Vic Black throws gas. In his major league debut last season, Black averaged 95.5 mph with his fastball. It couldn’t really be any other way though, could it? A guy with that name couldn’t be a soft-tossing lefty. No, that gig is reserved for someone like Jamie Moyer, not someone whose name is packed with [...]
Ike Davis has become the most polarizing player on the Mets. Oh, sure, some people get worked up about Juan Lagares and Eric Young Jr. but those two simply don’t bring the … baggage that Davis carries with him. Davis seemed destined to be a fan favorite. A first-round draft pick who advanced quickly through [...]
At the end of the Omar Minaya tenure, it seemed the team bent over backwards to minimize any injury. Seemingly every injury followed the same path. It would go from “it’s minor,” to “day-to-day,” to “15-day DL,” to “indefinitely out,” to “done for the year.” The running joke was that if the team announced a [...]
Last year Mets catchers put up a combined .654 OPS, 33 points below the average mark for National League backstops. Of the four catchers to see action for the club last year, Travis d’Arnaud had the lowest OPS with a .542 mark in 111 PA. Yet because of his minor league pedigree, many fans expect [...]
Three times in his career John Lannan has made 30 or more starts and notched an ERA under 4.00 – stamping himself with #3 SP upside. Daisuke Matsuzaka has three seasons where he posted a fWAR of 2.5 or higher, including one year when he went 18-3. But every Mets fan out there wants Jenrry [...]
In 2012 Daniel Murphy proved he could play second base without getting killed, which seems like an innocent enough statement now but was far from a sure thing this time two years ago. Last year, he improved his fielding at the position, going from one of the worst defensive second basemen in the majors to [...]
In his 10th start of 2013, Dillon Gee got knocked around by the Braves and saw his record drop to 2-6 and his ERA balloon to 6.34 after 49.2 IP. A trip to the bullpen almost seemed inevitable. Yet somehow, Gee turned his season around from that point. In his very next start he went [...]
Coming into 2013 there was a small concern regarding David Wright, given how poorly his 2012 season had ended. Overall Wright had a great year in ’12 but most of the damage was done in the first half of the season. After having a 1.004 OPS before the All-Star break, Wright had just a .750 [...]
It wasn’t the overwhelming debut of Matt Harvey but it’s hard to look at what Zack Wheeler did in his rookie season as anything other than a strong success. His overall 3.42 ERA was very nice and he pitched even better after some early struggles. After getting knocked around in his second and third MLB [...]
Of the three big additions for the Mets this offseason, Chris Young is the most controversial one. Some people only see the low batting average and wonder why Sandy Alderson bothered signing him. Some see his history as a solid defensive center fielder and worry that his signing means that Juan Lagares will be on [...]
If you ask people about Jonathon Niese and his 2013 season, the most likely answer you’ll get is that he pitched well after he returned from his shoulder injury but that his year was disappointing overall. This doesn’t give Niese enough credit for the year he turned in, which pretty much fits his career as [...]
Next up in our projection series is Juan Lagares. This time last year, Lagares hardly registered in the minds of most Mets fans. He was coming off a so-so season in Double-A and he seemed like a guy who could hit for some average but not do much else. But the planets aligned right for [...]