll take it. Hard to find that and you can plug any better hitting OFers you find into one of the corners easy enough.

I should (illegally?) splice Josh Lewin's call of his triple yesterday out of the audio. Great call.

[Edgy MD]

Any rebroadcast, reproduction, or other use of the pictures and accounts of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited.

Ceetar is an anarchist.

[Ceetar]

Any rebroadcast, reproduction, or other use of the pictures and accounts of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited. Ceetar is an anarchist.

Pretty much. I know I posted a funny Howie Rose "Change at Jamaica" joke on a foul pop-up on my blog a couple of years ago. They don't notice the small fish.

I mean, this stuff just vanishes into Ether on the off chance they want to highlight something. But it's good stuff and why shouldn't we enjoy and share it?

So yeah, if you want to hear Josh Lewin's call of Juan Lagares' triple yesterday, here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4Jy95v3sUH8VHNVOXhCRy13Qlk/edit?usp=sharing

(fixed to hopefully allow sharing now)




The Howie Rose joke, apparently back when I still thought Wayne Hagin was decent. Also, I shouldn't have hot-linked Howie's picture from CBS I guess.

http://www.ceetar.com/optimisticmetsfan/2010/07/03/howies-lirr-joke/

[Edgy MD]

Megdal wrote: Way back on May 27, Alderson talked up the possibility that the Mets would add talent in the summer period of baseball activity, with a Mets source pointing out, rightly, that "it�s hard to build an entire outfield in one offseason.� A few weeks later, on June 15, Alderson said this: "I do believe that over the next six months or so we will be in position to make some significant acquisitions, whether it's through free agency or trade. We're certainly looking forward to that possibility." Taking Alderson at his word, that means most of those six months, June 15-December 15, are now up.

Only somebody incapable of doing math, somebody incapable of hearing anything but perceived insults, or somebody committed to maintiaining his fantasy of running the team would argue as such.

But about that outfield, which Alderson was only recently telling fatalistic jokes about. "We've taken what seemed to be a fairly barren outfield at the beginning of the season and turned it over the last month into maybe the most productive outfield in baseball," Alderson said by way of explaining his inactivity on Wednesday. "So some positive things have happened. And we want to let that play out."

Why does anybody need to be insulted to the point where they deliberately pretend to think that he's talking about anything but July?

[Ceetar]

Edgy MD wrote: Way back on May 27, Alderson talked up the possibility that the Mets would add talent in the summer period of baseball activity, with a Mets source pointing out, rightly, that "it�s hard to build an entire outfield in one offseason.� A few weeks later, on June 15, Alderson said this: "I do believe that over the next six months or so we will be in position to make some significant acquisitions, whether it's through free agency or trade. We're certainly looking forward to that possibility." Taking Alderson at his word, that means most of those six months, June 15-December 15, are now up. Only somebody incapable of doing math, somebody incapable of hearing anything but perceived insults, or somebody committed to maintiaining his fantasy of running the team would argue as such. But about that outfield, which Alderson was only recently telling fatalistic jokes about. "We've taken what seemed to be a fairly barren outfield at the beginning of the season and turned it over the last month into maybe the most productive outfield in baseball," Alderson said by way of explaining his inactivity on Wednesday. "So some positive things have happened. And we want to let that play out." Why does anybody need to be insulted to the point where they deliberately pretend to think that he's talking about anything but July?

It's like the simplest of things and more candid than most GM-speak. He's seen signs of good things from guys (2 of which he DID bring in here) that are playing, and feels it's worth continuing to give them chances. That's it. He hasn't wrote any of their names into the starting lineup for 2014 yet..