roger_that

Edgy MD wrote: nobody knows where peak value is until it has passed. Again, yes, of course. I'm merely suggesting that with young pitchers that peak value tends not to last as long as it does with batters. So if you've got a desirable young pitcher coming off a good year, it's a good move to see if you've got any takers, and to trade aggressively if you find a team willing to give you a good hitter in exchange. I think, in the long run, you'll do very well following this principle. Of the Mets Five Young Aces, this means not dealing all of them at once. I'm not sure, for example, what Steven Matz' peak would have been: probably the winter after his first six starts, in retrospect, and more realistically near the trading deadline of 2019, when the Mets were double-digits out and Matz had just thrown a 5-hit shutout against the Pirates to bring his record to 6-6. And again it goes without saying that you're going to trade off some prize pitching for bupkis if you follow these principles, Ryan, Martinez, blablabla. That's trading, not a serious argument against avoiding trading. I can supply counterexamples to any principle you'd care to espouse. Doesn't make you wrong.

Edgy MD wrote: Well, apart from the ambiguity in the term "ace," they have a whole bunch of wins, three playoff appearances, a pennant, and a lot of good times. A LOT of good times. They also have Nick Morabito, Isaiah Greene, and a compensation pick this June. Plus, there's a significant amount of Matz DNA still floating through Khalil Lee's body. Yeah, I know all that (we do get TV broadcasts down here), and I also understand the ambiguity (and the conciseness) in the three-letter word "ace" to summarize five very different pitchers, but my point remains: the Mets have, in retrospect, overvalued these five pitchers, held on to most of them beyond the point that they could bring real value in exchange, and would be in much better shape if they had systematically adhered to the position that pitchers are fragile and dangerous to build around. True (and obvious) they wouldn't have won those three playoff appearances and that pennant, but they could have won five pennants and maybe some World Series if they'd swapped them out at their peaks of value, so your argument is perhaps less devastating than you think. I'm not looking to rob you, Edgy, of your fond memories of the good times--rather, I'm trying to show that, with a different philosophy and sharper evaluation of the value of bright young pitching stars, you may very well have had better memories of the past five years. I do find it amusing that some in this exchange are challenging my thesis (of trading young pitching off good years for hitting) as being widely known in the baseball world (and so useless as a strategy) while others are challenging the fact that there's a shred of truth to it--the combination effectively refutes its uselessness, since I'm not claiming that no one is unaware of it, just that some teams perceive it more powerfully than others, meaning you should offer pitching to the teams that need it most severely and/or buy into the thesis less.

Edgy MD wrote: trading partners probably know that. Some know it better than others. Some, in dire need of starting pitching, override their better instincts, and smart teams will take advantage of that fact. When the Mets had five young aces, they were in a good position to take advantage of that fact. Now those five aces are all gone and they don't have much to show for having had them.

The Mets did well, in the main, by holding onto deGrom this long, and they would have done well to hang onto Wheeler, it looks like. But you never know who's going to remain valuable and who is not, which is why I think they would have done very well to trade all five whenever they could have gotten top value in return

Edgy MD wrote: Indeed, any of those players could have brought a big package, and any of those packages could have produced well or poorly. Of course. Goes without saying, you can get burned on any type of deal. Burned badly on occasion. But as a principle, hitters are more durable than pitchers, generally and over the long run. If you consistently trade pitching at the point it's valued the highest (and of course if you know which hitters to trade for, which also goes without saying--I'm not advocating making colossally dumb trades on principle) you will make out like a bandit in the long run. And of course, as stated, you need to find trading partners desperate for good pitching, and to have good pitching to trade. There are teams that overvalue pitching. Right now, I'd say that the Rangers are overvaluing deGrom, for example. He could provide value by winning 100 games for them over the next five years, and if you asked them, they would probably be hoping for upwards of 50 wins from deGrom for certain. But the Mets are saying, in effect, that's pretty unlikely, and their resources are better directed elsewhere. Hitters are more valuable, but not all organizations agree. The Mets would do well to take advantage of such organizations.

Consider (or re-consider) my thesis: imagine if the Mets had dealt off each of their Big Young Five (deGrom, Harvey, Syndergaard, Matz, Wheeler) after their best seasons with the team. The sky's the limit for what each of them would have brought in return, close to an entire power-packed lineup's worth of value to the right (pitching-desperate) club. My thesis goes that pitchers are fragile, and often seem to promise more than they're capable, physically, of delivering, often (usually?) coming down with career-ending arm injuries in their late twenties. Yes, we would have gotten killed if we'd dealt off deGrom, but at his unhittable, yet affordable, peak we could have gotten a few amazing hitters in return for him. And we would have gotten away with murder swapping out Harvey, Matz, and Thor at their peaks when they were perceived by some as Cooperstown bound. ALWAYS TRADE PITCHING FOR HITTING. To do otherwise is to display greed and short-sightedness.

=G-Fafif post_id=113757 time=1670070922 user_id=55] Alfonzo to SF was the killer for me. Cooled my Met ardor for a year-plus. Blamed management rather than the player.

Sad, woulda liked him to retire a Met, but five years at top dollar violates my principles about signing elderly pitchers. Let the Rangers pay him for what he did (and didn't do) as a Met, and let's pay someone else to head up our starting staff.

Dime a dozen.

My subjective take is that, as a general policy, the smart move is to sign high-quality veteran free-agent pitchers for the shortest possible time you can, and pay the outrageous and inordinate salaries such pitchers get. Always have two or three such pitchers on your roster, and have the two or three best starting pitchers from your own system to fill out the starting staff. Trade these younger pitchers for hitting any time any one of them has a good season (pitchers tend to get hurt and have their careers wrecked more than hitters, though some teams can't resist the lure--take advantage of those foolish teams). Keep the line moving. If you have too many good hitters on your rosters (is this possible? Barely), consolidate them via trades. But never, never, never commit to a long-term contract for a veteran pitcher: you will get burned badly. For that matter, rarely commit to a long-term deal for a position player--sometimes this is unavoidable, andyou can get generally get more use out of a position player who fails (turn him into a part-time player, a defensive replacement, a pinch-hitter, whatever his remaining strengths are) than a pitcher with a blown out arm and 40 Mil coming to him for the next few decades.

That was how I parsed a project Mets lineup for 2023 with inadequate spacing: CANHALF. Which is a good start for several questions: Can half the 2023 Mets play a few games better than the 2022 Mets? Can half the turkey I cook for Thanksgiving keep past the point I'm sick of eating turkey? Can half the JFK assassination buffs' posts I read today, the 59th anniversary, make a shred of sense?

So who's the newest oldest now?

Frayed Knot wrote: And now back to my original original point on the topic: Jon Hey Man chimes in on the lack of logic and likelihood of a Trea Turner signing: https://nypost.com/2022/11/08/a-mets-trea-turner-mlb-free-agency-splash-makes-little-sense/https://nypost.com/2022/11/08/a-mets-trea-turner-mlb-free-agency-splash-makes-little-sense/ Hey Man is for horses, man. Is there more hedging possible than in this graf? After Nimmo, the other great option would be to try to sign Aaron Judge and move Starling Marte to center field. But of course, the Mets don't want to start an intracity war with the Yankees (and cost themselves $300 million in the process). And they seem slightly uncertain about the idea of moving Marte to center field full-time. They "seem slightly uncertain"? Ya mean, because he's getting on in years and hasn't played fulltime CF for a while? Anyone would "seem slightly uncertain" in those circumstances. Are ya sure you've left yourself enough wiggleroom if it turns out to be anything between "disastrous" and "genius"? And "of course" the Mets don't want a war with the Yankees? I suspect they welcome such a war. And why wouldn't they want to spend money on Judge? Well, for a lot of reasons, none of them being "Judge has a high ticket price on him." They wouldn't sign him because he's overpriced, maybe on the verge of a career decline, but Cohen is dying to spend big buck to improve the roster.

Soundtrack is great. Ah ---ooh--oh!--OHHH!--eh---Ah--OOOO!!

Edgy MD wrote: And I certainly don't want an owner determined to forsake logic in pursuit of a goal of breaking the bank. Not a Steve Cohen fan, are you?

nothing is logical to an owner determined to break the bank. If Cohen wants Turner to play 3B and is willing to pay him SS wages, what's to prevent it? What's to prevent Turner from signing such a contract?

Sick.

It's important to be flexible in your expectations. McNeil gives us some flexibility, depending on whether they can sign Nimmo, which is a very good thing.

Oddly enough, he seems unrelated (according to bbref.com) to former MLB outfielder Mike Kingery, whose middle name is "Scott" and who seems temporally capable of being Scott's dad. Scott's middle name is listed as "M.", further complicating the situation. "$56 million a week"--WOW! What does that work out to per hour?

I read that Diaz can opt out after season three, so 2025.

The logic here, seems to me, is that if Diaz falls from his lofty perch as an ace reliever, he'll still be a decent middle reliever. Overpaid absurdly, true, but if he proves ineffective in his closer role, I have to believe that Buck, or his replacement, will feel zero pressure from above to keep putting him out there in the 9th. This was the problem with the Wilpons. I feel that their agenda was "We paid a zillion dollars for this guy to be a star [whatever] so don't give up on him too fast," which really isn't a baseball decision. They're not going to be sending a 5.00 ERA guy out there to close games, whatever it costs Cohen.

NO. WAY. I'd rather resign Robinson Cano. .

As fond as I've become of Nimmo, I've seen too many guys peak in their 20s to get upset about losing out on signing a guy leaving his 20s in the rear view mirror. I'll be happy if he stays and OK if he goes, provided the Mets upgrade in the OF.

In this one instance https://twitter.com/i/status/1584523628712185857