As of this writing the Mets remain on the periphery of the Yoenis Cespedes market, and there’s a non-zero chance they land him. That would be rather surprising, though. Instead, it’s more likely that the team goes to war in 2016 with their current outfield alignment and perhaps another yet-to-be-signed backup. That means a platoon in center field featuring Juan Lagares and newly-acquired Alejandro De Aza. What can we expect from this seemingly underwhelming platoon?
Putting the social media rage the signing of De Aza induced aside, the bright side here is that his career wRC+ of 106 and wOBA of .331 against right-handed pitching is (a tad) above average. Likewise, Lagares’ 112 wRC+ and .327 wOBA against lefties means that the team, theoretically and on paper, has the makings of a slightly above average offensive player in center field. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the team gets the value it hopes for out of the rest of the roster. Specifically, the outfield and infield corners produce at a level that is somewhat expected, Travis d’Arnaud stays mostly healthy, and the starting rotation is even better than last season with a strong playoff showing under their collective belts. In that case, a league average offense from center field would be just fine.
The potential issue here, beyond assuming the best out of the rest of the roster, is that the left-handed hitting De Aza would be the long side of this center field platoon and his defense is questionable there at best. The last time he played center on a consistent basis was in 2013 with the White Sox when he had an UZR/150 of -4.1. In fact, whenever he’s played center regularly he’s been a net negative defensively.
If Terry Collins plays this as a traditional platoon that means that Lagares’ time on the field would be severely diminished over the course of the season. The peak 4.0 fWAR he provided in 2014 was almost entirely based on his elite defense. A traditional platoon effectively negates most of the value you get from having him on the roster at all beyond a late-inning replacement. That’s probably not what the team had in mind when they extended him before the 2015 season.
Of course, it may be the case that the team has no intention of deploying this platoon in the strictest sense. There is still hope that the 26-year-old Lagares can eventually evolve into a more well-rounded hitter. If he can move his performance against right-handed pitching closer to below average than poor, it would relegate De Aza to a more palatable backup role.
How likely is it that Lagares will evolve into that hitter, though? Well, if we weigh his performance against righties in 2014 heavily and attribute his poor showing against them in 2015 to health then there may be hope. He had a .291 wOBA and a wRC+ of 88 against right-handers in 2014. That kind of performance would put Lagares back on track as a strong starting center fielder without the need for a platoon, which gets his defense back on the field on a regular basis and again maximizes his overall value. In that sense, 2016 may be as important a year for Lagares as any player on the roster.
The outlier wasn’t what Lagares did against RHP in 2015 but rather what he did against LHP in 2014. His .875 OPS in 2014 versus lefties was 104 points higher than 2015 and 218 points higher than 2013. Last year’s mark against RHP was only 59 points lower than what he did in 2014.
Still, I think we’re better off concentrating on Lagares from a defensive POV. We all know he couldn’t throw last year. But he was just missing on balls that the previous two years he would catch. Maybe that was just bad luck, maybe he was out of shape or maybe it was something else entirely.
If you guarantee me the defensive Lagares from 2013-14, I’ll live with whatever he provides on offense. But I don’t blame Alderson for not being convinced that player is coming back.
What happened to the defensive whiz from 2013-2014? They claim he didn’t need surgery, but there were times he just flat out looked slow and/or bad.
I think the fundamental problem with looking at it either how I did or how you have here is that we still don’t quite know what he is offensively at this point, though it’s becoming clearer. Specifically, can you really ding him on the numbers he put up in his very first year as a rookie? It seems logical that he’d improve in 2014. On the flip side, can we really blame 2015 mostly on his health or did he take a step back in combination with the league adjusting? As you said, can’t really blame Alderson for being skeptical, though he did quickly sign him to that extension.
I think it’s very clear what he is offensively.
He’s not going to walk and he’s not going to hit for much power. For him to be near an average offensive player, he needs to have the hits fall in, to have the BABIP gods smile on him. That happened in 2014. It didn’t happen in 2013 or 2015 and he was well below average offensively in both those years.
At this point, I would look to tweak his swing and have him sell out for power.
I believe the reason Sandy signed DeAza is as much that he would accept the 1 year deal, while Span and Parra were going to hold out for longer. And it was not a money issue. They still believe in Lagares and want to give him every opportunity to show that he is the 5.5 WAR Lagares of 2014 and not the injured 0.6 WAR Lagares of last year. Don’t look for a conventional platoon approach with Lagares/DeAza. You are going to see Juan brought into games for defense earlier than usual, even when righties are on the mound.
Meanwhile, the platoon will play out just fine. When DeAza played CF regularly, his Fld% was only slightly below league average while his RF/9 was slightly above. I’m not so sure about the advanced defensive metrics that place him so far below average. So if we wind up with the platoon in CF (at this time there is still a remote possibility that Yoenis Cespedes will be roaming CF in Citi most of the time) we will see better than average offense coming from the 8th spot in the batting order, and average to better than average defense out there.
Lagares needs to play against both sides in order to see his value, if not there youngster in the wings
At any rate the CF platoon and/or stronger backup/bench player situation going in makes us much stronger than relying on Kirk or Mayberry Jr. I believe Lagares will have a turn around year but they need to make better use of his speed on he bases. We still need the big bat and with Davis signed by the O’s there is still a shot at a 1-2 year deal with Cespedes. We are not the contact hitters that the Royals had last year and without some who is feared in the lineup we will pitched around a lot. That puts too much pressure on the pitching staff to keeping hanging zeros on the board.
I am with Brian on this one, in that I understand why Alderson lacks faith in Lagares. He has been a black hole vs. RHP. The team turn-around in offense last season can be traced, in part, to getting Lagares out of the lineup.
Rob’s scenario sounds good — that Juan gradually establishes himself as the primary CF — except for the fact that De Aza signed for nearly $6 million. That’s not bench player money; the intention is to play this guy.
Agreed on the intention to play him, though I wonder if they maybe jumped the gun a little bit on giving him that much money in the first place. I guess if they had absolutely no intention of signing any OF to a multi-year contract it made some sense to ensure his price didn’t get any higher, but this seems like Cuddyer to a lesser extent. That is, jumping on a player and probably overpaying to get a deal done early because of a fear of getting priced out later in the off-season. Not sure how I feel about that defeatist strategy…