Once many years ago there was a piece in the New York Times which said that baseball should allow the batter the option of running to either third base or first base after he hit the ball. My immediate reaction was – That’s pretty stupid. If you think about it for just a minute, you’d [...]
It’s certainly been an eventful ride for J.D. Davis since joining the Mets. Acquired to be a depth infield piece and lefty masher, Davis ended up getting nearly full-time play in 2019, with most of it coming in the outfield. And he did just fine against RHP, too. Then when it seemed like he had [...]
After using the Baseball-Reference Play Index tool last week to look at the batters who did the best against the Mets, now it’s time to see which opposing pitchers did the best. We’re going to have a minimum of 100 IP against the Mets to qualify for these lists. We’ll list the top 10 pitchers [...]
So, how’s the COVID-19 quarantine treating you? My time has been spent rather unproductively but what are you gonna do? There was a box of my stuff that was dived into and among other things, it included four 1969 Citgo Mets portraits that were purchased on ebay some 20 or so years ago. The lot [...]
The Baseball-Reference Play Index search function is free for the month of April. If you haven’t ever used the Play Index before, you owe it to yourself to check it out now. You can use it to answer all sorts of player and team-specific research question. Today, let’s look at the Mets’ opponents and see [...]
When the projection series started back in January, it was unlikely that one would have been done for Michael Wacha, who seemed likely to get most of his work done in 2020 pitching long relief out of the pen. But the injury to Noah Syndergaard gives him a clear path to a gig as a [...]
Three weeks ago, an article was published at this site comparing Amed Rosario to other young shortstops. Gus identified Xander Bogaerts as a potential comp for Rosario, which would be a wonderful thing if it turned out to be the case. Bogaerts hits for average, is willing to take a walk and the last two [...]
We like things that are easy. It’s why we add together OBP and SLG to get OPS, which we use as a shorthand for offensive production. In mathematical reality, you never add things with different denominators. But adding together OBP and SLG gets you very close to the “right” answer so we do it anyway. [...]
New GMs are always eager to put their stamp on a team, which by itself isn’t a bad thing. After all, the old GM was let go for a good reason in most cases. The new GM doesn’t have any allegiance to the old GMs players and looks to bring in his guys in two [...]
Throughout their history, the Mets have had trouble filling certain slots on the diamond. For a long time third base was considered the biggest problem and they traded Amos Otis and Nolan Ryan chasing a solution. Then there was the stretch of 20 or so years where no one held down right field for more [...]
Everyone loves a list, regardless if it’s a “best of,” or “worst of,” or “top ten.” Recently, The Athletic’s Marc Carig came up on Twitter with his best MLB lineup of all time and seemingly everyone followed suit. Now, Carig is far from the first one to ever do it. But he did it at [...]
One of the weaknesses of advanced defensive systems was how they handled things when a team was playing a shift. This wasn't too big of a problem earlier in the decade but as more and more teams embraced shifting on a wider basis, it was something that needed to be addressed. Defensive Runs Saved has [...]