Anything can happen in baseball. The 1969 Mets, who won 73 games the year before, finished the regular season with 100 wins. It would be 17 years before the Mets won 100 games again. If starting in the year 1970 you bet on the Mets winning 100 games, you would have collected just twice in the last 51 years. It’s hard to win 100 games and wagering on a team to win that many is simply a bad bet.
Every year in baseball we see multiple things that come out of left field, things that defy the odds. Michael Conforto posting a .412 BABIP in 2020 is just one of those examples. That total would have been more than three standard deviations from the 2019 BABIP mean for qualified hitters. On the surface that might not mean anything to you – just know that it’s incredibly rare. The bottom line is that like the Mets and 100 wins, you don’t want to make any wagers on Conforto repeating that feat going forward.
Which brings us to Mallex Smith.
In 2019, Smith had the most PA he’s ever had in the majors (566) and he finished with a 73 OPS+. Do you have any idea how horrible that is? If you’ve been a Mets fan for a while, no doubt you’re familiar with rotten offensive players. You watched 2018 Amed Rosario and 2002 Roger Cedeno and 1998 Carlos Baerga and 1980 Frank Taveras and 1974 Felix Millan and 1967 Bud Harrelson – so you know rotten when you see it. Smith was worse than all of those.
There have been 226 seasons in Mets history where a player has accumulated enough PA to qualify for the batting title. Only 12 times – five percent – has someone put up an OPS+ worse than Smith in 2019. And four of those were by Rey Ordonez and three by Doug Flynn. This is the type of offensive player we are talking about with Smith.
And last year, Smith put up a (-1) OPS+ in 47 PA. That means in his 613 most-recent PA, Smith has posted a 68 OPS+. Yowza, that’s not good. In his first two years in the majors, Smith put up an 83 and an 87 OPS+. He’s been consistently not worth a roster spot.
But in 2018, all of the planets aligned for Smith. Thanks to a .366 BABIP, which was the fourth-best mark in the majors, Smith posted a 115 OPS+ and a 3.5 fWAR. Without a doubt, it was a good season. But it was a fluke, an outlier, an anomaly, an exception, an aberration. It was a one-time thing.
The worst thing you can do is to take a person’s outlier performance and expect results like that going forward. No, Bernard Gilkey’s not going to put up another 155 OPS+. No, Lance Johnson’s not going to repeat his 31 doubles-21 triples campaign. No, Todd Hundley’s not going to hit 41 HR and drive in 112 runs again. No, Smith’s not going to post another 3.5 fWAR.
It’s understandable why fans got excited about Gilkey or Johnson or Hundley – they watched those guys turn in career years while playing in Queens. What on earth was so fascinating about Smith’s outlier season which happened in the other league in … Tampa? Why is anyone excited that the Mets signed this guy to an NRI?
Maybe it’s the name. How many guys do you know named Mallex? It’s got an x in it and you don’t have to guess how to pronounce it. It’s fun to say. But fans were equally excited about a similar-type of player that the Mets picked up seven years ago and he had the most common name you can imagine – Eric Young Jr.
No, it’s not the name. Chicks dig the long ball but dudes love speed. It would make for an interesting research project to figure out why this is. My theory is that most guys have at one point or another smoked a ball and got to experience the thrill of hitting a ball deep in the gap or over the fence. But far fewer weekend warriors have won a game with speed. And for a nice coincidence, Little Feat’s “Feets Don’t Fail Me Now” is playing on Spotify as I type this graph.
Smith is very fast and he uses his speed well, at least on the offensive half of things. Unlike Billy Hamilton and Juan Lagares, Smith is not a good defensive player. In the past two seasons, Smith has a combined (-8.8) UZR and (-11) DRS. So much for making the roster as a defensive caddy for Brandon Nimmo.
So, what do we have with Smith? A fast guy who can’t hit at anywhere close to an acceptable level and a guy who’s nowhere as good as you might think on defense. If he’s happy playing a full season in Syracuse, then this was a great signing. It’s not so hot if you have visions of 2018 dancing in your head. Much like Daffy Duck in “Show Biz Bugs,” Smith can only do it once.
I was on the Mallex Smith bandwagon a few years ago. Boy, was I wrong and now we have him. Sure, he can run, but that’s about it. Knew he couldn’t hit, but he is not good at fielding either. Don’t really see a lot of value with him. Him even having a chance at making the team will depend on how many roster spots MLB will have in 2021. As you said, he will probably be playing in the confines of Syracuse.
I was excited about Smith too. He was a young, toolsy prospect and I wanted the Mets to trade for their CF of the future. Obviously, things haven’t panned out as hoped. I don’t understand how such fast players can be so bad at defense; maybe that can be changed with proper coaching and fundamentals.
At this point, he’s a lottery ticket. Once upon a time, he was a dream solution.
Let’s run the math.
The fastest players in the game have speeds of 30 ft/sec
Average speed is 27 ft/ sec
For an average fly ball the hang time is 5 secs. Ignoring acceleration, that means a fast player can cover 15 ft extra.
If the slower player is able to react to the balls ball 1/2 a second faster that’s 13 ft right there. If a player takes a more direct route that shaves off 1/3 of a second that’s 10 ft. If the faster player often has a bad first step costing him 1 sec that’s 30 ft lost.
So as you can see it’s pretty easy for a slower player to make up the foot speed difference if he has better fielding skills.
Brian,
All this attention! You love Mallex!
For my 2 cents (or less) – First, Mallex is a really really good baseball player. That is in comparison to you, me, and the rest of the general population. Compared to MLB-caliber ball players, not so much. So, as you point out, it comes down to what this signing represents. As an AAA player, age 28 season with one good MLB season (luck-assisted) and some awful big league production, blessed with speed, decent bunting skills, and mostly won’t kill you in the OF, he is a good depth signing. I’d rather have him than Tebow in Syracuse, or a veteran guy that is clearly done, should short-term OF injuries occur. Any expectation of him regularly contributing in 2021 to the big team would be ill-advised and Wilpon-era like. I am reasonably certain Alderson clearly understands this.
Tebow is a side show act. I don’t like the fact that he takes up roster space from somebody else who is younger and has more talent. He hit .163 in AAA in 2019 and he will be 34 in August. I asked one of the Syracuse in the summer of 19, hey, where is Tebow? He said, I have no idea. I don’t think the other players were too happy with the circus act.
Ignorance here asking… Can outfielding be taught? OK, you can’t teach speed, but are there “jump drills” that can improve that first step? Route skills? David W. worked & worked & worked on his bare-hand grab & throw routine and became pretty good at at it.
If OF lessons work, please avail them to Mr. Nimmo. –he’s otherwise fairly athletic. Forget Spandex or whatever his name is.
Basic fielding skills such as reading the ball off the bat, first steps, route running are typically learned and shaped during a player’s youth. By the time they’ve reached adulthood, they have practiced routines thousands of times, have become habits and engrained in their muscle memory and so it’s doubtful there will be any more improvement.
I appreciate that; thank you. Yet batting stances/approaches seemed to be able to be redefined. Pitchers learn new pitches/po moves. Not OF habits?
It’s rare for OF to improve defensively once they reach the majors but I attribute that more to apathy than to anything else. There are things one can do. Here’s some things to support that.
Trout also indicated that he was working on something more tangible. He wanted to be a little quicker getting to the ball.
“What we’ve been working on is … my pre-set,” Trout told MLB Network during Spring Training. “I’m already down when the pitch is out of the hand. I’m trying to get down as soon as contact happens so I can make that first jump, as opposed to sitting there for like a half-second, flat-footed. I’ve been working on it in the spring.”
https://www.mlb.com/angels/news/mike-trout-has-improved-his-defense-in-center-c278810936
*****
If pure raw speed isn’t Inciarte’s elite skill, surely something else is. He gave us a hint when he spoke to Muscle & Fitness magazine before last season.
“I work a lot on my first jump step, which I think is the most important part for any outfielder. I work on my reaction time and quickness. It’s my goal to always get to the ball while standing, and not with a diving catch.”
https://www.mlb.com/news/new-outfield-jump-burst-route-metrics-at-baseball-savant
*****
Laureano chased down a slicing line drive to deep left-center for a running catch at the warning track. The 2019 version of Laureano may not have been able to reach that ball.
“He’s trying to run a little bit smoother. He’s been working on his gait,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “Sometimes he’s pretty harsh in the way he runs. It’s pretty physical. Kirk Gibson was that way when he first started playing the outfield with the Tigers. The ball starts bouncing on you a little bit, and if you get a smoother gait, it doesn’t do that. He’s been working hard on that and looked good going after that ball.”
https://www.mlb.com/news/ramon-laureano-improving-outfield-defense
When it comes to practicing, humans tend to gravitate towards 2 things.
1. Things that they are good at (and usually correlates with them enjoying it as well)
2. Things that they are really bad at
The 3 examples you cited are representative of #1. These are guys who are already fantastic at defense and want to try to get even better. They want to try to go from super great to super super great.
An example of the second one would be Alonso working on his defense. He doesn’t want to be a trainwreck at first so he spends ample time practicing to avoid the embarrassment.
Those who are in that mid-range of slightly bad to slightly good at a skill typically don’t spend large amounts of time and energy improving that skill. This is where the apathy tends to come in.
When it comes specifically to Nimmo though given that he hustles to first base on walks, i don’t think effort is the problem. I’d imagine he is out there grinding his defense – he simply just doesn’t have “it”/raw talent to become any better.
Who knows what/if Nimmo is doing to improve defensively? I could certainly see the Mets bringing in a defensive coach and all of their OF improving somewhat in 2021. I’d also be wary of reading too much into numbers produced in the Covid season. I don’t believe Conforto is going to put up another .412 BABIP and I’m not convinced that Nimmo’s going to put up another (-19.2) UZR/150, which is 3X worse than the mark he put up the previous year in a similar number of innings.
Of the three examples I provided in the previous post, my take is that the first and third ones are much closer to #2 on your list than to #1.
This made my day a bit better so I am gonna post it (It might be off-topic ………apologies ) ………From MLB Website about an hour ago >>>>> Dec. 8: The Mets are reportedly interested in Bauer, and it appears the feeling is mutual.
“New York is … Well, he likes where the organization is going,” Rachel Luba, Bauer’s agent, told the New York Daily News. “It can definitely be a landing spot.”
So with Marisnick sitting out there we go and get Mallex Smith? Really? Why would we do that unless they want them for the AA team
Winter meetings have been quiet so far. Not much movement. Would like to see some deals tomorrow. Yes, I am impatient.
Brian, for your next post, please tell us what you really think! 🙂 Kind of how I feel about Billy Hamilton – was never a fan.
(Yea, I agree with you about Smith and I second Ike’s thoughts about Marisnick. At least he has a little power and can play some defense).
Just a reminder, Mallex Smith was signed as a minor league free agent. He does not have a major league contract and is not on the 40 man roster. His signing has nothing to do with acquiring Jake Marisnick, George Springer, or any other OF that will require a guaranteed major league contract.
He can definitely beat me in a foot race. Plus I’ve never once met a man named Mallex. Maybe he’s a dark horse GM candidate.
I’m not impressed with Maalox as a first name, despite the X