Before the 2013 season started, most Mets fans were quite aware that the team would not be competitive. Many were perfectly willing to take another year of losing baseball if it meant that the team was moving toward eventual perennial competitiveness. What’s another losing season if it meant that the team’s top prospects were inching closer to making their debut, the young core players were continuing their growth, and Sandy Alderson started making the necessary…
The Mets are 58 games into the 2013 season. A miserable season so far, to be sure, highlighted by their dreadful outfield. Much has already been said about the Mets terrible outfield this year. It’s very bad, in case you hadn’t noticed. Not only is the outfield a point of poor performance for the team, it’s been a revolving door. In fact, the Mets have already had nine different players start in the outfield. The…
During Spring Training Mets fans hoped that the projected outfield wouldn’t be as bad as the doomsayers had predicted. “Worst outfield ever” was a common theme parroted by numerous media outlets. The outfield was definitely lacking in talent, but there was no way it could be that bad. Right? As it turns out, the Mets outfield has been very bad this season. To find out just how bad, we’ll examine a few statistics from FanGraphs.…
Earlier this week ESPN’s Adam Rubin wondered, “Where are the Moneyball players with the Mets?” Rubin lists several players signed by the Mets since Sandy Alderson took over as General Manager that did and did not fit the mold of “productive free agents signed to small contracts.” It’s an interesting question, since “Moneyball” isn’t so much about Sabermetrics (as it’s generally made out to be) and more about getting the most bang for your buck.…
The Mets’ 2013 season is going down in flames faster than even the most pessimistic fan could have predicted. Sure, the team was not expected to be playoff bound and eventually slot into fourth or fifth place in the National League East, but the fall has been fast and unrelenting. This writer, for one, expected a semi-competitive first half with the annual Mets Second Half Collapse™. You couldn’t even get that one right, Mets. As…
The Savannah Sand Gnats trio of Kevin Plawecki, Jayce Boyd, and Brandon Nimmo has been on the lips of Mets prospect watchers all season long and with good reason. These players are absolutely mashing right now, but analyses of their performances are generally accompanied by certain caveats. The primary caveat with Plawecki and Boyd is that they are a bit old for the South Atlantic League (SAL), therefore they should be performing at a high…
Though nobody in the Mets front office wanted to say it directly, the fans and the media were well aware of what 2013 was for the Mets: a continuation of the “rebuilding” process. There were great building blocks in place in Matt Harvey, Jonathon Niese, Josh Edgin, Bobby Parnell, Ike Davis, Ruben Tejada, and David Wright. There were top-shelf prospects on the cusp of making their major league debuts, like Zack Wheeler and Travis d’Arnaud,…
The shortage of highly-touted position prospects in the Mets farm system is no secret. It’s a system built on pitching, of course, with the high-upside position prospects still grinding away at the lower levels. Some of these lower level position prospects are starting to distinguish themselves in a big way, though. In Savannah the trio of center fielder Brandon Nimmo, catcher Kevin Plawecki, and first baseman Jayce Boyd are absolutely tearing up the South Atlantic…
The headline sounds like a broken record to Mets fans, and may be a bit kind. The small sample size rule is in play of course, since the season is less than a month old, but so far in 2013 the Mets bullpen has not been very good. The bullpen has a record of 2-2 with an ERA of 5.47 in 52.2 innings pitched. As of 4/21, that ERA is dead last in all of…
If there’s one thing sports fans/writers/analysts/general observers like to do, it’s to compare supremely talented up-and-comers to prior greats, labeling them “the next [so and so].” It happens in every sport. Kobe Bryant was the next Michael Jordan, until Lebron James was the next Jordan. For the Mets, the latest iteration of this trend involves ace-in-the-making Matt Harvey. Many pundits, writers, and even opposing managers have compared him to former Mets great Tom Seaver. There…
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