Key Met of 2014

[Edgy MD]

Which Mets player do you see as most definitively the key to the 2014 season's potential success or failure? That is, who seemingly offers the team the broadest range of possible outcomes that could deeply impact the team's win total?

Anybody has a broad range of outcomes. Bartolo Colon could win 20 games or he could win two. But then there is a guy like Daniel Murphy, who, it has been noted, tends to gravitate closer to his mean. And other guys with broader range of high-possibility outcomes aren't as likely to be rewarded with a big enough role to make or break a season. If everything otherwise goes well but Wilfredo Tovar stinks it up, it's unlikely to break the season. If everything otherwise goes poorly but Wilfredo Tovar breaks through as a game-impacting big league shortstop, it's unlikely to redeem the season.

Given all that un-necessary explication, who is your KMo14?

[seawolf17]

I think Colon's your KMo14. If he's Bartolo 2013, then you can survive some growing pains from Wheeler/Niese/Syndergaard/Gee and you find this team in contention for something this summer. If he's a disaster, then we're also dreading being stuck with him for 2015 too.

[Ceetar]

Tempted to say d'Arnaud, but I'm going with Ruben Tejada (and/or Stephen Drew?). If he can put up a .350 OBP type year again he's worth quite a bit more than the SSs of last year. It'd be a big swing and right now I see SS as the biggest potential to be an absolute black hole in the lineup, killing rallies left and right.

[Edgy MD]

I like Wheeler. It's highly unlikely that he can give the team what Harvey did last year, but if he can give 80-85%, it can take the heat off of so many other players.

On the other hand, he may end up walking the entire league, placing an increased demand on a succession of pitchers, triggering a cascade of failure.

[Centerfield]

I think it's Ike Davis. He can put up an .850 OPS and hit 30 HR's or he can be released by May.

[Edgy MD]

My second choice.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Tom Seaver could come out of retirement and win the Cy Young Award pitching for the Mets or he could stay in California, overseeing his grapes.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'm gonna say Chris Young. I think the Mets will have three productive hitters in Wright, Granderson, and Murphy. Having a fourth solid bat will, if not make their offense strong, at least make it less weak. Davis could also be that guy, but I'm not counting on him for anything at all.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Doodoo. I think he's gonna be the first baseman when the bell rings and you're gonna need your first baseman to hit or else.

[Guest themetfairy]

Wheeler. The pitching staff desperately needs an anchor, and he's the best candidate.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I don't even know if I understand this question. Who, for example, would you say was the key 1973 Met -- so I get an idea of what I should be predicting?

OE - If you wanna know which Met I think has the broadest range of outcomes, wouldn't that have to be the Met with the highest ceiling?

[Edgy MD]

Well that makes two entries by you in the "Who can hijack the fastest?" contest.

Listen, I wrote at tedious length --- so tedious that I wanted to beat myself up --- because there are always one two when confronted with a simple question like "Who is the key Met of 2014?" who climb all over themselves trying to prove how empirical and semantic and tautological they are.

Congratulations. You win.

[batmagadanleadoff]

It's a trick question, because the Mets'll be out of it by the Fourth of July. Otherwise, they're gonna need a lot contributing. Why don't you just ask us who we think will be the Mets best player? The best player is usually also the most valuable player, and the key player, too. I mean, it'd be a nice surprise if whoever the hell gets most of the starts at first base can hit 25+ homers and on-base close to .375, but if Wheeler pitches like Harvey 2013, it's gonna take some convoluted and contrived thinking to convince me that the first baseman was more key than Wheeler.

[MFS62]

TDA, for the fourth productive bat in the lineup.
He could achieve the upside Sandy thought he had, or be very pedestrian.
Later

[Edgy MD]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Why don't you just ask us who we think will be the Mets best player?

Or you could.

[dinosaur jesus]

The key Met of 1973 is actually a pretty easy call. It's either Wayne Garrett or George Stone. Everybody else did what you'd reasonably expect them to do.

This year? Davis or Duda. If one of them is any good at all, we've got a decent team out there.

[Vic Sage]

I think Mags is saying you already have asked that question, in essence. But i disagree with him. If by "key" we're talking about the player whose unpredictability is tied to the widest possible range of outcomes, where if he's at the top of the range he's the Mets best player, but if he's at the bottom, he drags the team down like an anchor (which is my interpretation of the question), then i guess it's not really a question of who is the Mets best player, but who we think WILL be the Mets best player in 2014 despite that not necessarily being the case as of today, and despite the fact that he might end up as one of the worst instead.

I don't think i'm going out on a limb to say that the Mets' best player is David Wright (and Harvey when healthy, but that's not this year), and its unlikely he would end up as one of our worst. But if Colon or Wheeler pitch like CY-type aces (which i think is possible for either of them), then they could be better than David in 2014 (assuming Wright just meets his established level of production, which is just short of MVP-type production), but i think their low-range production (barring injury) would still be adequate, or could be replaced by some phenomenal prospects. Granderson has had 40 hr seasons, so that potential is there to garner some MVP votes, but even at 25hrs he can still be useful. Young? Very talented, unpredictable, wide range of outcomes; at the low end, he gets benched, but even at his best he's no better than David. And under no circumstances are we going to get an MVP-vote kind of year from any SS we currently have on our roster; Tejada's range of outcomes goes from "serviceable ML SS" to "AAA"; i don't see that as a player who's a key to anything. Same with Ike and Duda; their upsides do not suggest impact players to me, particularly at 1b, where other teams usually have significant offense so the bar is higher.

But d'Arnaud? Well, now we're talking. His upside is totally unknown beyond having been one of the top catching prospects in all of baseball (which implies a pretty high upside), and a productive catcher gives a team a significant edge over most other teams, due to scarcity of catching talent. So if D'Arnaud hits an average Wright year (.290-.300/20-25hr/90-100rbi), and everybody else does what they're supposed to do, we're a playoff team. But he has just as good a chance of hitting .200 again, or getting yet another injury setback (which he seems susceptible to), and if so, we're not going anywhere (all other things being equal). I don't actually think he's ready for that kind of season (if he ever will be), so i don't suspect we're going to play much more than .500 this year (if that), but if he does, then a wild-card could happen.

So d'Arnaud's my key Met of 2014, i guess.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Vic Sage wrote: I think Mags is saying you already have asked that question, in essence. But i disagree with him. If by "key" we're talking about the player whose unpredictability is tied to the widest possible range of outcomes, where if he's at the top of the range he's the Mets best player, but if he's at the bottom, he drags the team down like an anchor (which is my interpretation of the question), then i guess it's not really a question of who is the Mets best player, but who we think WILL be the Mets best player in 2014 despite that not necessarily being the case as of today, and despite the fact that he might end up as one of the worst instead....

I would also disagree with myself after reading your post, but that's only because you gave a definition to the phrase "key Met". I guess that "key Met" is subject to different interpretations. I loved George Stone in 1973 but I have a hard time understanding how he was more key than, say, Tom Seaver. If the Mets couldn't have afforded to be without Stone's contributions, then doesn't that go quadruple for Seaver's season? This exercise seems more like a word game than anything else. I also like your analysis of d'Arnaud, but unfortunately, this all reminds me of the talking heads who pontificate that this team has to stop the other team's cleanup hitter in order to win the Series. And then the other team's cleanup hitter goes 10 for 15 with four HR's in the series anyway but his team still loses.

[Vic Sage]

i guess the point is that Seaver, like Wright, is sort of the baseline production that the team relied on in 73, but here we're being asked to speculate about what player this year will contribute most (and perhaps unexpectedly) to the production ABOVE that baseline, who will add the most wins ABOVE the contributions expected from the stars on which the season actually rests.

It's easy and obvious to say Seaver and Wright are the best players, so therefore they are the "key" players of their respective teams, but what is being discussed is a bit more nuanced then that. It's that, GIVEN that Wright is our best player and will therefore have the greatest impact on our likelihood of success this year, what player has the potential to have an unexpected impact to make the greatest difference to the team's fortunes, above and beyond that?

[Guest d'Kong76]

Granderson will be the key Met in 2014. I'm putting all my
eggs in that baskets and running with it. Carefully.

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

d'Kong76 wrote: Granderson will be the key Met in 2014. I'm putting all my eggs in that baskets and running with it. Carefully.

I agree with Kong. The pitching will be fine. But we can't continue with the abysmal run support we saw last year. Granderson is the key. he doesn't have to have a monster season. But if he is good enough take some of the pressure off Wright, then they both will thrive. If he is well below expectations, then Wright is hosed -- again -- and we lose a bunch of 3-2 and 4-2 and 2-1 games. I don't think anyone is expecting big things from Ike, Duda and Chris Young and forget about Tejada. Granderson was brought in for this purpose.

[Lefty Specialist]

Agree on Granderson. We're all assuming Duda/Davis will suck, but we're all assuming the Grandy Man will be good. If he's not, we've got 4 years of crap to look forward to. See: Bay, Jason.

[Ceetar]

Lefty Specialist wrote: Agree on Granderson. We're all assuming Duda/Davis will suck, but we're all assuming the Grandy Man will be good. If he's not, we've got 4 years of crap to look forward to. See: Bay, Jason.

Eh, I'm assuming both Duda and Davis are unlikely to suck. And if one of them does, they won't have the rope to hang themselves/us with.

Granderson as well, doesn't seem a likely candidate to completely suck. the swing just doesn't seem like it'd be that far.

[metsmarathon]

to piggyback onto vic's definition of 'keyness' i would suggest that the key met is not only the met for whom exists the widest expected variability of likely outcomes, but also for whom there exists the least-good backup plan, and therefore to whom the mets fortunes are the most tied.

for this reason, neither ike davis nor lucas duda can really be the key met, as they are their own backup plans, followed by josh satin. and tejada cannot be either, as flores is a fairly passable plan b that many of us would like to see as a plan a (plus there's the whole debate of how good the likely upside can be).

i think that d'arnaud or grandy are the key mets, as the upside for each of them is fairly high, the foreseeable downside could be low, and the lack of backup plans are equally apparent.

i think the mets could swallow a struggling d'arnaud slightly better than they could a struggling granderson. if he's healthy enough to play, he's going to play - he's not getting benched in favor of duda or lagares. and while we expect good things from him, i believe, he's coming off an injury-stricken season and getting older, so anything could happen.

if granderson turns into jason bay, teh mets are sunk, in other words. if granderon turns into vintage granderson, the mets will likely be just fine.

[Zvon]

Wheeler. We need him to grow into whatever it is he's going to be.

[Fman99]

I also believe Grandy to be the Kay-Mo of 2014.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

I think Grandy can kneecap this season easier than he can raise it to transcendent heights.

I'll split my vote between D'Arnaud and Wheeler, the when-will-they-make-the-leap folk. If one does, it's an okay season. If both do? This one could be a rattlesnake, y'all.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: I think Grandy can kneecap this season easier than he can raise it to transcendent heights.

yup

[Guest d'Kong76]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: I think Grandy can kneecap this season easier than he can raise it to transcendent heights.

Not to reawaken the 'what is key' thing, but that to me is
part of the definition of key. I'll work on my other parts of
the definition.

[Vic Sage]

I completely understand (and share) the fear about Granderson's potential downside because of his contract, which could end up a Bay-like albatross because the Mets refuse to swallow their mistakes and move on, like big-market teams can afford to do. But i don't think that makes him a "key" to the season.

Last year Grandy was hurt and only played in 60 games. But it wasn't a chronic-type injury that threatens to continue to affect him. He was an excellent player for the 7 seasons before that; even in his "crappy years", he would hit 245/25hr, which would exceed the production we'd gotten from any of our OFers the last few years. And if he totally crashes and burns, there is a Lagares and a Puello waiting in the wings. But catchers are another matter. They are not as plentiful as OFers, even in the Mets organization. And unlike a hitting OFer (which even most crappy teams have), a hitting catcher gives a team a big edge on their competition. And unlike Granderson, d'Arnaud is ALL projection at this point, with no ML track record to refer to. Granderson can hit .275/35hr/100rbi or .245/25hr/75rbi and we wouldn't be surprised, nor would the difference necessarily have a huge impact on the team's overall fortunes; if he collapses completely, Lagares and/or Puello will get more ABs and they both have projectibly high upsides.

But if d'Arnaud gives us one of his minor-league seasons (.310/20hr/30db/90rbi/.900+ops) rather than the punchless .200 he hit last year, he'll be in the all-star game, dramatically increasing our chances of a WC birth and maybe getting an mvp vote or 2 in the process, and settling our catching situation for the next decade. If not, what... Anthony Recker? That's a pretty steep dropoff. Kevin Plawecki? 22, hasn't played above A-ball yet... not really an option for 2014, or perhaps ever.

As for Zach Wheeler, he could do exactly what he did last year and be fine. Yes, he could be better, or worse. And if he goes on the DL, we'll bring up Syndergaard, Montero, deGrom, Matz (or any of our other top-rated prospects) and perhaps do no better or worse this year as a result. To me, that doesn't make him a "key".

But today i have absolutely no sense of what d'Arnaud's is likely to do this year, whether savior or anchor. Do you? If savior, he's not only the key to 2014, but to the decade that follows. If not, we're doing what exactly... giving ABs to Taylor Teagarden and Anthony Recker until Mr. Plawecki shows he can play above A-ball? If so, we're a sub-.500 team, unless everybody else has great years.