It’s no secret that the Mets need offense. One surprising area where the club has received an offensive contribution here lately is from Ruben Tejada. He’s reached base safely in 11 straight games and he has an .820 OPS in that span and has even hit a homer. Additionally, he’s the only one on the club to drive in a run recently without a home run, as he delivered an RBI single and an RBI double in the past two games against the Cardinals.
Overall, Tejada is giving the same amount of production that he did last year. Currently he sits with an 89 OPS+ and last year he had an 88 OPS+. This is what hot streaks by middle infielders without multiple homers gives you overall. Tejada is who he is and in a vacuum, he’s not the problem. Instead, the issue is the multiple guys in the lineup with similar or worse OPS+ numbers. Michael Cuddyer checks in with an 88, Wilmer Flores with an 84, Juan Lagares with a 72 and Kevin Plawecki with a 70.
The goal coming into the season was to have a lineup where, while there were no superstars, every spot in the lineup contributed between 95 and 115 in the OPS+ departments. Right now it would be an improvement if just half of the lineup reached that target. The club gets a semi-pass with the injuries that have sidelined Travis d’Arnaud and David Wright, in addition to the ones that should have sidelined Juan Lagares, who is trying to fight through them with predictably bad results.
But there’s no pass at all from the production received from shortstop and left field. Late last season, the Mets turned those positions over to Flores and Matt den Dekker. Flores delivered a .730 OPS over his last 51 games while den Dekker had an OBP-heavy .766 OPS in his final 36 contests. The Mets opted to keep Flores and import a left fielder.
The hope was that we were just starting to scratch the surface of Flores’ talent, while den Dekker merely had a well-timed BABIP hot streak. If Flores just matched the production from the final one-third of the season and Cuddyer remained healthy and did what he normally did, those two positions would be solved. Whether you agreed with it or not, you had to admit there was a certain logic to the offseason.
Unfortunately, however logical it may have seemed at the time, 91 games into the 2015 season these moves have to be viewed as a failure. Obviously, there’s still plenty of season left and by game 162 hopefully we will be singing a different tune. But here in the third week in July, the club needs offense and the two main offensive decisions of the past offseason are a big reason why.
Earlier it was stated that Tejada is who he is. And it seems that same statement can be applied to Flores, too. Last year Flores had an 87 OPS+ and this year he has an 84. At the end of last year, we could have hoped for an improved BABIP from Flores and hopefully an uptick in slugging, too. And while his ISO has improved from .127 to .139, his BABIP has actually gone down 11 points.
But perhaps the most discouraging thing has been the disappearance of his home run output. Flores has gone 116 PA without a homer. An optimist can say he’s due to belt some homers and that will help his ISO and OPS marks. A pessimist can say the league has figured out not to pitch him low and inside and he only has Tejada power elsewhere.
In the 29 games since his last home run, Flores has a .568 OPS and that includes a five-game stretch where he went 11-20. In his brief career, Flores has been very streaky like that, where he hits like gangbusters for a week at a time and then goes three weeks where he couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat. You live with those if the hot streaks include three homers.
Can you live with extended streaks of garbage if the hot steaks are what Tejada has done in his last 11 games?
Here are Flores’ hot streaks this year when he hits multiple homers:
4/16-4/25 – 1.100 OPS in 30 PA (3 HR)
5/10-5/16 – 1.066 OPS in 27 PA (3 HR)
6/7-6/12 – 1.056 OPS in 19 PA (2 HR)
Even last year’s streak to end the season was propped up by one homer-fueled span. The 51 games mentioned earlier broke down like this:
7/29-9/11 – .600 OPS in 127 PA
9/13-9/16 – 1.963 OPS in 16 PA (3 HR)
9/17-9/28 – .650 OPS in 41 PA
Much like with gerrymandering, those in power can draw the lines however they want. A Flores supporter can claim that from 4/16-7/5, he delivered a .719 OPS over 267 PA. The bookends of that span would be the first hot streak of the season and the 11-20 stretch around the Dodgers series right before the All-Star break.
That span has Flores on pace to hit 24 HR in 650 PA. Let’s agree that when Flores hits homers at that rate, he’s a no-doubt MLB starter. The problem for me is that six of those homers came in a one-month stretch from 4/16-5/16. If we look at Flores’ production from 5/17 on, we see he has a .618 OPS over 211 PA, with four homers. And this time frame includes two hot streaks and does not include his poor 4-25 start to the season.
At the rate of his last 211 PA, Flores would finish with 12 HR in a 650-PA season. And, quite frankly, he would not be a starting-caliber player. No one wants to see Tejada starting and he has a lifetime .648 OPS, 30 points over what Flores has given once the HR barrage ended.
You can drive yourself mad trying to examine streaks, splits, good stretches and bad. So, let’s just use full-season stats. Tejada has a .673 OPS and Flores has a .664 mark. While they have different profiles, Flores and Tejada have given similar production this year. Flores can out-produce Tejada if he can return to hitting homers at a 24-per-year rate. Or he can be an even worse player if he maintains the 12-HR-season pace of his last 211 PA.
The problem is trying to compare the offense of a defense-first player with an offense-first player. Flores doesn’t do anything else well on the diamond…he doesn’t have speed and while his defense has been fine at second, it’s certainly not a plus skill.
“No one wants to see Ruben Tejada starting” …. not totally true. I do. Do I think there are better players out there? Sure. Are there worse, far more expensive players out there? Absolutely. Remember when Matt Cerrone got drunk at that panel then wrote on Metsblog about how the Mets needed to trade Noah Syndergaard for Ian Desmond? Yea. Go take a look at what Ian Desmond has done relative to Ruben Tejada.
You hit the nail on the head. Tejada is doing exactly what you expect him to do: something like 10-15% below league average offensively and well above average defensively. It has led him to a full WAR already in far less time than his peers. He actually is second on the Mets in WAR/PA for players who have gotten in at least 20 games (he narrowly edges out Duda). Sure, that speaks as much to the bad position players on the Mets but it also speaks to how grossly Mets fans and analysts misinterpret and undervalue Tejada’s contributions.
Is he a good hitter? No. Not even close. But is he doing exactly what he was supposed to do? Yes. And it’s led him to be a middle-of-the-pack shortstop in baseball and there’s value to that. He’s been leagues better than Ian Desmond, Alexei Ramirez, Starlin Castro, Jean Segura and Chris Owings, all players the Mets have been tied to in the past and all players who would have probably cost one of the “big four” to attain.
You’re right…Ruben Tejada is not the problem. He’s not the “shortstop of the future” for this Mets team but he’s actually been one of our best players when you look at total value and not just offense.
To me, evaluating Ruben Tejada by his hitting ability is like evaluating Lucas Duda by his speed.
Or maybe I should say,
“Evaluating Ruben Tejada by his power is like evaluating Lucas Duda by his speed”
Lots of good stuff in your post.
I disagree that either Segura or Owings should have cost one of the big 4 but since Dave Stewart asked for Syndergaard for Didi, I guess we shoudn’t have expected less for Owings. Either way, you’re right – we’re better off this year with Tejada, even if I think you overrate his defense.
I might…but I also don’t see what there is not to like. Passes the “eye test”, metrics are solid, he’s not too error prone, his arm actually grades positively now which is an improvement from even two seasons ago…
Yea I don’t know why people don’t think he’s a very good defender. I mean heck they threw him at third base for 150 innings this year and he had never played third before in his life. Seriously not one single inning as a professional baseball player before this season and he did it with average DRS and well above average range (small sample size, admitted). It’s impressive. At short he’s even better.
He has a (-3) DRS at SS this year.
But well above average UZR and defensive fWAR, who uses a system I prefer.
If you believe DRS is the bible (joke intended) then fair enough.
I only used DRS since you used it in the comment I replied to. I would probably use UZR, too. My only thing is that when you use one system and the other one shows a completely different picture, you have to at least mention it. The same discrepancy applies to Flores, too.
That’s fair and I brought up both to be thorough. I’m well aware what DRS has to say about our players but I’ve also written far too many words on why I don’t like that system. Not that UZR is a ton better…
Brian let’s collaborate some time on defensive metrics for a piece we could co-run on our sites. Could be beneficial for our readers to understand how those values are arrived at and where the inconsistencies and inefficiencies are. I like UZR much better but even that frustrates the heck out of me and I think you and your writers at least know that drawing conclusions from partial seasons of data is just about useless. I could probably make a decent case that you can go an entire season with poor range numbers and it not be indicative of your defensive ability (look at Mike Trout’s UZR from last year as a great example of that)
I think it can be reliably stated that any average major league shortstop can be moved to 3B or 2B and can be expected to be somewhat better than average at those positions even if they have little to no prior experience at the position. Shortstop is the most demanding position to play on the diamond (excepting catcher perhaps). If a player can master SS then 2B and 3B should come pretty easily.
I agree about the overrating of Tejada’s defense.
IMO he is an average defensive shortstop and a below average offensive shortstop. Therefore he is overall a somewhat below average ballplayer.
When he looks good defensively it is mostly because we realize that Wilmer Flores would not have gotten near the ball that Tejada just got to.
The best statistic we have to quantify everything you just said (his defensive contributions and offensive detractions), is WAR. His WAR for the season is 1.1 which is two things:
1.) The second best mark on the Mets on a per-PA basis (min: 20 games played)
2.) Projects to about 3.0 WAR had he been the starting shortstop for this team from the start of the season.
Do you know how many Mets position players were worth 3.0 WAR last year? Two. Just Lucas Duda and Juan Lagares.
Players like Ruben Tejada are not the problem on the 2015 Mets. Not in the slightest. Fans need to realize that. The organization needs to realize that.
I see half a dozen posts and articles about Ruben Tejada’s inefficiencies for every one I see about Michael Cuddyer. Why is that? Huh? Because of the two, Michael Cuddyer *has actually been* a problem. Ruben Tejada has not.
Unless there is an on the record quote from Dave Stewart, from a non-Wilpon funded news service, that he asked for Syndergaard I do not believe it. The Mets ownership and front office are known liars, and there is a lot of motive for them to use planted misinformation in the press to justify inaction. When you couple that with a team owned television “news” outlet, and a paid partnership with a major daily newspaper you are left having to make your own mind up about all reported information.
Not a quote from Stewart, but not a Wilpon mouthpiece either (I don’t believe)
There’s also this
which was taken from this (terrible) Mets minor league blog piece
http://metsminorleagueblog.com/analysis/was-the-didi-gregorius-trade-a-missed-opportunity-for-the-mets/
I just feel better at second base,” Flores told Rohan. “I don’t know the reason. I just feel more relaxed.” he said in an interview in the NY Times.
If the Mets land Aramis Rodriquez then Murphy goes back to second base and Flores to the bench.
If they land Ben Zobrist then Ben plays 2B and Flores goes to the bench.
In 2015, Tejada has beaten out Flores as the SS offensively and defensively and mentally.
Entering the 2015 season, the Mets had the twice failed Tejada as the safety net for the Flores experiment. The GM passed up an experienced and cheaper option when he turned down Escobar for Gee last winter. Escobar was not a solution but offered another option and some depth while Gee had no future on the Mets.
Currently Cecchini is having a good year in AA and even with no current AAA SS he has not been promoted. It would seem that it would be a good time to test him to see if Gavin could be the 2016 mix. Alderson just frustrates me.
FWIW, Flores has a .616 OPS at 2B