Centerfield

Sorry. Who is the Tom Seaver of sitcom neighbors?

So, my answer is going to be a bit different than the rest of you guys because of what Tom Seaver means to me. You guys remember the Hall of Fame pitcher, the Franchise. I have very few memories of him actually pitching for the Mets. The last memory of him that I have on the field was one spring training where he tried a comeback that didn't pan out. Otherwise, most of my memories of him are as an announcer. And not a great one. Full of himself, prone to cliches, very little actual analysis. And off the field, he was a jerk. When SC was a kid, we got into the elevator at Shea with Seaver. He was stonefaced, staring straight ahead. There were a few other kids on the elevator, all with dads looking for an opportunity to intro their kids to the Franchise. He never gave any opening. When the doors opened, he walked off briskly before anyone could say anything. So movie monsters. I'll go with Dracula. That name seems to mean a lot to guys older than me. But for my personal experience, it's pretty underwhelming.

Do you guys remember signing him? Stearns signed him to a two year minor league deal in January. Alzolay missed all of 2025 rehabbing from Tommy John, but should be good to go in 2026. Alzolay is a failed starter. Injuries and ineffectiveness ultimately resulted in him going to the pen. But he had a good season as the Cubs' closer in 2023. (22 saves, 2.67 ERA, 1.016 WHIP). He took a step back in 2024 (4.67 ERA in 18 G), but was hurt and ultimately needed the surgery. Mid 90's fastball, good slider. Definitely has some upside if healthy. I think he has the potential to be next year's Brooks Raley. Alzolay is one of a few potential bullpen arms coming back from major injuries. Drew Smith (TJ Surgery) should be healthy. AJ Minter (lat surgery) expects to have a somewhat normal spring training (assuming he opts into his contract). Even Danny Young has a chance to be back late next year. They also have rookie Dylan Ross, who was called up but I don't think actually made it into a game. Our bullpen so far: 1. Closer: TBD 2. LHRP: AJ Minter 3. LHRP: Brooks Raley 4. RHRP: Drew Smith 5. RHRP: Huascar Brazoban 6. RHRP: Adbert Alzolay 7. RHRP: Dylan Ross Certainly, none of these guys are locks, and so Stearns will have to build in some duplicity, but maybe the bullpen doesn't have to be entirely rebuilt, like we thought going in. It seems like Stearns has some potentially useful pieces to start with.

The buzz this week is that the Tigers and Skubal are $250M apart in contract discussions, leading everyone to speculate that the ace will be on the trading block this winter. First, we should keep in mind that the story that broke this week was from Jon Heyman, which means it’s a Boras press release. Also, the gap was supposedly from talks held a year ago, so it’s not like this is a recent development. The only real question, I guess, is why Boras would choose to leak it now. I don’t see that it benefits him to have his client traded. It’s not like he’ll sign an extension without testing free agency. It’s a bit puzzling. Detroit has made the playoffs two years in a row. I’d guess they’d be inclined to keep Skubal and try to win a World Series. If they trade him, I’d guess they’d want a Kings ransom in return. And if that means giving up McLean or Benge, I’m out. Building a package around Sproat or Tong, and adding one of Baty or Mauricio, then sure. I could get behind that. But I doubt that’s anywhere near enough. Keep in mind, I suck at trades. I always lean toward keeping the guys I have. So maybe I’m not the best to lead this discussion.

I nominate 2015 NLDS Game 3 at Citi. I know it's not a close game like some of the others, but I can't remember ever seeing Citi delirious like that. When Cespedes hit that bomb, I remember thinking WTF is going on. We're going to win the World Series! What a team. I think if we win Game 1, we win in 5.

Or be sufficiently young enough so your peers don’t know the reference. My brother’s name is Albert. He was never fat, but that didn’t stop ppl from calling him “fatty” growing up.

An article on Okamoto. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/slugging-japanese-infielder-expected-to-be-posted-by-yomiuri-giants/ar-AA1OoQQw?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Another option at first is Kazuma Okamoto, expected to be posted by Yomiuri. Power hitter, though not as prodigious as Murakami. But hits for average, walks and plays good defense. 29 years old. Has been compared to Seiya Suzuki.

I went with Mets for 4 years. If some team gives him 5-6 years, he's probably gone, but I have a hard time coming up with a team that will offer him that.

Going back to the original extension offer from 2023. Pete has since made $20.5M in 2024, and $30M in 2025. There would be 5 years, $107.5M left on his contract. ($21.5M AAV). You'd think just by sheer pride he wouldn't want to take less than that. Maybe 4 years $100M, plus a 5th year vesting option gets it done. Or a straight 4 year, $115M contract.

Three years certainly. Four years begrudgingly. Five years, I dunno. I guess it depends on who else is available by the time Pete signs. Which is why I think it's important to get this done quicker than we did last year. Let Pete go find his market. Match it if it's 4 years or less. But pivot if he doesn't make up his mind quickly. Plan B Options: 1. Murakami. Huge unknown. Younger, but he's never played in the bigs, has huge strikeout numbers, and was hurt last year. 2. Bellinger. Same age as Pete, more or less. Less consistent offensively, but is a better athlete and offers positional versatility. If he can actually play CF, he might be a good fit for the Mets regardless of Pete. 3. Josh Naylor. Not as good offensively, better defense. A few years younger. 4. Ryan Clifford. The in-house option. Non-1B Options. You could always try moving Vientos/Baty/Nimmo/Soto to 1B and fill Pete's production in other ways. 1. Kyle Tucker. The big fish this offseason. I don't see this happening. 2. Kyle Schwarber. Masher. But will be 33 next year, and has never hit for any kind of average. 3. Alex Bregman. He's a big name, but I don't like his production at all. Power numbers have fallen off, which isn't great considering the ballparks he plays in. But he bats RH.

I feel like the using sim score to predict results can be fairly easily tested if you are able to go back and look up similar players retroactively. I don't think it's any major feat if a sim score predicts decline. As we all agree, almost every player declines during that 32-34 window. Oftentimes precipitously. It's like I can come up with a fancy formula to predict that Frank from accounting couldn't hit Nolan McLean. It's not the formula, it's that most can't hit Nolan McLean. Does sim score predict the outlier? Take a look at Moises Alou at age 30. Or David Ortiz. Or Jim Thome. Do their lists contain other players who performed into their late 30s? Or do their lists have players that declined under the normal aging curve. If you look up Manny Ramirez at age 30, do you find Jason Bay? Or is it full of guys like Mike Schmidt or Moises Alou? If the latter, maybe there's something to it.

So. If marathon can find the 5 year projection on Alonso I’m guessing an actually MLB GM probably has that info too. 7 years. lol. But then again, it only takes one…

Bump.

I love that there is no extra runner. And if I had my way there would never be one. One of the considerations a manager used to have when pulling his starter early is “what if this game goes into extras”. Those that favor the extra runner will say we can’t take it away because of the way the games are managed now. Everyone will run out of pitchers. I say if you go back to normal, then managers maybe wouldn’t manage this way. In the end it’s all about viewership and ratings. We know it won’t ever go away. I just wish they’d give us, say, two innings of real baseball before adding the runner. Starting with a runner in the 12th makes more sense to me.

My son’s coach, who coached at AAA Las Vegas, used to tell him to treat the first pitch like a 3-1 pitch. Hone in on one pitch, one area, and if you get it, attack. Let everything else go. I have no idea if high school kids and big league players are taught to treat them the same way. But if they are, part of the success could be from batters being very selective. Expand that, and maybe those numbers go down.

I think what it comes down to, is sim score measures how similar players are according to certain criteria. But we don't know if this criteria says anything about how fast a player will age. In looking at these criteria, are the number of games played indicative of how fast that player will age? Do the number of ABs indicate how fast that player will age? Runs scored? Hits? Doubles? Some combination of these stats? At the end of the day, we don't know. Because we have no idea what criteria affects how fast a player will age. And so no matter how similar Pete Alonso may be to the players on this list, we don't know if the criteria being measured are indicative of aging curve.

I'm not sure how our luck was worse in 2020. (and if it was, 2020 was a small sample size, so certainly luck plays a larger part). I'm not saying anything about clutch for the bad luck piece. Bad Luck Event #1. I'm saying, a team that hits the ball harder and more consistently than any other team in baseball, should be the top offensive team. But because of a low BABIP (bad luck), we only ended up 6th in OPS. Bad Luck Event #2. Then through more bad luck (grouping of hits? timeliness?), a team that was 6th in OPS ended up 9th in runs scored. Again, not terrible luck individually, but collectively, through two separate instances of back luck, the team that hit the ball the hardest ended up 9th in runs scored. If luck had gone the other way, a team that was 6th in overall OPS could very well have ended up 3rd or 4th in runs scored. Bad Luck Event #3. But even with the prior bad luck, 9th in runs scored is usually enough to get you into the playoffs, and was for everyone else, except us. And I get that our pitching was bad, but overall, we had a +51 run differential. But we got beat by Cincinnati, a team with a +26 run differential. Because of our terrible record in one run games. Yet again, more bad luck.

I think there is enough evidence of players declining after age 31 to be cautious with Pete, regardless of sim score. It's well documented, and there is nothing to suggest Pete will be an exception. As to the sim scores, looking at that list, I don't see what makes these players more like Pete Alonso than any of the others listed in this thread. When I see the list, nothing jumps out at me as "wow, these guys are just like Pete". And I've read the explanation, and still don't see the connection. The only way I'd be convinced, is to learn the methodology behind the sim score. And frankly, I don't care enough to spend the time to do that. As to expanding the list. Even if there were 20 players listed, who all fell off after 31, I wouldn't be convinced until I took the time understand the methodology. And again, I don't care to spend that much time to do it. Would I think there could be something to it? Sure. There's always a chance. But it wouldn't change my thinking on Alonso, since I'm already cautious with him, regardless of sim score.

I think bad luck is the only logical answer. But the bad luck of the 2025 Mets is almost impossible to comprehend. When Jonah Tong was getting knocked around in that Cubs game, I remember thinking how unlucky we were that none of these ground balls found gloves. They didn't seem to be hit very hard, but just ended up in the right place. On the flip side, Pete smoked the hardest hit ball hit all year in game 162 in Miami, and that ball was an F7. Well the data tells us it wasn't just our imagination. The Mets were #2 in hard hit rate, while the Cubs were 20th. So let's play out this string of bad luck. Hi. We're the 2025 Mets. We are elite in all facets of hitting the ball hard. We're either 1 or 2 in terms of exit velo, hard hit rate, barrel percentage. We consistently hit the ball harder than any other team. Wow! Fantastic! You must be one of the top offenses in MLB. Certainly top 2 or 3 right? Well, actually, we got a bit unlucky. We were 6th in team OPS. Two teams who aren't in the top 10 of hard hit % had a higher OPS than us. What? How is that possible? Well despite hitting rockets all over the field, we ended up 20th in BABIP. We were a bit unlucky. Ok. Well 6th best offense is not terrible. Ninth actually. Despite the high relatively high OPS, we were 9th in runs scored. Some back luck. Ok. Well being in the top 10 in runs scored is usually good enough to make the playoffs... Usually yes! Everyone else in the top 10 made it, but not us! What are the chances? Did you have a bad run differential? +51. Good for 12th in MLB. We were beat out for a playoff spot by the Reds, a team that was 25 runs worse than us in run differential Ouch. I guess you lost some close games? We were 5-13 in one run games in the second half. We were 2-13 in our last 15 games. What bad luck! This is incredible. How much bad luck can one team have? Did we mention we were 0-70 when trailing after 8? The only team in MLB to not win such a game...

Also, the Mets BABIP was .287. 20th in MLB. https://www.teamrankings.com/mlb/stat/batting-average-on-balls-in-play

Great work. I remember checking those numbers around the end of August and was surprised how much they had changed. They went on that tear after Gelbs reported that change in philosophy on fastballs, before regressing in September. All of this providing no solid answer to, were the Mets unclutch or unlucky? I posted this in another thread. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast?type=batter-team&year=2025&position=&team=&min=q&sort=barrels_per_bip&sortDir=desc The Mets batted ball metrics were terrific. #1 in hard hit balls, #2 in hard hit %. #2 in average exit velocity. They were #2 in number of balls barrelled. #2 in barrel % for batted balls, and also #2 for barrel % against plate appearances. By all these metrics, the Mets should have had an elite offense. So was it just bad luck? They were 5-13 in one run games in the second half. After winning their first 3, they finished 2-13 over their last 15. They lost 3 of 4 extra inning games in the second half, Pete's walkoff against Texas being their sole victory. When they scored runs, they gave up runs. They lost three games by a score of 7-6. But when they pitched well, they didn't hit. The lost five games by a score of 3-2. Is this terrible luck? Or was there something off about this team?

Nice work. Question for the forum. Do you guys feel like Brooks Raley qualifies as a Dark Horse Candidate? Remember, the criteria are: 1. Not reasonably expected to contribute this year. No projected starters. No big name free agents coming off a down year. Has to be someone we expect to be a fringe guy. (IOW, no Montas/Holmes) 2. Can't be a premiere prospect (or at least, no longer one). No Drew Gilbert, Acuna, Clifford, etc. However, if Gavin Cecchini were to somehow resurface and make a contribution, he would qualify. 3. The type of player if he were hurt/released/traded prior to Opening Day you wouldn't care. Nick Madrigal fits that description. Dylan Covey too. Brett Baty does not. So Brooks Raley was signed at the end of April, coming off TJ surgery. He was not reasonably expected to contribute this year, is clearly not a top prospect. But would you have cared if he got re-injured or released prior to making his debut? Say, for instance, in May, we got news that Raley had a setback and wouldn't pitch at all in 2025. Would that have been newsworthy? I'm torn on this one.

Well, yes, it's obviously the case that the vast majority of players decline after age 32. (Obvious to some, anyway.) My point about Pete's comparables in particular (see link on previous page) is that they decline very sharply (to the point of being out of baseball entirely) in almost all cases, and are horrible choices to expend a long-term contract on for big money. I looked up the current 10 most comparable players. They all stunk the joint out after age 32, except those who are still playing at around Pete's age. (Olson) Similar Batters Khris Davis (937.3) Jim Gentile (919.3) Glenn Davis (905.0) Rhys Hoskins (901.3) Nate Colbert (900.6) C.J. Cron (898.0) Christian Walker (897.4) Dick Stuart (897.4) Matt Olson (892.6) Paul Sorrento (890.9) I see. I've always known that there was the concept of sim scores, and I read the formula that KC posted. I don't know if I'm fully convinced that this formula is the best way to come up with similar players. For instance, looking at that top 5, Khris Davis had a 4 year peak from age 27-30. Is that similar to Alonso, who has produced for 7 years? Rhys Hoskins has topped 30 HR twice in his career, and missed all of 2023 with a torn ACL. Alonso tops 30 HR every year, and never misses games. I have never heard of Nate Colbert. But he declined after his age 26 season. When he was 30, he hit .178 with 2 HR. I don't see how that makes him comparable to Alonso, who just hit 38. Is Colbert, a guy who hit 14 home runs at age 28, and played in the early 70s, a better comp than say, Paul Goldschmidt or JD Martinez? And to be clear, I'm not saying sim score isn't accurate, just that I don't know enough about it to know how much weight to give it. But certainly I agree with you, that these sim scores should give pause to anyone thinking to give a long term contract to Pete Alonso. Or really, anyone on the wrong side of 30.

What is the argument about the comparables? My post was meant to suggest that most players decline during that 32-35 window. Most of the time sharply. There are outliers that age earlier, some that age later.