The Mets called up Michael Conforto in the middle of a pennant race, gave him extended playing time and were rewarded with a player who turned in a 132 OPS+ over 194 PA. It was reminiscent of another rookie that the Mets called up in the middle of a pennant race to be a platoon left fielder. While the team outcome wasn’t as good, Daniel Murphy was just as successful, putting up a 130 OPS+ in 151 PA back in 2008.
That’s pretty good success with a couple of rookies. How did other Mets in this same time period perform in their rookie season when they were given at least semi-regular playing time for a decent amount of time? Setting our floor as 150 PA in a rookie season, the Mets have had 19 players since 2008 to meet this threshold. Only two of those players turned in a performance that was painful. Here’s how everyone in the group did:
1. Lucas Duda – Had a 137 OPS+ (.852 OPS) in 347 PA split among 1B and the OF. Played his best ball at 1B (.884 OPS) so they spent the majority of time the next two years trying to make him an OF. Once they moved him back to 1B, he put up a 137 and a 132 OPS+ marks the past two years.
2. Conforto – 132 OPS+
3. Murphy – 130 OPS+
4. Josh Satin – Had a 123 OPS+ in 221 PA. Of course he did this thanks to a .379 BABIP. He followed up in 2014 with a .143 BABIP in 43 PA and hasn’t been in the majors since.
5. Ike Davis – Called up much earlier than expected, Davis responded with a 115 OPS+ over 601 PA. Was off to an even better start before suffering a freak on-field injury in 2011. From this fan’s perspective, he seemed more interested in succeeding on his terms rather than succeeding. Made adjustments in the second half of 2012 which produced great results and immediately abandoned them in 2013 and hasn’t been a factor since.
6. Travis d’Arnaud – 105 OPS+ in 421 PA. He couldn’t hit a lick at the beginning of the year, which earned him a return trip to the minors. Made the necessary adjustments and now the big question isn’t if he’ll hit – it’s whether he can stay healthy.
7. Josh Thole – 99 OPS+ in 227 PA. This was a strong debut for a 23-year-old backstop and he had essentially the same season the following year. But the hits didn’t fall in for him in three of the next four seasons and without any power to help him through rough spots, his MLB future is in serious doubt.
8. Eric Campbell – 96 OPS+ in 211 PA. He looked like a useful player in 2014 and a bum in 2015. Had a .348 BABIP in the former year and a .230 mark in the latter. Split the difference and you probably have a serviceable minimum wage backup, especially since he can fake it at both the infield and outfield corners.
9. Matt den Dekker – 94 OPS+ in 174 PA. Had a .290/.392/.374 line in 125 PA once given the larger half of the left field platoon, a la Murphy and Conforto. The organization that gives lip service to valuing a high OBP sent him packing.
10. Jordany Valdespin – 94 OPS+ in 206 PA. More of an athlete than a baseball player, Valdespin’s attitude won him few fans over the years. Looks about done as an MLB player but perhaps he might have had more of a career if he came up in a different organization.
11. Justin Turner – 94 OPS+ in 487 PA. Serviceable backup that the Mets cut ties to at the exact wrong time. Legend has it that he adopted hitting techniques learned from Marlon Byrd and he saw his BB% and ISO leap the past two years with the Dodgers.
12. Chris Carter – 92 OPS+ in 180 PA. When the other options were Frank Catalanotto, Jesus Feliciano, Jeff Francoeur, Gary Matthews Jr. and a past-his-expiration-date Fernando Tatis, Carter’s production was an upgrade.
13. Kirk Nieuwenhuis – 91 OPS+ in 314 PA. A streaky player, he had the good fortune of hitting right out of the box. He had a fine April and a solid June. The less said about July, the better. Strikeouts and streakiness are part of the bargain with him. But he plays all three outfield positions and worse players than him have had long careers.
14. Wilmer Flores – 90 OPS+ in 274 PA. Another streaky player, the Mets apparently decided to turn him into a super-sub after he started most of 2015.
15. Jason Pridie – 90 OPS+ in 236 PA. Perhaps nothing more than being in the right place at the right time but the Mets had a 26-19 record when he started that year. May not sound like much but the team was 51-66 when he didn’t.
16. Omir Santos – 82 OPS+ in 306 PA. Congratulations if you’ve forgotten him! Santos got his playing time in 2009, when everyone and his brother got hurt. They played him because they had no other choice and he performed much better than his minor league numbers would have projected.
17. Juan Lagares – 80 OPS+ in 421 PA. His all-world defense made him a valuable player, despite the poor year with the stick, one propped up by a .421 BABIP over a 106-PA spread.
18. Kevin Plawecki – 62 OPS+ in 258 PA. Like with Santos, Plawecki got playing time because of injury. Like Santos, he performed better than his minor league numbers would have indicated. Our translations show his Las Vegas numbers in 2015 being worth a .216 OBP and a .225 SLG in the majors and he produced a .280/.296 line.
19. Ruben Tejada – 62 OPS+ in 255 PA. In 2008, Tejada had a .588 OPS in Hi-A. The idea that he would spend half the year in the majors in 2010 was ludicrous. And it was.
*****
Some of this is a bit circular, in that the main reason these guys got this many PA is because they performed when given a shot. Satin, Campbell and Nieuwenhuis certainly wouldn’t have gotten the PT they did if they hit a buck 60 right out of the gate. Timing may not be everything but the one thing we can say for sure is that it will earn you a longer leash, regardless of your minor league pedigree.
Still, it’s hard to ignore that 17 of the 19 guys in our sample performed (at least) at a credible major league level when given more than a handful of PA. Some performed like starters and some performed like bench guys. That’s okay, you need bench guys, too. Hopefully the team can be in a constant state of evaluation, comparing actual results to expected ones to determine the most-likely scenario going forward.
Maybe a BABIP 33 points higher than an elevated minor league mark from a non-heralded guy shouldn’t be viewed as sustainable. Of course, the flip side of that should hold true, too. Maybe the default assumption shouldn’t be to view major league readiness based solely on 50 or 100 sporadic PA in The Show when anyone can go hot or cold based on nothing more than the fickle nature of the hit gods or lucky bounces.
Santos and Valdespin looked like real players for a stretch. a lot of these guys were not legit prospects but were able to give us lightning in a bottle. Sometimes you get lucky with a midseason call up. For every Greg Jeffries September, you get a top prospect who quickly looks overmatched or an under the radar guy who gets a wild hair up his butt and starts hitting at the right time.
I think there is one more consideration. The Mets were in a rebuild from the bottom up for the arrival of many of those players. They got extended looks mainly because they had minimum salaries and there was little expectation of team success. I had hoped to never hear the words “Jason Pridie” again, that was a trip down nightmare lane. I think the Mets record with Harvey on the field is worse than Pridie, but I’ll go with Harvey, thanks. The call of 17/19 is overly generous based a few hundred PAs. Of that list, 5ish actually are major league every day players. This seems like an extension of a theme of recent articles about “let the kids play”. All that is fine, but not for defending National League champions with a narrow window to win a World Series based on pitching. More than anything, I want to see the best players we can muster at each position without experimenting on whether rookies may or may not perform. I may be alone, but I think the new middle infield is already much better than what went out there last year. I want a World Series, and couldn’t care less if they trade every person in the pipeline to get the talent to do so. I’ll take 1 WS win and a decade of no playoffs over going to the playoffs every year but never being able to slam the core shut. In my world, there’s only two positions: winning at all costs and rebuilding. Like Ricky Bobby’s dad (that font of wisdom!) told us, if you ain’t first, you’re last.
Preferring a World Series title to multiple years of playoff baseball is a defensible position, one which I have no qualms about anyone taking.
But your use of the word “rookie” as some type of pejorative is something that, in my opinion, really is a mistake. You shouldn’t treat every rookie as the second coming of Trout. But you shouldn’t treat every rookie as some plague-carrying mongrel mutt that seeks the downfall of Western Civilization, either.
You also can’t put untried, unknown, and untrusted talent all over the diamond and expect magic to happen. It usually doesn’t.
For the record, I’m happy they called up Conforto, NS, MH, TdA, and Matz. We have a very youthful team.
Playoffs are a crapshoot! One WS and 9 non playoffs vs playoffs every year? C’mon give me a break, I’ll take the 10 playoffs and 10 enjoyable seasons.
I’ll take two WS wins the Mets have over the 1 the braves had and their long run of pennants all day every day.
“Life is a journey, not a destination”
Baseball is about raising flags, having parades, and going to the White House.
For some of us, it’s about enduring and appreciating the ups and downs of the 6 month marathon and not the silly game of Russian roulette that tacked on at the end so that some people can get a quick high.
Here is the full list of the guys who didn’t get enough PA to qualify for the list, but could have if they performed better.
Argenis Reyes : 35 OPS+ in 121 PA – Had he played better, he probably could have kept the 2b job after Castillo came back from injury
Fernando Martinez : 38 OPS+ in 100 PA – Can argue he was rushed, but he had a chance to make the list had he played better considering the none of the top 3 guys in the OF that year cracked 400 PA
Jesus Feliciano: 55 OPS+ in 119 PA – Not a prospect at age 31 and probably doesn’t deserve to make this list, but he was a rookie in 2010 and did have opportunities for playing time that year
Brad Emaus 22 OPS+ in 42 PA – Congratulations if you remembered who our 2b Opening Day starter was! While he was a rule 5 pick and odds were against him, he was given a shot and just completely fell flat on his face
Mike Nickeas 32 OPS+ in 122 PA – Was on the roster the entire 2012 season and still couldn’t crack 150 PA. The Thole/Nickeas combo was so poor that year that the Mets picked up Shoppach in September even though they had nothing to play for.
Darrell Ceciliani :55 OPS in 75 PA – Remember this guy? Remember when one writer prematurely declared him to be a success? https://mets360.com/?p=26047. Even though he was a non-prospect, he had a window of opportunity to play with Lagares/Cuddyer’s poor play plus Kirk/Mayberry being dreadful in a bench role as well.
There are also a few interesting cases.
Nick Evans :85 OPS+ in 119 PA – An interesting case here. At seasons end, his stats look well enough to be a bench player, but in his first go round that season, he didn’t hit much at all. Had he hit better in his first go round, he may have gotten more PA and held off Daniel Murphy for more playing time late in the year
Dilson Herrera 89 OPS+ in 103 PA – A controversial case. Wasn’t terribly poor in his time, but was also on the roster during a playoff season. Don’t remember the exact circumstances for being sent down (probably roster crunch?) but service time may have been a factor. I’d argue that the opportunity was there though and was his for the taking.
That adds a total of 6 failures and 2 interesting cases, which makes the overall success rate of 17/25 or 68% which, without context, is hard to analyze.
“Maybe the default assumption shouldn’t be to view major league readiness based solely on 50 or 100 sporadic PA in The Show when anyone can go hot or cold based on nothing more than the fickle nature of the hit gods or lucky bounces.”
Is Nick Evans still floating around?
Doesn’t this almost completely boil down to scouting and player evaluation? Most of these guys have been in the system for years.
Most AAA players can come along for a brief time and give you something close to what a decent ML player offers. But that’s no reason to throw away ABs on guys who aren’t very good. The majors level is not the try-out period for crappy guys like Josh Satin. If forced, can they perform adequately for a period? Maybe!
An organization has to make decisions on players, based on years of observation. Sometimes they are wrong. But there’s a significant distinction between, say, a Herrera and a Muno.
It’s about the investment of precious time. The rare gift of opportunity.
I think of it as shelf space in a grocery store. It’s valuable and it’s bad business to waste too much space on products that won’t move.
I actually think that one of the obvious lessons of last season — and in many years before it — is that giving too many ABs to poor prospects like Campbell, Muno, Etcetera is a recipe for mediocrity, i.e., failure.
I don’t believe the Mets are holding good players back. To date, their problem has been the reverse.
+1
I agree completely with your first five, perhaps six paragraphs.
I do think this version of the Mets regularly acquires guys that they pay more than minimum wage to that they could have used someone from the farm system, instead. They signed both Chris Capuano and Chris Young rather than give Dillon Gee a shot. Twice now they’ve given out large contracts to Bartolo Colon rather than use a farm system guy. They’re paying a good chunk of change the next two years for Asdrubal Cabrera.
Their M.O. is to never begin a year with a rookie if there’s any way on earth to avoid doing so. This practice also happens midseason, too. They signed Rick Ankiel off the scrap heap rather than give Juan Lagares a shot. Shoot, they brought in Aaron Harang and Daisuke Matsuzaka at the end of a year where they were going nowhere rather than give starts to a farm system guy.
They signed Michael Cuddyer so they wouldn’t have to play a young guy and if Cuddyer hadn’t fallen on his face, they wouldn’t have given a shot to Conforto. Think about Conforto’s minor league placement to start the year. Did they put him in A-ball because that’s where their scouting and development people thought he should be or did they do it to time it so that they wouldn’t have to bring him up to the majors until there was only a couple of months left on Cuddyer’s deal?
But then the proven veteran, that rock-safe guy who could never fail to do anything but perform well if he was healthy — well, he sucked. You’d think he was a rookie or something.
Edit: Well, it should come down to scouting but either it doesn’t or their scouting needs to be reviewed and probably overhauled.
I agree with many of your points. We aren’t far off. it comes down to specific players. The Mets started an unproven rookie in Game 4 of the WS, with another rookie in LF. Flores was given a very good opportunity last season. You know the examples. If the Mets spent elsewhere, I could have lived with rolling the dice at 2B or #5 starter. Maybe their unwillingness to take those risks effectively hamstrung the entire organization this winter, which might be your point.
For example: Herrera/Flores at 2B saves club $10 million, plus allows them to trade Niese for a CF or reliever. They decided to go the other way. I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.
+2
We need to frame that and send it to Sandy.