A serious Mets fan can easily read 20 or more articles about the team and its individual players in a typical week. There are over a dozen blogs to choose from. The New York papers usually have one or two Mets pieces each per day. There’s ESPN and other online sources. And if you’re really desperate you can listen to WFAN.
A good quarter of the articles are dedicated to describing everything in the charismatic world of Matt Harvey. David Wright gets plenty of play, some Wilpon rapping is always to be found (less so while the team is winning). But you get the idea.
The simple footsoldier normally doesn’t get much recognition unless he has done something momentous in a recent game. But they also serve and in team sports they form the base platform for the big stars to operate on.
During the offseason the Mets made a splashy move to sign free agent Michael Cuddyer, formerly of the Colorado Rockies, to a two-year $21 million contract. This signing also cost the Mets the 15th pick in June’s draft. So this was a huge thing for a team with a small market-like payroll. Since the season has begun Cuddyer has looked a whole lot like the next coming of Jason Bay but because we are just in early May it still is a bit too early to describe it as a pointless wasteful signing.
About the only other thing the club did before its end-of-spring-training-trade-for-southpaw-relievers-day was to sign John Mayberry, Jr. to a one year, $1.45 million contract. Now $1.45 million for most teams is the amount of money the cleaning crew finds in the sofa cushions of the GM’s office. But for the Mets 1-1/2 mill is considered real money.
I submit that this signing could work out very well for the Mets if this player is used as directed. Players don’t come with a Users Manual and even if they did all the managers in baseball are men and we all know that men don’t read those things unless all else has failed. To use this player properly it is necessary to understand what he can do and what he can not.
Let’s start with defense. Mayberry can play either of the corner outfield positions and he can, if necessary, play some firstbase.
In left field Mayberry is a definite improvement over Michael Cuddyer. Going back to the Strat-O-Matic ratings that Keith Hernandez and I often allude to Cuddyer is a 4 (that means bad) while Mayberry is a 3 (fair, but definitely better than a 4). In RF Mayberry’s also rated a 3 for range as is Curtis Granderson. The difference is that Mayberry’s arm rating is several steps better than Grandy’s. Translated this means he can reach third base from right field where Granderson would be hard put to do so.
At first base Mayberry was given the same range rating, 3, as Lucas Duda received. Duda has looked very good at the position this season and I strongly suspect the next card set will see him promoted to a 1b-2. Mayberry, even if he is competent at first, likely will get little play at the position because when they sit Duda it will likely be to use Cuddyer or Eric Campbell or maybe even Daniel Murphy who seems to be morphing into a utility player with the promotion of Dilson Herrera.
But the key to using Mayberry efficiently is to have him avoid facing right-handed pitchers.
Looking at his career splits we see that versus lefties he has a lifetime batting average of .268. His on base percentage vs the southpaws is .323 while his slugging percentage is .535. This gets him to an 858 OPS. I should mention that decades ago Bill James suggested that for ease of usage one should calculate the OPS by adding the OBP and SLG and then multiply that by 1000 to rid oneself of the decimal point. That’s the way I always do it.
How sweet is that 858 OPS? Here’s a list of those major leaguers who had an OPS in the range of 840 to 880 last year with a minimum of 100 at bats.
So when you sic Mayberry on a lefty you get something like these guys.
But the flip side is that for his career vs righties the player bats .223 with an OBP of .292 and slugging percentage of .363 for an OPS of 655. There’s a whole boatload of poor hitting players who had an OPS of 645 to 665 last year. Here’s just a small sampling of them:
D.J. LeMahieu
Jay Bruce (he really stunk it up last year)
Simply put when you ask John Mayberry, Jr. to face a righty you will get back in offense about what you normally get from Ruben Tejada. You don’t want that. You really don’t want that.
One would normally expect a seasoned baseball man like Terry Collins to understand this and, to his credit, he has not yet used Mayberry in a starting lineup against a righty. On the other hand, as recently as Tuesday he created a lineup with Ruben Tejada batting 6th so I wouldn’t put it past him.
Hopefully Mayberry will get his 150 or so at bats this year almost exclusively vs lefties. If he does then that $1.45 million figures to be money well spent.
I agree , and we should send a copy of this to Terry Collins 🙂
I liked the Mayberry signing in the offseason and so fare TC and Co have been using him “as directed” starts against Lefties and PH mostly against lefties. with the limited bench he has had to PH against some righties but so far it is being done right.
Cuddyer has looked pretty good in LF if you ask me. More speed than I expected and has gotten to just about everything. Perhaps because expectations were so low for his defense, but to me he looks like an avg left fielder. And while arm strength is an issue for Grandy in RF – he covers ground and is fearless going into the corner.
I agree that Cuddyer has looked like more than a total give-up in LF. I still maintain the team could have helped themselves in spring training by making Granderson the LFer and Cuddyer the RFer.
Yea… with Duda absolutely killing lefties this year to the tune of .455/.520/.591 (aided by a .500 BABIP)… there’s really no point of having Mayberry on this team.
Even if Duda regresses and “only” hits lefties to a 700 OPS, i’d much rather just roll with Duda everyday to give the lineup and him the continuity than platoon him with Mayberry.
I guess i can’t rag Sandy for the move that much, because he was signed as an insurance policy for Duda, but for now he’s pretty much useless. Hopefully he’ll ride the pine the entire year and we won’t have to see much of him.
You make some good points Name.
The absolute need for Mayberry is lessened because Duda looks quite competent this year vs lefties. Don’t know if I would be thrilled with a 700 OPS vs lefties but 750 would be fine since he’ll probably have an OPS between 850 and 900 vs righties.
Even still you can find ABs for Mayberry since Granderson is not that young and has trouble with some lefties. Cuddyer is also in need of periodic days off.
And then there are the DH games at AL parks. Against a lefty you can give Cuddy a partial day off with him DHing while Mayberry takes care of left.
There is nothing wrong with having a proven power hitting RHB on the bench to PH to put up runs quickly. Duda has really picked up his game and should only sit when he needs a rest. Mayberry will lose AB’s because of Duda’s success but Mayberry and his 838 OPS vs LHP may steal some starts from Granderson who once again has started off slowly. Mayberry at $1.5M is chump change for a good bench player on a playoff bound team. I still like the signing and it will pay dividends if TC ” uses him as directed”.
Mayberry’s splits make him a low value platoon, low use bench piece….. better to have an overpowering LH bench bat with strong platoon splits. I din’t favor the Cuddyer signing….Mayberry’s addition added to that mistake. It pretty much adds a guy “just like Cuddyer” on days that they can both play—and what days are those? It’s like adding 1.5 million to Cuddyer’s package.