The Mets seemingly have their temporary 1B solution in place, having traded for minor leaguer James Loney. This is a move of which the majority of the fanbase approves. Put me in the minority. This move seems like one that Sandy Alderson would have made three years ago. A low budget, uninspiring deal which shows a shocking lack of creativity. In a word, lazy.
If you’ve ever played in a fantasy league, you’ve encountered the guy who’s in the league but who’s really not invested. His first couple of picks are fine and then he starts overdrafting people in the middle rounds, picking up name players who are still active but who are no longer good. But they were good three years ago when he used to really follow the game. To me, that’s what this Loney move is like.
In 2013, Loney played in 158 games, had a 117 OPS+, had a +4 DRS and a +6.1 UZR. It was a great return for the Rays, who picked him up on a cheap one-year contract. That season earned Loney a 3/$21 deal. In 2014, his OPS+ dropped to 106 and his defensive numbers fell into negative territory, with a (-1) DRS and a (-1.5) UZR. Then last year, Loney put up a 91 OPS+ and again was a negative on defense, with a (-2) DRS and a (-2.4) UZR. Those defensive numbers are counting stats and Loney didn’t play a full season. He had a (-5.4) UZR/150.
The Rays were so unenthused by his play that they released him prior to the start of this year, on the hook for his $9.667 million salary. Loney earns more money from the Rays this year than everyone on their roster except Evan Longoria. Releasing him was not an easy financial decision for a club with an Opening Day payroll that didn’t even reach $70 million.
No one wanted Loney and he ended up with a minor league deal with the Padres. They sent him to the PCL, which we know is a pretty good hitter’s league. MiLB.com has 2015 park factors and those showed El Paso, Loney’s 2016 home park, with run and hit factors better than Las Vegas, which edged El Paso in HR factors.
Loney had a .797 OPS at El Paso, a mark that was seventh-best on his team among those with at least 100 PA. The team average was .853 and that includes pitchers. The idea that Loney went to Triple-A and found his flaw or fixed his swing is simply not true. His numbers look superficially acceptable because he played in a hitter’s park in a hitter’s league.
Expecting Loney to come up and provide solid offense is akin to expecting the same thing from Matt Reynolds.
The Mets gave no thought to promoting Triple-A first baseman Marc Krauss. No doubt they looked at his .791 OPS and found it uninspiring. Too bad they didn’t follow that same logic with Loney.
You would think this would have been the perfect chance to get Wilmer Flores in the lineup on a regular basis. The one benefit of having Flores at first base is that he isn’t responsible for corralling throws from Flores on any other spot on the diamond. Both Asdrubal Cabrera and Neil Walker make strong, accurate throws to first. Instead, they went dumpster diving and brought in a guy who gets the majority of playing time if they run a straight platoon. It’s not a ringing endorsement of Flores.
They rejected the ideas of moving either Michael Conforto or David Wright to first base and it’s hard to argue with either decision. Mainstream media writers rejected the idea of moving Walker to first, although you wonder how much thought team brass gave the idea. This would have been my preferred solution, allowing the team to give some consistent playing time to Dilson Herrera at second base. But Herrera hasn’t been tearing the cover off the ball here lately, so it’s at least partly understandable why they went in another direction.
Someone who has been tearing the cover off the ball is Juan Lagares. It would be nice to get him in the lineup but it would have been a waste to have him play first and they already rejected moving Conforto. There’s no way Yoenis Cespedes is moving. Which brings us to Curtis Granderson.
As the oldest guy and the one with the worst throwing arm, isn’t it just a little surprising that no consideration was given to moving Granderson to first base? Granderson still moves well and always seems involved in the action. One would think he would have the skills to handle the move to the infield and first base. This would have been my second solution.
Instead we have the Loney era. May we end up remembering it better than the Rick Ankiel era.
Forgive me, but I’m taking my comment from another thread and re-posting here where it is relevant:
>> I think the Loney acquisition was a solid organizational move. A minor upgrade.
As fans — and usually I try to avoid this type of thinking — we want to start moving players all over the field. Herrera at 3B! Conforto in RF! D’Arnaud at 1B! And so on. In this case, cooler heads prevailed. For a minimal cost, the Mets added a quality glove to 1B. A LH bat who has been there, done that. They did this at a time when Ty Kelly was on the roster. And Matt Reynolds. And Eric Campbell.
So, yes, surely there’s room for Mr. Loney. He can get some starts against RHP, and the Mets can respond accordingly.
From another perspective: If he was in AAA Las Vegas, he would have been the obvious call-up. So the Mets effectively moved him from San Diego AAA to NY AAA, and then called him up as a fill-in, veteran bat. Not a wide-eyed kid, mouth agape, saying, “Wow.” This is the right role for him. If it works, great. If not, no loss.
I know that some of you here were on the Loney bandwagon from the beginning. I hope you saved a seat for me. <<
Marc Krauss is 28 years old and has three years experience in the majors. He’s in the system and has numbers very similar to Loney. They didn’t call him up.
This is not avoiding calling up a rookie. This is the recycled veteran who’s more appealing because he’s in someone else’s system train that we’ve seen before. Yes, he’s likely to be an upgrade over the flotsam that’s currently on the roster. But if you’re going to go through the trouble of upgrading, why not aim higher?
Would you replace the broken step in your house that has three cracks with a step that only has two cracks?
Marc Krauss?
Marc Krauss?!
The part-time, fill in role is best handled by a veteran who has a body of success under his belt. Sandy’s mistake this year with the bench has been to go with cheap, inexperienced players. It’s not an accident that the Mets helped turn things around when they traded for Uribe and Johnson. That said, if Smith was ready and able to contribute now, I believe the Mets would have called him up.
Money was a solid organizational move. A modest upgrade.
I would have been in favor of getting a veteran who was producing at a good rate in the majors, like what they did with Johnson and Uribe last year. The Mets did not do that. They got a guy who was producing at an unremarkable rate in the PCL who hasn’t been good since 2013.
This is an excellent move. Loney is a career .285 hitter who makes contact and does not strike out frequently like many players do these days. This move was not made to get points or to bolster/fortify a fantasy roster like the article seems to be harping on- that’s an extremely ill-informed comment which is ignorant to how the game and business of baseball is actually played. The last thing anyone wants to do is try plugging in anyone on the roster into 1B- that shows a complete lack of understanding and respect for the position and the game itself. He has an excellent playoff record and according to recent scouting reports Loney’s defense is near gold glove caliber and he makes alot of contact.
Yeah, would you be so kind as to link to those scouting reports?
The word from scouts are given in practically every article written about Loney since this became a story. Again, plugging everyone on the roster there without any experience (even Wright, Conforto, etc.) isn’t the answer… and he was cut at the very end of spring training when team’s rosters were set. The Rays seldom if ever operate in win now mode so they’re certainly not the standard by any means and SD already has two 1Bs on their roster… Myers & Wallace… that’s why there was the player opt-out in his contact- same as with Henderson’s deal.
Your original comment said recent scouting reports. Please provide a link to a recent scouting report regarding his defense.
Link? Nowhere was it said nor implied there is a link to a scoring repor. Now is not the time to play internet attorney… read an article or two about him leading up to the deal.
So, it’s hearsay.
At one point Loney was a good defensive 1B. Now he’s not. If there’s a scouting report that says otherwise, I’d love to see it. Otherwise it’s lazy columnists remembering him from years ago.
The Mets could be saving their dry powder (prospects, cash) for later, closer to the trading deadline, when there may be better players available for upgrades.
Also, if you think 1B is Duda’s, then this is a temporary fix until he’s ready. I’m not wild about Duda, never have been, but he’s not going anywhere soon.
So to recap, your first choice is to move Walker to first base, a position he’s never played. (but really to get Dilson to the majors)
Your second choice is to move Granny to first base (who by the way is hitting as badly as Loney last year), which would probably result in Lagares and his career .669 OPS in the lineup.
How is that any better than Loney?
My opinion for replacements is that you want to get the guy who isn’t going to hurt you the most, aka, i’d prefer the guy with the highest floor rather than a high ceiling/low floor guy.
Loney in his 8 full seasons has posted an OPS+ of below 91 just twice. Also, when you have enough major league experience, i’d rather look at his major league stats than his current minor league ones. Krauss has similar minor league numbers as Loney this year, but has never posted an OPS+ of more than 67 in the majors, with a career rate of 62. You could argue they might have similar expected production (which i would disagree), but it’s no question that Loney would have a higher floor than Krauss.
On a positive note i’m glad you dropped the idea of Campbell and didn’t mention him at all. May OPS… down to .560
What do you think Loney’s floor is? I’d say it’s at the sub-.600 level. My expectation is that he’ll give something like a .320/.350 line. Granderson, with all of his problems so far this year, has a .712 OPS. I wouldn’t put his floor much beneath that.
It seems odd that you think he could do as badly as sub 600 when his lowest in the last 10 years is .630. I get that you’re probably using your PCL->ML conversion, but with a veteran, wouldn’t you rather look at his major league track record instead of converting a 40-game sample size?
My guess for the floor is probably about the 650 mark but my expected production would probably be 690-700.
His floor alone is probably better than guys like Lagares, Campbell, Rivera and many of the options at AAA.
No, I meant sub .600
The only way he’s successful is if he runs a high BABIP. If he has a Granny-like .225 BABIP, he’d be in the low .500s
Given his history, it’s not likely that he would run one that low. But he put up a .269 mark in 2012, so I don’t think a .250 mark is out of the question when we’re talking floor. Especially given that mark was when he should have been in his prime. He’s not gotten faster and he hasn’t added power since then.
The ISO isn’t going to be much, he really needs to have the hits fall in to be useful.
You edited your comment, so let me address that.
I did not use the LVG MLE. But let’s see what would happen if we did —
What he’s done in El Paso would be a .302/.280
LVG is more of a power park, so my guess is that SLG translation is a little low. The important thing is that this is not a translation for floor – but rather what he’s actually done.
Regardless, I think the important thing is that your projected floor is not far from my expected outcome. You see him as someone within a very tight area, with a floor of around .650 and likely around .695 whereas I see him with much more variance, with a floor of about .575 and expected around .670
I guess we should define what we feel are floors.
I define floor at 25th percentile of production, expected as 50th percentile of production and ceiling as 75th percentile so that explains my decreased variance.
If you are defining Loney’s floor as sub .600 you must be defining it as something very low like 5 or 10th percentile.
You never explicitly stated in your article, but do you project any of the other Met options (for who would be taking the unoccupied spot) would be better than a floor of .575/expected of .670?
My feeling is 25/75 is too low in both directions for floor/ceiling. I’d prefer 10/90 and wouldn’t argue with someone who said 5/95. Also, I think we need to establish that you need to have some minimum, consistent playing time. I’d like to see 200 PA but I don’t think Loney’s going to get that many. Is 125 PA enough?
Loney had a 35-game stretch last year (124 PA) where he put up a .557 OPS. Of course everyone has good and bad stretches, which is why there has to be some minimum. He also had a 143-PA stretch where he had a .740 OPS.
I think Lagares’ floor is similar to Loney’s but I’d put both his expected and his ceiling at a higher rate. The Dilson had a .677 OPS last year in sporadic playing time and everyone treated it like it was horrible production. His final 27 games (6 in Sep/Oct) he had a .753 OPS with a .273 BABIP. I think the Mets are missing a golden opportunity to give him six weeks of consistent playing time and seeing what they could get.
The argument for Loney is he didn’t cost anything, he’s likely to produce at least as good as Campbell and if he doesn’t, you move on and make an acquisition near the trade deadline if Duda isn’t back. But they didn’t have to give up any money to acquire Herrera, they didn’t have to make a 40-man roster move to play him and if he flops, you send him back to Triple-A and make a move.
I’d rather ask Walker to play a new infield position than get a guy who plays the position but is in free fall. If the Mets had gotten a veteran with first base experience who was performing consistently in the majors – like Kelly Johnson last year – I would have gotten behind that move. But they went out of the org to try to catch lightning in a bottle.
I respect the consistency of your perspective Brian, although in this case, and ones similar, I disagree with it. Loney is a solid, if not spectcular move. I do not carry high expectations and imagine he will be the anti Duda, a small swing, on-bace guy that will score runs. I expect him to play the position at a level we have not seen in some time. The Mets have no time to experiment with novices or reassignments, or bringing up people from below.
I’ll take Loney all day, every day over any option presently befronting the squad.
Loney is a better player than Kelly and Reynolds (and Krauss, since he has now been added to the discussion). Loney is fulfilling the 24th or 25th place on the roster. When Duda gets back then in all likelihood Loney will get cut as he doesn’t have the positional flexibility of Campbell. If Duda isn’t ready to come back by the trade deadline because his condition is worse than diagnosed, then the Mets could look to get a solid first baseman. Meanwhile, Loney gets starts at first base along with Flores and fills the six week gap until Duda comes back.
You are expecting Campbell to be here in July? I don’t expect him to make it to June!
I don’t have a problem with Loney, per se. The guy can play the position and he used to be a good contact hitter (though devoid of power). In his prime, he’d have been good in the 2 hole with the Mets current lineup. But… I would still give Flores the starting job at first until or unless he proves he can’t handle it. His bat is certainly more valuable in the lineup than Loney’s at the respective stages of their careers. Krauss does nothing for me. Nor does the idea of moving any of their other assets around the diamond. Loney or no, the Mets are going to have to get some quality players for the bench, as they did last year with Johnson and Uribe, if they want to win the division this year. We’ve been watching this movie for too many years to believe the bench we currently have (some of it forced by injuries) is major league.
You’re talking Terry Collins. Flores is screwed. Can’t wait to see him be a decent player on another team, or have a chance under a real manager.
I like the Loney pickup, but Flores would need to be twice as good as Loney to make up for his lack of experience, lack of defense, lack of veteranship, etc.
Flores is screwed for 1 reason. He is not a capable major leaguer except somewhere down near 24 or 25. Hes a defensive liability everywhere but 2B.Coming off the bench, he is not a solid hitter. It leaves him in total limbo — not good enough to play every day to get the PAs he needs to have a bat and not good enough of a bat to even play off the bench on a post-season caliber team. This is not TCs fault. We have a huge dearth of league average guys that fill 25 spots.
Chris, Flores is a middle infielder and I can start naming a ton of guys worse that are starting. Further, I cannot share that opinion with you because the reason veterans are mostly used as bench strength and not youngsters, is it is considers the most difficult thing to do. Now, if you are a Campbell, Neuwenheis, Reynolds, it’s your only choice. I would think Flores is way above that.
I hope Wright is out for a long, long time. Mean as it sounds, this time needs to move on from his high maintenance Prima Donna act. He adds nothing but a great smile, and while I want to embrace our captain, his production. Leaves me wanting Herrera in his spot and Flores/Loney at first in a 67/33 split.
Wilmer Flores is hitting .170 and you are ranting on the manager?
I realize that Wilmer isn’t that bad — he’s had inconsistent playing time and then got injured when the club needed him most — but the reality is that he’s looked lost all season long. Tentative, unsure of himself.
I think his poor play — the guy didn’t even hit in Binghamton — forced the Mets hand at first base. They simply couldn’t count on Wilmer showing up. It could be that he’s not suited for his role, but what’s the alternative? Make him a starter?
Bottom line: He has an opportunity to show the Mets what he’s got. He has a job in MLB. Now he needs to make something of it — and it is entirely up to him.
I think Loney’s biggest asset is being not-Eric-Campbell…