N.B. Lindberg

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images The 2025-26 MLB offseason felt like the end of an era in Queens. The New York Mets let Edwin Diaz and Pete Alonso walk in free agency, traded Jeff McNeil for salary relief, and swapped Brandon Nimmo for Marcus Semien. From a pure cost-to-production standpoint, the moves were all defensible, but with the Mets scuffling three months into the season, it’s time to see if they would have benefitted from holding on to their most-tenured core. Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil, and Pete Alonso rank 15th, 17th, and 18th in Mets’ bWAR. They’re not franchise legends by any stretch (save for perhaps Alonso), but they formed a strong position player nucleus for the past seven seasons. In a different era, they would have probably finished their careers in Queens, but that doesn’t mean their contributions to the organization should go overlooked. Brandon Nimmo debuted in 2016, racking up 1,006 games, 4,365 plate appearances, and a healthy 26.0 bWAR. Those aren’t Hall of Fame figures, but they had Nimmo trending towards the Hall of Very Good, which usually gets your number retired. Despite never making an All-Star team, his career bWAR outpaces both McNeil and Alonso’s. Jeff McNeil debuted in 2018 as a 26-year-old rookie and hit the ground running. Over parts of eight seasons with the Mets, he amassed 22.9 bWAR, made two All-Star teams, and won a batting title. His .284 batting average with the Mets is the ninth-best in franchise history, despite playing exclusively in a low-batting average era. If he had played in the 90s, his career Mets’ average would have pushed John Olerud’s franchise record of .315. Jeff McNeil Batting Average Time Machine *Based on McNeil’s +117 Batting Average plus with the Mets (17% better than league average) Unsurprisingly, Olerud’s Mets career covered the 1997 through 1999 seasons, which saw the league post an average batting average of .268, well ahead of the .245 league-average batting average McNeil was up against over his Mets’ career. All of this is to say: There’s a case for McNeil as the Mets’ greatest bat-to-ball hitter in franchise history. However, similarly to Nimmo, he wasn’t Cooperstown-bound, but with the help of some postseason glory, his number might have earned Do Not Disturb status. That brings us to Pete Alonso, who debuted in 2019, won Rookie of the Year on the back of a rookie record 53 home runs, and then just kept slugging. He made five All-Star teams, hit a franchise record 264 home runs, collected MVP votes in four seasons, and amassed 23.1 bWAR. Alonso’s overall WAR figures are dinged due to his poor defense at first base and lumbering base running, but his 264 home runs were the third most in the majors over his Mets’ tenure — behind Aaron Judge and Kyle Schwarber — and his 132 wRC+ ranks 18th. Once again, Alonso is unlikely to make it to Cooperstown (if he reaches 500 home runs, that could change) but he was a lock to have his number retired if he spent his whole career in Queens. In the cold, harsh world of professional sports, what you’ve done matters far less than what is believed you will do going forward. Each of Nimmo, McNeil, and Alonso were on the wrong side of 30, and the Mets' decision to move on was likely based on this simple truth — we all get old, and sports are a young man’s game. But just for 2026, what would the Mets have looked like by keeping them around? The Jeff McNeil and Brandon Nimmo trades are invariably linked. McNeil might have been a batting average savant in his prime, but the past two seasons his average had sunk below the league average. However, he was able to muster a 111 wRC+ in 2025, which made him enticing enough to the Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas Athletics to take on his $10 million salary, once you factor in the Mets sending $5.75 million in cash along in the deal, for 2026 with a $2 million buyout or $15.75 million team option for 2027. Essentially, the Mets cut $12 million in costs to offload McNeil and land Yordan Rodriguez, an interesting 18-year-old arm. Sending McNeil west meant the Mets now had a gaping hole at second base, and to fill their void at the keystone, they flipped Brandon Nimmo to the Texas Rangers for Marcus Semien. While this deal wasn’t entirely motivated by money, the Mets certainly felt Carson Benge was ready for the show; it did shave off considerable long-term salary. Semien is owed $26 million in 2026 and 2027 and $20 million in 2028, while Nimmo is owed a flat $20.5 million through 2030. The gambit the Mets made was that Semien and Benge would outproduce Nimmo and McNeil, and thus far, they’ve made out maybe a tad ahead. *fWAR is FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement, bWAR is Baseball Reference, f/bWAR is the average of the two Based on fWAR, the Mets are up +0.6 WAR this season due to the shift, while Baseball Reference thinks they’ve lost -0.1. A single win above replacement is generally worth around ten runs, which means we’re talking about a six run boost or a one run loss. Obviously, those hypothetical six runs would have helped the Mets, but it’s not the difference between the cellar and even fourth place in the NL East. Hindsight being 20/20, the Mets needed to go way bigger in addressing their second base situation. Moving McNeil after a strong season appears to be a prescient decision, but acquiring Marcus Semien after a down one does not. While it would have taken prospect capital, Brendan Donovan would have been the higher upside transaction. However, there is another route not taken. The Mets could have retained McNeil and Nimmo and still promoted Benge. Now, that would have required Benge playing center field full time, which he would almost certainly be stretched at. When you factor in how well A.J. Ewing has played in his own rookie season, that probably wouldn’t have been an upgrade. The Mets' decision to trade both Nimmo and McNeil feels like rearranging deck chairs. If they have improved, it has only been marginal, and it certainly hasn’t been a roaring success. The financial savings in 2029 and 2030 should allow them to be more aggressive in free agency and trade, but money has been no object for the Mets in recent years, which is why not re-signing Pete Alonso looks so asinine in hindsight. To the shock of no one, Pete Alonso is having a very Pete Alonso season. He has a 129 wRC+, 21 home runs, and has been worth 2.3 fWAR and 2.0 bWAR. And his full season numbers undersell how well he has been playing for the past two and a half months. After a slow April, Alonso has a 147 wRC+ since the start of May. Yes, $31 million a season is a lot for a one-dimensional slugger, but power is expensive for a reason. While Alonso has had an excellent season, the real reason the Mets surely rue their decision to let him walk has been the play of their first basemen. The Mets have garnered -0.6 fWAR from their first basemen, who have combined for a wRC+ of 89. Somehow, that wRC+ only ranks 26th, while they’re second-to-last in fWAR. If they had simply retained Alonso, they would have benefitted from a 2.9 fWAR swing. To put in perspective how damaging Alonso’s loss has been, the Mets are 29th in position player fWAR at 5.8. Simply swapping their first base production with Alonso’s would increase their position player fWAR by 50%. When you add it all up, moving on from Alonso, McNeil, and Nimmo is not the reason the Mets’ season has fallen apart. Trading McNeil and Nimmo for Semien and Benge has basically been a wash, and while Alonso would have dramatically improved their first base production, they’d still be fielding a below-average offense. There’s also the financial component to consider. The Mets, by not re-signing Alonso and trading away McNeil and Nimmo, saved $34.5 million this season and then $51.5 million in 2029 and 2030. Unfortunately, the Mets completely whiffed on their offseason spending as Bo Bichette has been a massive disappointment thus far, but long term, they should be able to reinvest those savings into players in their prime years. The Mets’ decision to cut the cord on their three most-tenured players has not paid off as they had hoped. However, their exodus isn’t why they’ve spent 2026 wandering in the desert. The Mets are just having a season from hell, and they’re better positioned for the future than they would have been if they had kept those three around. At the end of the day, the guys who are here just have to play better. View full article

Image courtesy of © Brad Penner-Imagn Images The New York Mets’ season, to say the least, has not gone according to plan. They enter the second half a 40-57 team, good enough for a 1.5-game lead over the Colorado Rockies for the worst record in the National League. The majority of their offseason moves have flopped, and they’ve been just as hapless under Andy Green as they were under the Carlos Mendoza line. The only positive things you can say about this team are that Juan Soto continues to be a Swiss-made hitting machine and Nolan McLean looks the part of a frontline starter. Debuting late in 2025, McLean’s eight-start cameo shot expectations into the stratosphere. It’s impossible not to get excited when a touted rookie pitches to a 2.06 ERA, 30.3% K%, 8.5% BB%, and 61.1% ground ball percentage. Despite his ace-level production, the Mets famously faltered down the stretch, but heading into 2026, nearly every media outlet was bought all the way in on McLean. McLean was FanGraphs’ number one pitching prospect, third overall with a 65 grade; Baseball America ranked him as 2026’s top rookie in a class they mused could be historic, and ESPN ranked him as the 100th best player in the MLB. As Michael Jordan would say, “the ceiling is the roof.” So, now that McLean has 107.1 innings under his belt in 2026, we can see just how well he has lived up to the hype. Let’s start with the obvious. McLean’s 2026 ERA of 3.52 is nowhere near his incandescent debut. However, if you were expecting him to replicate a 2.06 ERA, or even exceed it, I’ve got some bad news for you. Since 1946, the post-war period, the lowest career ERA for anyone who has thrown over 500 innings is Mariano Rivera’s 2.21 mark. As I’m sure you’re aware, Rivera was a single-inning reliever, and the best to ever do it. Among pitchers who were nominally starters, the lowest career ERA of the post-war period is Clayton Kershaw’s 2.53, with only 14 starters owning a career ERA below 3.00. Not to be that guy, but if you thought McLean was going to run sub-2.50 ERAs for the next 1,000 innings, congratulations, you played yourself. Eventually, regression comes for everyone. Paul Skenes posted a 1.97 ERA over his first 320.2 innings and is currently sporting a 3.57 ERA 108.1 innings into 2026. Fortunately, it’s the 21st century, so we have far better tools to analyze pitcher performance than just earned run average. McLean’s debut was legitimately exceptional, but all of his ERA estimators thought he was running quite hot. His xERA, based on Statcast data, was 3.56, his FIP was 2.97, and his xFIP was 2.78. In any given season, those are still elite, top-of-the-rotation figures, but they’re usually not going to win you the Cy Young without some help from BABIP (batting average on balls in play) and home run luck. When you stack his ERA estimators from 2025 and 2026 next to each other, McLean’s supposed step back looks far less pronounced. What’s interesting is that BABIP isn’t the culprit here. His 2026 BABIP of .272 is actually better than his .275 in 2025. The main change for McLean has been his inability to strand runners. In 2025, his left-on-base percentage (LOB%) was 84.1%, but that figure has dropped massively to 68.9% in 2026. Generally, better pitchers have better LOB%, but among starters in the post-war period with over 500 innings pitched, Andrew Abbot is the only player with a career LOB% over 80% (80.6%), and the lowest is Luke Hochevar at 63% (and his career 5.44 ERA). McLean was never going to continue to strand runners at an 84% clip, and he won’t continue to post a sub-70% figure going forward. The league average LOB% has been around 72.2% the past two seasons, and it’s very likely he’ll settle in around a 73% to 77% LOB% going forward, which will have the added benefit of shaving his ERA down a tad. While it might not feel like it, McLean’s underlying pitching ability hasn’t changed much between 2025 and 2026, even if the results have. However, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t changed as a pitcher. The most notable change in his underlying performance has been the complete erosion of his groundball percentage. MLB teams have moved away from trying to build groundball-generating machines, but that’s not because groundballs aren’t valuable; it’s because strikeouts are simply the best, and the two are mostly mutually exclusive — unless you were Nolan McLean in 2025. To put it mildly, McLean’s combination of strikeout and groundball rate in 2025 was absurd. He combined a 30.3% K% and a 61.1% groundball rate, which, if held over a full season, would have been historic. Since 2000, the highest single-season starting pitcher groundball rate was Derek Lowe’s 67% mark in 2006 and 2002, which he paired with sub-15% K%. In fact, there have only been 37 qualified seasons where a starting pitcher has posted a 60% or better groundball rate, and among that group, the highest (non-2020 division) K% was Tyson Ross’s 25.8% mark in 2015. While it would have been fair to assume that McLean’s strikeout and groundball rates would regress a bit, armed with a nasty sinker and the bendiest of breakers, there was no reason to believe that he couldn’t continue to be a strikeout-groundball-generating unicorn. Unfortunately, his groundballs have all but evaporated in 2026, and his pairing of a 27.9% strikeout rate and 47.8% groundball rate looks far more ordinary (although still excellent in a vacuum). Digging into the granular data, McLean has seen his groundball rate drop on nearly every single one of his pitches, and that drop has been most pronounced on his pitches with arm-side movement. Last season, he posted groundball rates of 79.5%, 63.2%, and 44.4% on his sinker, changeup, and fourseam fastball, but has seen those figures move to 54.4%, 47.4%, and 26.8% in 2026. The scale of this shift is staggering, and there are a few things at play pushing McLean’s groundball rate up and off the ground. The first is his arm angle. In 2026, McLean’s average arm angle has increased to 31 degrees from 27 degrees in 2025. But that vertical tilt up has not been uniformly distributed. On almost every pitch, McLean has bumped his arm angle up by about three degrees, but on his sinker it has shot up by five. There’s nothing magical about arm angles, but they do impact pitch characteristics and can have a downstream effect on pitch location. Unsurprisingly, all of McLean’s pitches have seen their movement characteristics change, but none more so than his sinker. *Horiztonal and Vertical Movement is relative to the league average per pitch McLean went from throwing a sinker with extreme vertical movement (drop) and comparatively minimal horizontal movement, to one with substantially more horizontal movement, but far less drop. The pitch’s effectiveness hasn’t waned, but it has altered its strengths. It went from generating gobs of ground balls but getting hit hard (92.4 MPH average exit velocity) to being an elite contact suppressor (86.8 MPH average exit velocity). On top of getting more on top of the ball, McLean’s new release point seems to have shifted where he is able to locate consistently. The difference might appear subtle, but in 2025, McLean was much more consistently locating his pitches lower in the zone. Once again, this isn’t a good or bad thing, but it marks a notable shift. Pitches lower in the zone will generally generate more ground balls, while certain pitches at the top lead to more whiffs and weak aerial contact. We’re a little more than halfway through McLean’s rookie season, and he has already established himself as one of the brightest young starters in the league. His breaking balls have elite movement characteristics, and he has a deep arsenal. However, where he goes next will be fascinating to see. There are real changes under the hood for McLean this season that have made him a slightly different pitcher, but not necessarily a better one. Before jumping to conclusions on whether the Mets need to bring back the old McLean, he deserves a period of grace to work with his new arm angle. Throughout the minors, McLean, a former two-way college player, always had elevated walk rates. It’s not that he has awful control, but he’s so new to pitching, and his pitches move so much, that he’s likely nowhere near his command potential. When you factor in the new arm angle and new pitch characteristics that follow, it’s no surprise he has taken a slight step back from that dominant 2025 run. To make it clear: The kid is right on schedule, just not ahead. He’s made changes at the big-league level and still found success, and there’s tons of untapped potential. It wouldn’t surprise me if he finds his pitches again and rips off a dominant ten-start run to close the season. The Mets have their ace of the future, even if the ERA doesn’t say it yet. View full article

Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-Imagn Images Freddy Peralta’s New York Mets tenure has been tenuous. Yes, he has been a steadying force atop their rotation, but he hasn’t been the “capital-A” ace fans hoped he’d be. He hasn’t been the problem in a season that has gone sideways, but he also hasn’t been the solution. The best way to describe his Mets’ exploits is excellently mediocre, but that’s clearly not how Peralta views things. Per Bob Nightengale, Freddy Peralta expects a contract “similar to Max Fried’s eight-year, $218 million deal,” when he reaches free agency this fall. As a point of reference, Fried’s contract is the largest ever handed out to a left-handed pitcher, although Tarik Skubal should blow by that, and is the fourth-largest ever for a pitcher. While it’s not really noteworthy when a report surfaces that a free agent-to-be would like a comically large sum of money, it could change the way the Mets view the trade deadline. Mets Are Teetering on the Edge of Buyer and Seller As of the week of June 8, at 29-36, the Mets are five games back of the final wild card spot, and 15.5 games back of the Braves for the NL East divisional crown. According to FanGraphs' playoff odds, the Mets have a 22.7% chance of making the postseason, the ninth-best figure in the National League. Considering six teams from each league make the playoffs, the Mets’ playoff dreams aren’t dashed, but they’re certainly tenuous. If the Mets make a run and fortify their playoff positioning, Peralta will finish the season in Queens. Teams in the playoff picture always need more pitching, and Peralta, while a mild disappointment thus far, would be integral in any Mets playoff scenario. However, if the team falls out of the running before the trade deadline, Peralta’s name will become a hot topic of discussion, and his looming contract expectations will certainly be a factor for any team pursuing him and the Mets’ desire to retain him beyond 2026. As a quick note: The looming collective bargaining negotiations throw a tremendous amount of uncertainty over all of this. Since no one knows how those will play out, I’m going to assume that the status quo largely wins out. That is potentially naïve, but for the purposes of this analysis, it’s the only way to operate with any certainty. Why the Mets Would Trade Peralta To land Peralta over the winter, the New York Mets traded Brandon Sproat and Jett Williams to the Milwaukee Brewers for Peralta and Tobias Myers. At the time, Williams was the 69th-ranked prospect, according to Fangraphs prospect rankings, while Sproat was 51st. The pair held 50 overall grades, which indicates average or better MLB players over their team control years. Sproat and Williams are very good prospects, and while the Mets probably won’t get commensurate value back, landing one top-100 prospect isn’t out of the question in a Peralta trade. They could also opt to cast a wider net and land a few players with tantalizing upside, but who are much farther from the majors. However, I doubt recouping prospects would be the primary reason the Mets would trade Peralta. They own the league’s second-highest payroll and have been aggressive every offseason to bolster their roster through free agency. Moving Peralta would likely be a means to clear as much future cash to pursue Tarik Skubal. If the Mets have no interest in keeping Peralta long term, then they have every reason to trade him before the deadline because extending him a qualifying offer doesn’t move the needle much. Due to the Mets paying the competitive balance tax, they’d receive their compensatory pick after the fourth round of the MLB draft, as opposed to after the first round. The disparity in bonus slot allotment and projected value between a player drafted after the first and fourth rounds is substantial enough that the overall player return for Peralta via trade would dwarf letting him walk after extending him a qualifying offer. On top of that, the qualifying offer will be for around $22 million, and if the Mets really do want to splash the type of money they’d need to land Skubal, then the potential of Peralta accepting the qualifying offer would be a serious risk because his salary expectations and reality don’t seem to align. Forecasting a Freddy Peralta Contract Since the season is not over, any salary projection for Peralta has to make two assumptions. The first is that he will finish the season mostly healthy, and the second is that he’ll maintain his current level of production. To properly gauge Peralta’s market, we need to first properly analyze the actual market. Over the past three offseasons, there have been 11 free agent pitchers around the age of 30 (28-32) who entered free agency coming off a 3.0 fWAR season or better. Since Peralta has only just turned 30 and has averaged about 3.0 fWAR over the past three seasons, these pitchers can reasonably be called his peers. Player Info Actual Contract Name FA Period Pos Bats Thr Prev Team Age Service Time QO Signing Team Years Total Salary AAV Ranger Suarez 2026 SP L L PHI 30 6.112 ✕$22.0M BOS 5 $130.00M $26.00M Framber Valdez 2026 SP R L HOU 32 6.163 ✕$22.0M DET 3 $115.00M $36.52M Dylan Cease 2026 SP R R SDP 30 6.089 ✕$22.0M TOR 7 $210.00M $27.02M Corbin Burnes 2025 SP R R BAL 30 6.049 ✕$21.1M ARI 6 $210.00M $33.04M Max Fried 2025 SP L L ATL 31 6.148 ✕$21.1M NYY 8 $218.00M $27.25M Jack Flaherty 2025 SP R R LAD 29 7.006 DET 2 $35.00M $27.50M Blake Snell 2025 SP L L SFG 32 8.072 LAD 5 $182.00M $31.36M Jordan Montgomery 2024 SP L L TEX 31 6.153 ARI 2 $47.50M $23.75M Blake Snell 2024 SP L L SDP 31 7.072 ✕$20.3M SFG 2 $62.00M $29.70M Aaron Nola 2024 SP R R PHI 31 8.076 ✕$20.3M PHI 7 $172.00M $24.57M Eduardo Rodriguez 2024 SP L L DET 31 8.07 ARI 4 $80.00M $20.00M On average, these pitchers signed contracts for 4.6 years, for a total of $127.95 million, and at an average annual value (AAV) of $27.54 million. It should be noted that longer deals for larger total money will generally have lower AAVs, while shorter deals usually get a slight AAV bump. To quickly and rudimentarily get an idea of what Peralta should expect in free agency, I found the correlation between contract length, contract size, and AAV and six-season bWAR total, ERA, FIP, strikeout to walk ratio, innings per 162 games, and available start percentage. [As a note, the pandemic 2020 season makes all of this a little trickier.] Name Service Time Walk Season fWAR bWAR ERA FIP SO/BB Inns per 162 Starts Available Start % Years Total Salary AAV Ranger Suarez 6.112 4 17.6 3.35 3.48 2.94 170 116 67.44% 5 $130.00 $26.00 Framber Valdez 6.163 4 18.4 3.23 3.36 2.96 215.5 153 88.95% 3 $115.00 $36.52 Dylan Cease 6.089 3.4 16.8 3.73 3.55 2.91 184.1 174 101.16% 7 $210.00 $27.02 Corbin Burnes 6.049 3.8 19.1 2.88 3.01 4.24 204.8 137 97.86% 6 $210.00 $33.04 Max Fried 6.148 3.4 22.1 3.06 3.23 3.72 195.3 142 82.56% 8 $218.00 $27.25 Jack Flaherty 7.006 3.3 10.2 3.61 3.87 3.32 182.4 125 72.67% 2 $35.00 $27.50 Blake Snell 7.072 4.1 14.7 3.33 3.29 2.9 173 137 79.65% 5 $182.00M $31.36M Blake Snell 7.072 4.1 19.6 3.02 3.32 2.95 177.8 148 86.05% 2 $62.00 $29.70 Jordan Montgomery 6.153 4.2 9.7 3.63 3.67 3.6 182.7 112 65.12% 2 $47.50 $23.75 Aaron Nola 8.076 3.8 20.2 3.89 3.56 4.44 204.4 175 101.74% 7 $172.00 $24.57 Eduardo Rodriguez 8.07 3.1 14.9 3.98 3.77 3.04 187.5 161 83.85% 4 $80.00 $20.00 Average 6.73 3.75 16.66 3.43 3.46 3.37 188.86 143.64 83.51% 4.6 $127.95 $27.54 Correlation to AAV -0.54 0.39 0.35 -0.73 -0.65 -0.02 0.54 -0.02 0.29 Correlation to Salary -0.31 -0.18 0.71 -0.26 -0.63 0.40 0.41 0.43 0.65 Correlation to Years -0.08 -0.30 0.64 -0.03 -0.41 0.40 0.24 0.46 0.56 Unsurprisingly, the bWAR over the six seasons prior to free agency had the strongest correlation to contract size and length, while ERA over that same span was the best at predicting AAV. From there, I threw Peralta’s figures into a linear forecast model, with a little boost to his on-pace bWAR total from this season, to give us a rough estimation of what he should expect to see in free agency. Based on this, Peralta should expect a contract of 4.8 years, for a total of $132.1 million, and at an AAV of $28.5 million. These numbers don’t all add up, but the general outline is that Peralta’s market should be for around five years at $28 million a year. For every additional year, you’d expect the AAV to decline and vice versa. Obviously, that’s not particularly close to Max Fried’s eight-year, $218 million deal, but perhaps Fried simply beat his projection. Well, about that. Fried’s projected contract length was for 6.56 years, for a total of $192.38 million, with an AAV of $30.9 million, which aligns pretty well with what he got. However, there was one little thing bugging me from that data set: Blake Snell. Snell features twice in this exercise, and his whole presence kind of ruins everything. The linear correlation between six-season bWAR and salary craters from 0.86 without him to 0.71 with him. The reason for this is that Snell basically has two elite seasons where he won Cy Youngs and a bunch of mediocre to poor seasons in between. And since I used six seasons as my cutoff, his first free-agent foray, where he only got two years and $62 million, he had 19.6 bWAR, but his second trip through free agency lopped off his 7.1 bWAR season, and he then landed a five-year, $182 million contract on only a bWAR of 14.7. It’s not the most rigorous exercise, but I wanted to see what Peralta and Fried’s contract forecasts would be if I simply removed Snell from the equation. Yes, it shrinks the sample, but I’d rather kill two outliers with one Snell. In the Snell-less projections, Peralta would expect a contract of 5.2 years, for a total of $144.5 million, and an AAV of $28.8 million, while Fried landed a 7.35-year deal, for a total of $215.04 million, and an AAV of $31.37 million. Fried projecting so accurately makes sense because his figures are part of the sample, but they continuously reinforce the notion that if Peralta starts with Fried’s contract in negotiations, it’s only going to go down from there. What Peralta’s Demands Mean for the Mets Personally, if I were running a team, Peralta’s expectations wouldn’t scare me off from trading for him, or keeping him if I’m the Mets. Unless he rips off a truly transcendent final 20 starts, Peralta looks in line to land a six-year deal worth a total of $160 million, which is right in line with what Ranger Suarez got this offseason. Now, whether or not the Mets want to hang onto him long term at $160 million is another thing, but his seeking Max Fried money shouldn’t be a hang-up. At the end of the day, it’s highly unlikely any team will go anywhere near $200 million for him on a contract. The difference between his perceived value and true market value does make it more likely that he’ll accept a qualifying offer or seek a short-term deal with opt-outs, but most teams have had few qualms about handing out those types of deals. At the end of the day, Peralta’s contract expectations should change the Mets' line of thinking. Either they need him for a playoff push, or they decide they’d rather commit long-term money to a higher-end pitcher and trade him. Outside of a CC Sabathia-like run to close the season, Peralta is going to land a contract that pays him like the number two starter that he is. View full article

Image courtesy of © Brad Penner-Imagn Images As of the start of their series against the San Diego Padres, the New York Mets are tied for the league’s lowest wOBA at .291 with the very same Padres. Considering the talent on the roster, that’s simply an unacceptable level of performance, but they’re not entirely to blame. The Mets own the lowest wOBA in baseball, not because they’ve built a lineup of hapless scrubs, but because they’ve angered a vengeful god. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to suggest that the Mets have been the unluckiest lineup in baseball. Their wOBA of .291 is objectively awful, but their xwOBA of .318 sits at much more respectable 16th. Unsurprisingly, the Mets’ wOBA-xwOBA difference of -0.027 is the largest in the league, and dwarfs the Rays’ +0.012 over-performance. Now, every season has to have a luckiest and unluckiest team; that’s just the way things work. But the depths of the Mets’ misfortune have them speeding toward the lower mantle. Taking every team’s xwOBA and wOBA difference, we can see just how dire the Mets' start has been. At -2.656 standard deviations from the mean, no team, positively or negatively, is in the same ballpark as the Mets. And just to make sure that this isn’t a somewhat common, although unfortunate, occurrence, last season, the biggest underperformers were the Pirates at -0.015, good for -1.670 standard deviations from league average. It should be noted that the Athletics posted a positive difference of +0.014, good for 2.493 standard deviations from the mean, but they played half of their games in a Triple-A park. The Mets should see a heaping helping of positive regression, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something intrinsic about this lineup that might cause it to underperform its expected metrics. While it’s easy to point to expected metrics as the gospel, at the end of the day, they’re just a useful tool, and they leave out one critical detail: spray angle. By now, the average fan has heard of launch angle and exit velocity, which are the two primary ingredients in xwOBA. Player sprint speed is thrown into the equation for certain types of batted balls, so blaming a lack of team speed isn’t an out (although that feels like every fanbase's go-to gripe with an under-performing lineup). However, one crucial, although smaller, ingredient that xwOBA leaves out is spray angle. Exit velocity is how hard you hit a ball. Launch angle is how high. And spray angle is where you hit it. Some players, usually by being extreme pull hitters, routinely outperform their xwOBA, and others, by crushing pitches to center and the opposite field, will consistently go under it. However, that really shouldn’t be an issue when evaluating a team. The players who really under or over-perform their expected metrics are outliers, and it’s dang near impossible to build an entire team from outliers, try as the Rays may. So, let’s take a look and see if the Mets have built a lineup where underperforming their xwOBA should be the expectation. The Mets, based on their team-wide spray chart, shouldn’t secretly be over-performing their xwOBA, but they also shouldn’t be underperforming it to the degree they have. Compared to the rest of the league, they hit their groundballs in the most productive places, and while their pull-air rate isn’t amazing, it also isn’t anywhere near the Brewers, who are 30th at 12%, and are hitting almost exactly to their xwOBA. If the spray angle isn’t to blame, then perhaps there is one particular type of batted ball that the Mets have been struggling with. (The (+) metrics are weighted so that 100 is exactly average, and each point is a percentage away from average. Example: a SLG+ of 95 is 5% below league average, while a BABIP+ of 103 is 3% above league average.) If you hate the Mets, this should be hung in the Louvre, but I’m guessing that’s not the case if you've made it this far. The Mets are dramatically under-performing on every type of batted ball, except for pulled grounders, which are, by far, the least valuable type of batted ball to begin with. This looks like a team that made a deal with the devil to gain a marginal edge on the thinnest of margins at the cost of the whole operation. So, what does this all mean? Well, since the Mets are fifth in MLB at 6.3% barrels per plate appearance, own the fifth-highest EV50 in the league (100.4 MPH), and have the eighth-best exit velocity average on line drives and fly balls (93.5 MPH), they should start hitting as their xwOBA suggests. That doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily reach their xwOBA by season's end, as a lot of damage has already been done, but they should certainly start moving in the right direction. The Mets, miraculously, aren’t dead in the water despite this cataclysmic underperformance on their batted balls. It might be a stretch to say some god or pantheon of deities hates them, but they certainly look cursed. While the numbers say everything should begin to turn around, just to be safe, consult with your local exorcist. View full article

Image courtesy of © Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images At the end of April, you would have assumed that any monthly Mets’ pitching ranking would include Nolan McLean. He posted a 2.55 ERA and 2.20 FIP, and had the strikeout (33.3%) and walk rates (7.4%) to back it up. But you know what they say about assuming. Unfortunately, in May, McLean was a shell of his April self. Driven by a step back in command, he was torched for a 6.10 ERA and 5.56 FIP. He walked more batters, got fewer strikeouts, and gave up six long balls. Now, despite the Mets’ most talented pitcher struggling mightily, the staff, as a whole, was incredibly strong. Exiting April with a team ERA of 4.17, the Mets pitched to a 3.43 ERA in May, and a 3.05 ERA sans-McLean. Needless to say, the other guys stepped up, particularly the trio we've highlighted below. Ranking the New York Mets’ Best Pitchers in May #3: Huascar Brazobán One of my favorite elements of baseball is the hot reliever. In a sport so inherently random, relievers, more than any other position, are at the mercy of randomness. Sometimes, it feels like a cruel joke, as two consecutive meltdowns undo years of hard work. On the other end of the spectrum, to keep the cosmic balance, you can have a month like Huascar Brazobán. To put it simply, Brazobán shouldn’t be pitching as well as he has, but sometimes the almighty smiles upon a low-leverage reliever. Over 15.2 May innings, he racked up a 2.30 ERA despite a strikeout rate of 20.6% and a walk rate of 14.3%. On top of that, he had a left-on-base percentage (i.e., strand rate) of 66.7%, which is well below the league average of 72.2%. And while I want to say his .125 BABIP is all a mirage, his Statcast expected ERA is 1.76! The secret sauce for Brazobán is a deadly sinker and change-up combo, which induces spades of weak contact and completely offsets an inability to limit free passes or get strike three. When everything is going well, like it has this season and in May, he’ll rack up outs in a way that doesn’t even seem possible. For now, Brazobán is one of the Mets' best pitchers, and they ought to ride his hot streak until someone figures out how to square him up. #2: Christian Scott By FanGraphs WAR, Christian Scott was the Mets' best pitcher in May. Over 29 innings, he racked up 0.9 fWAR and a 2.73 ERA. His 29.6% strikeout rate helped to offset an 8.8% walk percentage, and he limited hitters to a single home run. In a month where Nolan McLean struggled, the Mets desperately needed another starter to step up, and Scott did just that. While Scott’s surface-level performance was exceptional, he only ranks second for a reason. He far exceeded his expected ERA of 3.93, and he threw those 29 innings over six starts, maxing out at 5.2 innings against the Marlins on May 24. Five-and-dive starters are valuable, but consistently getting through six innings is the benchmark for elite pitching. So, while on the surface Scott looked elite, underneath the hood, he left a little wanting. Fortunately, Scott’s inability to consistently avoid free passes isn’t likely to be a huge issue long term. Throughout his minor-league career, he routinely posted excellent walk rates, and he probably just needs an adjustment period at the top level. #1: Luke Weaver Luke Weaver was an absolute monster in May. Over 11 appearances and 12.2 innings, he allowed exactly zero runs. Needless to say, a 0.00 ERA is a good way to be named pitcher of the month, and his underlying metrics support his run of dominance. Weaver posted a 1.73 FIP and 1.88 expected ERA in May thanks to 31.4% strikeout rate, 7.8% walk rate, a 23.3% hard-hit rate, and a 27.4% infield fly-ball rate. When you rack up whiffs, limit free passes, minimize contact quality, and get infield pop-ups, you’re going to get a whole bunch of outs. On top of Weaver’s pitching excellence, he was incredibly clutch. His Win Probability Added led all Mets pitchers at +1.48, as did his average leverage index when entering the game of 2.11. When the game was on the line, Weaver came in and got the job done, every single time. While he’ll eventually give up a run, Weaver has firmly established himself as the Mets’ bullpen ace. As much as it would be defensible to move Weaver into the closer role, he’s probably more valuable to the Mets with his current job. More games are won and lost based on what happens with a runner on first in the seventh inning than on what happens after trotting out for the ninth with nobody on. Weaver’s May was excellent and has him looking like the bullpen stud he was two seasons ago in the Bronx. Should Nolan McLean rediscover his form, something I’d bet heavily on, the Mets could have one of the better pitching staffs in baseball. Christian Scott is pitching like an elite fourth starter, Freddy Peralta continues to get outs, and the bullpen has been one of the best in baseball all season. The rotation still looks one starter short, but unlike most teams, they have a host of internal options who could readily claim a spot. After a disastrous April, the Mets' pitchers came up big in May. View full article

Image courtesy of © John Jones-Imagn Images The New York Mets entered May with a 10-21 record. Needless to say, they were in desperate need of a solid showing to maintain any hope of reaching the postseason. While they were unable to go on a ridiculous tear to get back to .500, they finished the month 16-12 and sit at 26-33. Outside of a 1-7 stretch from May 19 through May 26, the Mets looked like the team everyone expected at the start of the season, and the bats coming alive helped carry the day. After averaging 3.4 runs per game over March and April, the Mets cranked up the activity on the basepaths and produced a sterling 4.75 runs per game in May. In large part, the Mets’ surge was powered by three hitters, who, despite injuries and the continued struggles of marquee hitters, kept the team’s season alive. Ranking Mets' Best Hitters in May #3: Brett Baty Through the month of April, Brett Baty’s last name played like a cruel joke. He had a wRC+ of 60 thanks to a .211 batting average (AVG), .255 on-base percentage (OBP), and .311 slugging percentage (SLG). As a rule of thumb, it’s bad to rarely get on base and slug like you’re holding a limp noodle at the plate. However, when the calendar flipped to May, Baty started to swing like he holding an actual bat. In May, he produced a wRC+ of 115 with a .253 AVG, .354 OBP, and .373 SLG. He was able to offset an increase in strikeout rate, from 27.6% to 28.9%, thanks to his walk rate more than doubling to 12.4% from 6.1%. While his SLG still isn’t ideal, and he has been the benefactor of some BABIP fortune (.358 BABIP), he earned his walk rate in May. Baty cut his out-of-zone swing rate from 31.6% to 25%. While that might not sound massive, it’s the difference between ranking 25th and 79th, among qualified hitters. The Mets are going to need him to keep showing a discerning eye at the plate, and hope it leads to a few more hitters’ counts, which will in turn lead to a few more round trippers. All told, Baty, beginning to live up to his namesake, was a May boon for the Mets. #2: Carson Benge Similar to Brett Baty, Carson Benge completely turned his season around in May. His 133 wRC+ in May was second on the team, and that was despite underperforming his Statcast expected metrics (wOBA: .360; xwOBA: .381). It’s still a little too early to proclaim Benge a future All-Star, but, like his .375 May OBP, it wouldn’t be off-base. So, how did Benge go from hitting like a pitcher to hitting like a star? By leaning into what he does well, and not selling out for the modern-META of lift and pull. Benge cut his pull percentage from 32.8% in April to 25.9% in May and saw his Statcast hard-hit rate jump from 41.8% to 47.1%. His decision to square up the ball and use the whole field is how he was able to hit the same number of home runs in May (two) as he did in April and March, and still boost his SLG from .278 to .426. Benge has feasted as a doubles machine, and there’s no reason for him to stop. Home runs and walks are great and all, but some hitters are just built different. As May showed, Benge is the rare hitter who can go up there looking to find a gap and prosper. It may be unconventional in today’s game, but runs are runs. #1: Juan Soto The Mets have been two teams this season. The one with Juan Soto in the middle of the order, and the one without him. In 42 games where Soto has featured, the Mets are 23-19, good for a .548 winning percentage, and in the 17 games he missed due to injury, they’re 3-14. It doesn’t take a math genius to understand how stark a difference that is, and his May only further reinforced how valuable a hitter he is. Over 26 games in May, Soto posted a 167 wRC+, ranking ninth in the league for the month, on the back of a .281 AVG, .369 OBP, and .615 SLG. His 10 home runs led the Mets and were one behind Kyle Schwarber for the major league monthly crown. He came into May looking for trouble, and that’s just what he did — at least from the pitchers’ perspective. What makes Soto’s incredible month so incredible is just how un-incredible it is for him. Soto has a career 159 wRC+, and he was actually better in his brief April and March stint (187 wRC+). Soto was by far the Mets' best hitter, basically performing at his baseline. It's crazy that this wasn’t anywhere near his best, and yet he was one of the most dangerous hitters in the sport. Don’t be surprised if he takes the #1 spot a few more times this season. Considering the continued struggles of Bo Bichette and Marcus Semien and the extended absences of Francisco Lindor, Francisco Alvarez, and Jorge Polanco, the Mets' offense has plenty of room to grow. The season hasn’t been salvaged just yet, but if everyone can get healthy and recapture their form, there should be plenty to play for come September. View full article

Image courtesy of © Brad Mills-Imagn Images The New York Mets' playoff hopes are by no means back in business, but they’ve done enough to forestall foreclosure. Entering May, the Mets owned a 10-21 record, built on the tidal cesspool 3-17 stretch from April 8 to April 30, but their 11-6 start to May has them at 21-27 and gives them an outside chance to make a real postseason push. While everything that can go wrong has and did go wrong, Carson Benge’s May surge, one horrific defensive play aside, has been central to the Mets’ turnaround. To put it mildly, Benge’s April was as bad as the Mets' was. Over his first 97 career plate appearances, he hit two home runs, two doubles, and struck out 23.7% of the time to produce a 52 wRC+. To put that offensive ineptitude in perspective, that’s the career wRC+ of Sad Sam Jones (who I swear is a real person), a pitcher from 1914 to 1935. Needless to say, you probably want to outhit a mediocre pre-war pitcher if you plan to stick around in the bigs. Fortunately, the calendar turned to May, and we might as well call him Carson Binge. In 66 May plate appearances, Benge has been on fire. He has cut his strikeout rate to 14.1% and posted a wRC+ of 165. While that has only been thanks to one home run and five doubles, Benge has started to get far more out of his contact, even if it's been in a subtle way. The funny thing about hitting is that averages can be misleading, and I’m not talking about batting averages. Benge is hitting for more power in May than in April, but you’d never guess based on his average batted ball metrics. I mean, how is he hitting for more power doing this? Your eyes do not deceive you. Benge is hitting fewer fly balls, more ground balls, is pulling it less, and hitting it hard less often in May (the month where he has basically hit like Juan Soto) than in April, when he hit like Sad (Sack) Sam Jones. So, what the heck is going on? Well, like I said, averages are deceiving. While hitting the ball hard, in the air, and to the pull side is a great way to post elite batting lines, you’ve got to do all three at the same time for it to matter. You can hit a ball 120 MPH to the pull side, but if it goes straight into the ground, you’re probably running past first base, straight down the right field line, and into the showers, because you just grounded out to end the game. So, while Benge, on average, isn’t hitting the ball hard and in the air more frequently, when he is hitting the ball hard, he’s getting it off the ground more often, which is actually what matters. Using 100 MPH batted balls as our proxy for smoking the ball, we can see how Benge’s slow stretch to start the season was largely due to hitting his best struck balls straight into the ground. *Stats in graph charted as of May 18 When you factor in his improved contact figures, it’s not hard to figure out why Benge started binging, and his rolling 100+ MPH launch angle average just so happens to look eerily similar to his rolling wOBA. Instead of focusing on averages, which can be obscured a bit by one freak batted ball, it’s even easier to see why Benge’s batting line has taken off. Using April 15 as the date of demarcation, Benge has done a much better job of getting his best contact off the ground. In the early going, 40% of Benge’s best batted balls were grounders, while only 40% were line drives or fly balls. Now, 60% of his premium contact has been a line drive or fly ball, and only 20% is headed for the dirt. Hard ground balls can become hits, possibly even a double, but the chances are low, and the upside is minimal. When you clobber the ball, you want it to have a chance to find a seat, not have it play around in the dirt. It should be noted that some of Benge’s turnaround is down to better luck. He posted a BABIP of .231 in April and is at .426 in May. Hitting them where they ain’t is still an undefeated strategy, but BABIP isn’t just about luck. Benge, despite lifting more of his best contact, is still a lower launch angle hitter. That means when he does lift the ball, he’s far less likely to hit it in the can-o-corn range, where even elite exit velocities go to die. As long as he continues to limit his worm burners, he should maintain an above-league-average BABIP. We might track and analyze hitting largely through averages, but at its core, it’s all about events. Having an average exit velocity of 75 MPH would be dreadful, but if you hit one ball 100 MPH and another 50 MPH, you’re probably going to have a hit to your name. Carson Benge has turned his season around by getting the most out of his batted ball events. He won’t continue to post a BABIP above .400, but he doesn’t need to in order to help the Mets achieve liftoff. View full article

Image courtesy of © Brad Penner-Imagn Images The 2024 New York Mets feel like a distant memory. While it hasn’t even been 24 months since Grimace’s first pitch turned the Mets into a juggernaut, it might as well have been the pivotal moment in the Revolutionary War. A late-season collapse in 2025, followed by the fast-moving ecological disaster to start 2026, has all but erased what felt like, for a fleeting moment, the beginning of something special. And no player has embodied the rollercoaster quite like Sean Manaea. Manaea was a revelation for the 2024 Mets. He made 32 starts, totaling 181.2 innings, and posted a 3.47 ERA. A season after being moved to the bullpen in San Francisco, Manaea earned the right to start four playoff games for the Mets, and it was in large part thanks to him lowering his arm slot. The truth about hitting is that it is fundamentally subconscious. There just isn’t enough time to see, think, and react to a pitch moving 90-plus MPH. What this means for pitchers is that being generic is the worst thing possible. The more generic a pitch is, the more times a hitter has seen it, and the easier it is for them to square it up or spit on it. Manaea always had a weird profile. His sinker and four-seam fastball might be the same pitch. The former has more horizontal movement and vertical drop than average, but is usually thrown at the top of the strike zone. The general rule is that sinking fastballs play best at the bottom of the zone, while high-spin ones dominate at the top. Despite all this, Manaea limited fly balls, threw enough strikes, and got hitters to chase his sweeper or changeup on his way to being a mostly league-average pitcher. It was an effective plan, but it was mostly generic, until all of a sudden, he wasn’t. With the Mets in 2024, Manaea made the bold decision to lower his arm angle and completely transformed his fastball into an unstoppable weapon. While pitch characteristics are important, they aren’t the only factor in determining how a pitch will play. A lower arm angle provides pitches with a flatter approach angle, which generally makes them play better at the top of the zone. The combination of a sinking-tailing fastball from a shallow approach angle at the top of the zone made Manaea’s fastball far more unique, and helped him and the Mets to a second-half surge. So, what has gone so wrong for Manaea since 2024 and, in particular, 2026? Well, it’s complicated. First, his 2025 wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked. His xERA was 4.00, his FIP was 4.39, and his xFIP was 3.30. In fact, he posted the best K% (28.5%) and K%-BB% (24%) of his career, but was undone by a career-worst home-run-to-fly-ball ratio of 19.4%, which is how he posted a 5.64 ERA, despite some solid indicators. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of his 2026. There is no way around it: Manaea has legitimately been awful to start the season. His xERA is 5.52, his FIP is 4.48, and his xFIP is 4.58, despite throwing exclusively out of the bullpen. So, while he has been unlucky to have a 6.85 ERA, it’s not like he’s making a case to re-enter the Mets' rotation. The biggest concern facing Manaea has been his fastball. Usually, pitchers experience some form of velocity bump when throwing out of the bullpen, but Manaea’s average fastball velocity has dropped to 90.2 MPH, down from 91.7 in 2025 and 92.2 in 2024. No matter the secondary characteristics or the location, at a certain speed, any fastball is vulnerable. And to make matters worse, he’s locating it far worse. Manaea’s fastball has played relatively well at the top of the zone, and has characteristics where it could play near the bottom, but what you cannot do is throw a 90 MPH fastball down the middle, and that’s exactly what he has been doing this season. Sean Manaea 2026 Four Seam Heat Map Unsurprisingly, the pitch has surrendered an xSLG of .537 and has seen its whiff rate drop from 23.2% to 18.2%. The reality is that Manaea’s fastball velocity might never return. He’s 34, and his velocity has been trending down over the past few seasons, despite throwing more innings out of the bullpen. However, that doesn’t mean his fastball can’t play far better if he can manage to locate it more consistently at the top of the zone and out of the heart of the plate, and despite the awful results, there are still a few things under the hood that the southpaw is doing well. His infield fly ball percentage of 17.2%, which, when paired with a 41.4% fly-ball rate, means that 7% of all the batted balls he has allowed are infield fly balls. Infield fly balls are historically converted as outs at nearly the same rate as strikeouts. When added to his current 22% K%, he's still getting nearly automatic outs in 27.08% of plate appearances. That's not elite, but it's something to build upon. Manaea's first pitch strike percentage is also down to a career-low 59.3%, but in his excellent 2024, it was 59.8%. In all likelihood, his first pitch strike percentage should regress towards his career average of 63.1%, which will help cut into his career-high 9.3% BB%, and probably lead to slightly better strikeout figures and batted ball metrics. With the loss of velocity, Manaea’s days as anything but a spot starter might be over, but there’s a road map for him to be a viable member of a bullpen. All he needs to do is locate his fastball a bit better, and he should start to look like the league-average pitcher he has been for most of his career. That's not particularly exciting, but the Mets, and Manaea for that matter, need boring competence more than anything. View full article