People love to say things which they think makes them appear smart. One of those is that Spring Training stats don’t matter. And on the surface, that’s true. It doesn’t matter if Player X is hitting .300 or Player Y has a 0.00 ERA. But there are things that are important and one of those [...]
We all hope that David Stearns will add another arm or two to the bullpen. But whether he does or not, one thing that we hope that Stearns and/or Carlos Mendoza will do is to utilize Brooks Raley as a true setup man, rather than the lefty specialist that it seemed Buck Showalter wanted Raley [...]
Most fans put Tylor Megill and David Peterson in the same boat. They view them as okay depth starters but not anyone you want to write into ink for the 2024 starting rotation. That’s not an unreasonable take. However, my opinion is that Peterson is a solid back end of the rotation guy while Megill [...]
This past November, the Mets signed Denyi Reyes, one of the plethora of guys they signed because of his option status. Reyes was released by the Orioles following the 2022 season, one where he advanced to Triple-A at age 25 but went 0-7 with a 7.17 ERA. Reyes began the year in the bullpen for [...]
At the end of the projection piece on Kodai Senga for the 2023 season was this bit, My opinion is that if he’s able to throw strikes, he’s going to dominate. If he has the WHIP that ZiPS forecasts, he’ll have a sub-3.00 ERA. Here’s my totally biased forecast for Senga this year: 155 IP, [...]
We have been criticizing Billy Eppler for his options-reliever strategy since before the season started. And it’s turned out even worse than we initially feared with how those back-end relievers have all been horrible this year. But one thing that flies under the radar has been the club’s designation as Drew Smith as one of [...]
If you’ve watched the Mets play since the end of the trade deadline, you’ve seen a club go from bad to worse. It wasn’t too difficult to predict, that an under-performing veteran club would see whatever little wind was in its sails disappear completely. Yet while it was predictable, that doesn’t make it any easier [...]
Last year the Mets were terrific in the regular season, winning 101 games, which was the second-most in franchise history. That still means they lost 61 times. Losing is part of the game. You can have games where you lose in a frustrating fashion. But shouldn’t that mean there are games where you just, you [...]
In his first start back from the All-Star break, Kodai Senga continued his strong pitching, as in a six-inning stint he fanned nine batters and allowed only one run. But that strong outing went for naught, as neither the bullpen nor the offense contributed very much in a 5-1 loss. Senga got a no-decision but [...]
It’s been a weird season for Francisco Lindor. It’s been well documented how he’s had more extra-base hits than singles virtually all year. And those lack of singles has been a main contributor to his poor AVG. But his AVG has taken a nice uptick in the past two games, as he’s banged out eight [...]
Prior to the start of the 2023 season, FanGraphs’ Depth Charts, which acts as a conglomeration of all of the projection systems posted at the site, had Kodai Senga with a forecast of 160 IP and a 3.60 ERA. As we close in on the mid-point of the season, Senga has 76.2 IP and a [...]
We all want to see starting pitchers for the Mets go deep into games. It’s my opinion that when you’re not a slave to pitch counts, that you can get more from starters. Friday night was a great illustration of this, as Buck Showalter let Justin Verlander, who was pitching well, go another inning. But [...]