The Mets have had, by all accounts, a terrific offseason. Steve Cohen has done a particularly good job of improving the team on the field. Most projections put the Mets in the lead for the division crown and in a position to challenge for the World Series. Should the Mets be confident in that? Or [...]
Steven A Cohen has started off his ownership with a bang. The trade for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco, plus the signing of James McCann, has significantly improved the Mets overall quality. Lindor is 15-20 runs better defensively than Amed Rosario and a better hitter as well. McCann’s defense is better than the Mets catchers [...]
The following paragraphs will contain some blasphemy. There will be “what ifs”, and optimistic projections. All in an intellectual exercise to examine where Jacob deGrom lies within the New York Mets Pantheon. For Christmas, Bill Madden’s latest book on Tom Seaver made its way to Mets fans across the country. Seaver is arguably the best [...]
From 2012-2015 Matt Harvey was fabulous on the mound for the New York Mets. His performance in the 2015 World Series was everything a fan wants from a top hurler. He had the persona, the confidence, the dominance and the city to deserve the moniker “The Dark Knight.” It was very fun to be a [...]
The 2020 Mets were an “also-ran” footnote. The last week was an awfully bad week, but up until then the season was just “also-ran.” The best aspect of the COVID-shortened season was a free season for Noah Syndergaard to recover from TJ surgery. Michael Conforto’s best season was a plus, as was Dominic Smith’s. Hopefully, [...]
The season mercifully came to an end on Sunday. The Mets went into Saturday with a chance at the playoffs and proceeded to dump the season in getting swept by the Washington Baseball Team, surging into the National League East cellar. Tremendously, the Mets played well on offense. The starting nine only had Amed Rosario [...]
The Mets are having a tough end to the week, even with winning a double header over the Yankees. GM Brodie Van Wagenen was heard on a hot microphone complaining about how operations was going, and the Wilpons were not happy about it, leading to whispers of Van Wagenen possibly being fired. Then news of [...]
The key to being a good manager, according to Jim Leyland, is being sure to put your players in a position to succeed. One of the keys to preventing runs is doing a good job of having your pitching and defense work together. The biggest key for the Mets will be in not giving away [...]
The Mets historical performance defensively has been, in a word, bad. As we have examined the best and worst fielders in Mets history, it was evident identifying bad players was a little easier than identifying outstanding players. At second base, the answer was largely “no one.” It is never easy to explain *why* the Mets [...]
It is always interesting and exciting to hear about the best fielders. Rarely do we get a good look at the terribly bad fielders. Derek Jeter is always mentioned as a terrible fielder and having the worst negative performance of any fielder. This has some bias toward the good hitters, like Jeter. In looking at [...]
Recently there was some chatter about who the best Met defensive players have been. Marv Throneberry or Keith Hernandez – Bud Harrelson or Rey Ordonez, and so on. Anecdotally, there are a couple of Mets with tremendous defensive reputations, and Gold Gloves, but were they deserving, given what we have learned from advanced metrics? Let [...]
Since the 2019 season ended, there have a plethora of articles written about the Mets’ (reportedly) terrible defense, and their lack of personnel moves to address them. Good news – these reports are overstated. Do the Mets have holes in their defense? Yes. Are they insurmountable? No. The Mets have three positions where defense is [...]