Last offseason Lucas Duda, Wilmer Flores, and Juan Lagares were asked by the Mets to travel to Michigan to train with Mike Barwis, who has been a strength and conditioning consultant with the Mets since 2011. This offseason Barwis opened up a new gym on the grounds of the Mets spring training complex in Port [...]
When teams are competing for championships, their “window” for contention is often talked about. The Texas Rangers had a short championship window, from about 2009-2012. The San Francisco Giants’ championship window opened up in the 2009 season and is still wide open. The Detroit Tigers window is preparing to slam shut as their stars continue [...]
Next up in our projection series is Zack Wheeler. Wheeler’s first full season in the major leagues was promising as it was frustrating – with him realizing improvements in most of his underlying peripheral stats including strikeout rate, walk rate, GB%, FIP and xFIP. More importantly, Wheeler was able to toss 185.1 innings last year [...]
In Juan Lagares’ first three seasons in the Mets organization – from 2006 to 2008 – he committed 73 errors in 195 games. He was also a shortstop. In 2009, the decision was made to move Lagares to the outfield, and now he’s regarded as the best defensive centerfielder in major league baseball. Lagares’ journey [...]
The big news this weekend, as usual, had nothing to do with the Mets acquiring a shortstop, and once again had everything to do with Fred Wilpon and finances. Except this time, the news is that Fred Wilpon has been selected by Commissioner-elect Rob Manfred as the new chairman of the finance committee, as first [...]
Here are some news and notes to get you caught up on all the recent happenings in Mets land. You may know that Ben Zobrist was traded to the Oakland Athletics this past weekend, but according to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, there were discussions of a potential three-way deal between the Mets, Rays and [...]
With Mike Piazza once again being snubbed for the Hall of Fame, garnering 69.9% of the vote from the BBWAA, people have taken to sharing their outrage that the “greatest hitting catcher of all time” isn’t in the Hall. But why is it that we need that caveat of hitting catcher when we talk about [...]
As we digest from the end of the holidays and a weekend of football, here are some things to get the first work week of 2015 started. With the announcement of the Hall of Fame voting results coming up tomorrow, this is a Cooperstown-heavy version of the Monday Leadoff. Dan Lewis from Amazin' Avenue wrote [...]
At FanGraphs, Josh Barnes posted a wonderful piece of community research concluding that Jon Niese is poised to have a breakout season in 2015. Before continuing reading this article, I’d highly recommend reading what Barnes wrote if you haven’t already. His reasoning is that Niese developed a solid changeup in 2014, leading to its increased [...]
A pleasant good Monday to you, the last one in 2014. Here's some news and notes to get your abridged workweek started. A picture went viral on Twitter showing that Las Vegas has the Mets at 12:1 odds to win the World Series in 2015. On one hand, those odds are probably skewed low by [...]
Grant Bisbee of SB Nation took a look earlier this week at three of the forgotten names in the free agent market: Asdrubal Cabrera, Stephen Drew and Colby Rasmus. While Rasmus, a lefty-hitting outfielder with good pop and not much else, doesn’t really serve as a fit on the 2015 Mets, Cabrera and Drew, both [...]
Here's some news and notes you may have missed this weekend. Dwight Gooden wrote an introspective letter to himself for Derek Jeter's website, The Player's Tribune. It's a nice short read and the advice he gives to his younger self is something that is probably good for all of us to be reminded of from [...]