Baseball-Reference has this nice visual component to their site where if you go to a team page, they display thumbnails of the top 12 players on the team in bWAR. In addition to livening up the pages that normally just have text, it informs, too.
Viewing the 2019 Mets, we see something that no one – and I mean no one – would have predicted coming into the year. Dominic Smith is sixth on the team in bWAR ahead of Jacob deGrom, Robinson Cano, Brandon Nimmo and Noah Syndergaard.
Now, the WAR numbers are not very big at this point in the season and certainly no one should put a lot of faith in what they say right now and the predictive value of these early results. But with that caveat out of the way – this is still a huge surprise.
Good for Smith, who is making the most of his opportunity. Many had given him up for dead. And sure, the hits are falling in for him at an unsustainable rate. But no one seemed to care when his BABIP was 100 points below what it should have been when he first came up so it’s nice that he can spend some time on the side of the fence where the grass is greener.
He’s gotten into 25 of the Mets 27 games which is incredible for a bench player. Mickey has recieved criticism for other things and rightly so but give him credit for maximizing Smith’s playing time.
How long can you hold onto a bench guy that plays one position and is worse in the field and at the plate than the other guy playing that position?
Overall we all feel happy for Smith, and super pleased he has figured out a health issue and addressed it. That said, in the first base battle, he is not the winner. If hes a thousand OPS player but rotting on the bench, isnt it possible we can spin that into a position we need more help with? The competition he faces has 4x the AB and also > a thousand OPS, not to mention 18 XBH, 9 of which are HR. Perhaps the Mets are hedging against a cliff that they see Alonso falling off of, but even then using Smith as the replacement is hardly satisfying who would even be no lock.
If the some team sees a singles hitting 1B who can play the position well enough as something to trade for, then Id do it like crazy. Hes not going to maintain a .530 OBP or a .400 BA (over 25 AB) forever!!
Wilmer Flores couldn’t play any position and they held onto him for six years. And it’s a stretch to say the Alonso is better defensively. There’s more of a reason to think Smith could play the OF than there is to think that Alonso is the better defensive option.
So, you’ve gone from thinking that no one would want Smith because he stinks to thinking that if someone wants him you’d trade him like crazy.
Progress?
Im happy Smith has improved. But Im not excited about a singles slap hitter that plays 1 position, a powerbat position. I dont think his numbers represent everyday reality, so if someone is bamboozled by them (no one will though) and offers something good and ready to go, Id do it. Maybe he turns into Justin Turner…but we already have a player better than Smith at 1B who has the same control. Id trade him because he serves no real purpose, particularly if you are persuaded by his (phony) OPS. Smith’s defense is overrated. He makes plenty of mistakes fielding, catching, and throwing; he cannot play OF even near as good as Duda, and we know how that turned out. (As an aside, McNeil is no OF either, and probably at the bare minimum for fielding that position). We were told Alonso is a butcher at 1B, but chance after chance shows that to be wrong.
The Flores thing…wow…I cant believe it took the team 6 years to see the obvious.