Recently on MetsBlog there was an article entitled, “Mets have great rotation, but are still short on depth.” In the article was a plea to sign someone like Clayton Richards (sic) or Jorge De La Rosa. Steamer projected those pitchers to post a 4.03 ERA and a 4.30 ERA, respectively. That’s good enough to be a full-time starter, even if neither one made FanGraphs’ list of top 50 free agents. The last SP on that list was Colby Lewis at #46 and Dave Cameron projected a 1/$8 million contract for him. Let’s say Richard and De La Rosa can be had for a lesser amount. Would you spend $6 million on starting pitching depth?
Before you answer that, let’s take a look and see what we should expect, starts-wise, from starting pitchers. Here’s how many starts were made by the top nine pitchers for each of the past five years for the Mets. Nine was selected as our point because that’s how many pitchers started a game in 2014 for the club.
| 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33 | 31 | 32 | 32 | 33 |
| 30 | 30 | 31 | 26 | 30 |
| 24 | 29 | 30 | 24 | 21 |
| 22 | 29 | 22 | 23 | 20 |
| 17 | 24 | 22 | 17 | 17 |
| 12 | 7 | 9 | 12 | 13 |
| 8 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 7 | 4 | 7 | 7 | 5 |
| 3 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 4 |
In 2016, the Mets pitcher with the most starts made 33, the one with the next most made 30, the one with the third most made 24 – and so on. The average of this five year sample results in the following starts:
32
29
26
23
19
11
8
6
3
On average, the top nine starters will account for 157 starts per year. So, you should plan on having at least nine pitchers. So, let’s put some names with those totals to make it a little more real.
32 – Noah Syndergaard
29 – Jacob deGrom
26 – Matt Harvey
23 – Steven Matz
19 – Robert Gsellman
11 – Zack Wheeler
8 – Seth Lugo
6 – Logan Verrett
3 – Sean Gilmartin
The order’s not important, so feel free to shift around however you’d like or substitute Gabriel Ynoa for one of the bottom names. The question is: Do you want to pay for a free agent to be one of your 7-8-9 guys and kick Gilmartin/Ynoa to the other category? Is that the best use of resources?
And what about the flip side of that equation? Would Richard or De La Rosa be happy coming here and getting fewer than 10 starts? Richard started the year in the bullpen but after being traded to the Padres, he made nine starts and posted a 2.41 ERA. He’s made 141 starts in his career and after battling back from missing the 2014 season with thoracic outlet syndrome, he’s likely looking for a full-time starting gig.
Meanwhile, De La Rosa has made 20 or more starts in eight of the last 10 years, including the last four. He only appeared in 13 games, all starts, over the 2011-12 seasons due to elbow surgery. Since 2013, he’s appeared in 112 games, making 110 starts. Seems like another guy who’d like to go somewhere to be a starting pitcher.
Neither Verrett nor Gilmartin were very good last year as a starter, so there’s nothing wrong with looking for guys to replace them. But it’s likely that we’re only talking about a handful of starts for this type of depth pitcher. So whoever the club signs needs to be open to spending the majority of the year either in the bullpen or Triple-A. Those guys are certainly available but they’re likely to be in the Jon Niese–Alfredo Simon section. Guys you can get on an NRI or an incentive-heavy deal and hope to get lucky.
The Mets figured to have somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million to spend this offseason. And you can take off $17 million from that figure now that Neil Walker has accepted the Qualifying Offer. If Yoenis Cespedes re-signs, that will eat up most of that remaining figure. Do you want whatever money is left to go to a righty bat, a seventh-inning reliever or a depth starter? Of those three choices, I’d rank depth starter a distant third.
Of course if Cespedes goes elsewhere, the Mets will likely have money for his replacement and all three items listed above. Successfully trading Jay Bruce’s salary might be another way to open up the necessary funds. But you still have to find a pitcher willing to be a part-time MLB starter. And that task gets harder, the higher up the pitching food chain that you go.
We had that inning eating, fan favorite starter insurance and we let him go.
Do you want to pay $12.5 million for a guy to make 8 starts and 30 relief appearances?
I guess the question is what will Wheeler give the Mets in 2017. If he’s able to provide the Mets with 15-20 starts then you don’t go dumpster diving. If he’s not ready by spring training then you can always wait until teams make their final cuts before the season begins.I wouldn’t sign any reclamation projects for 5-6 million dollars for 8 starts. I would expect Matz to provide at least 24 starts. So if deGrom and Syndergaard make 30+ starts then having Harvey as a 4th starter with 20-25 starts puts the Mets in at least a reasonable position. Is Harvey expected to be back at full strength in spring training? Is Wheeler?
Here’s what Adam Rubin reported on the subject:
“Harvey already has resumed long tossing a baseball since the procedure, according to Alderson.”
“(Wheeler) presumably will be good to go in spring training.”
http://www.espn.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/124824/an-amazin-cy-young-in-17-checking-in-on-mets-injury-riddled-aces
Catcher, relief pitchers, a RH bat for the bench are bigger needs. Oh, they also need to resign Yo.
Why did you do this with starts and not IP?
Last year, outside of the main 5 (Harvey, Colon, deGrom, Matz, Noah), the Mets needed about 400 IP from the depth squad, which is > 40 games.
including of 2012, RA Dickey and Colon are the only 2 people to have had 200 or more innings. I do not like GS as the singular benchmark for this exercise.
Do the Mets need more SP depth? I guess I wouldnt say it that way. I think losing a 200 IP guys means more stress for SP and certainly for RP.
Where are you getting that 400 IP from? Last year the preferred 5 had 746 IP and the 7 other guys who started games combined for 176 IP.
The Cubs had more IP from their starters than any team in the NL and they had 989 IP. If you get 746 from your preferred 5, you’re not going to get anywhere close to 400 from the depth guys. And the Mets got 126 starts from their preferred 5 in 2016, compared to the five-year average of 129 for the top five guys, so they received fewer starts than average from their top guys.
That value comes from BBRef. Adding it up its closer to 385 IP for all pitchers not classified as SP or RP. The starting 5 not named Colon summed to 556 innings.
In any event, outside the 5, and with Colon gone, lets not pretend that starting innings wont be harder to come by. Im not saying pay Colon 12M$, but I am saying outside of Noah, every other SP is coming in with a cloud over them. I think it is a high stakes decision to not have a certain innings eater aboard. Note: Im not saying its a bad move, but innings need to come from somewhere.
You’ve got to subtract out the relief innings, then.
I think it’s six one way, half a dozen the other whether to use starts or innings. I have no problem if someone wants to use innings but my opinion is that you have to jump through more hoops to use innings than starts and the extra effort isn’t worth it.
And absolutely, the innings need to come from somewhere. In my mind, we’ve got seven guys on hand who are going to cover the five-year average of 148 starts. Sure, it’s possible that multiple injuries mean those seven will provide fewer starts. It’s also possible they’ll stay healthier than last year and provide more. In 2014 the top seven produced 154 starts. In 2015 the top seven produced 156 starts. So staying healthier isn’t something that’s purely theoretical or that these guys are completely incapable of doing.
Yes, I’d like to have a better option than Verrett/Gilmartin/Ynoa for the on average remaining 24 starts. But I don’t see how that happens unless we increase payroll or we skimp somewhere else. I’d rather that we pay the $6 million for a 7th inning guy that we absolutely know we’re going to use all year long compared to a depth starter that we may or may not need for more than a token role.
Also, replacing Dickey was more daunting than replacing Colon, as he threw both more innings and with better quality.
So in a 1500 inning season I want to see about 1000 innings from a team built primarily on starting pitching. Your look at the Cubs pretty much shows how critical that turned out to be, and they have a huge offense. Now, a team like that isnt your everyday run-of-the-mill organization, and to win it all it doesnt have to be, but a team with as lousy of an offense as it has (regardless of September) needs to be superior somewhere. With a pretty much good BP, that now for sure will be taxed with a certain suspension of Familia, for the Mets its SP.
So lets get rid of Colon and see what our core of principal SP have provided in IP:
2016 – 557
2015 – 707
2014 – 650
The WS year certainly stands out because with Colon that was 900 IP for the starters. We are getting rid of those locked 200 IP and now will rely on 5 guys that have never hit 200 IP, of which 4 are coming off major surgeries.
So, with a starting rotation as heralded as ours, and linked to the real success of the team, I sure want to see 1000 innings from them. If you are telling me thats a long shot, then I think genuine depth is a necessity, as well as a definite improvement from the offense.
I’m not going to lose any sleep if the SP don’t amass 1,000 innings in 2017. Especially since none of the 30 teams in MLB had starters give 1,000 innings last year and only two clubs did it in 2015. I hope we don’t get fewer innings than the 922 we received last year. But the key is to do at least as good in those innings. I’d rather have 922 IP at a 3.61 ERA than 934.1 at a 4.33 ERA, which is what the Cardinals got last year.
I would hardly call innings from a soon-to-be 44 year old as “locked.” Colon’s at the age where he can fall off a cliff at any moment.
If you were Sandy Alderson, how would you approach the depth question? How do you go up to a guy who’s worthy of pitching 20 starts and tell him, “Yeah, we want you on the club buy you’re only going to start if one of the guys ahead of you get hurt. And by the way, I can only pay $2 million.” I have a hard time balancing all of the Mets needs and payroll and think they’re going to add the type of pitcher suggested by the MetsBlog story. I hope I’m wrong.
Finally, the offense was not just September. They scored 141 runs in September compared to 142 in August. And they averaged 4.8 runs per game in April but because they played fewer games the total doesn’t look impressive. There were three months when the offense was above average and three months where it was lousy. You saying the offense was only good in September is like me saying the offense was only bad in May.
Runs/Game rank: 12/15
runs rank: 12/15
hits rank 12/15
doubles rank 14/15
triples rank 15/15
HR rank 2/15
RBI rank 11/15
SB rank 14/15
BA rank 12/15
OBP rank 13/15
SLG rank 6/15
OPS rank 7/15
an offense nearly all carried by HR. Maybe you watched a different team, but what I saw looked pretty poor for the most part.
The idea is to score runs, not hit triples or steal bases.
I wish they did a better job of scoring runs and it certainly wasn’t much fun to watch the team in May-June-July. I think there were two things suppressing the runs scored. One was an offense that was historically bad with RISP and the other was injuries. I hope neither happens again. I think we saw at the beginning and end of the year what this offense, as flawed as it was, could do when it was reasonably healthy and reasonably fortunate.
The average NL team scored 4.4 runs per game. The Mets were better than average in April, August and September. No surprise that their record in those three months was 47-31. That’s a 98-win pace. To me, that’s not an offense that needs to be broken up or overhauled. Even if it isn’t sound on fundamentals or filled with speed.
I hope Granderson, Flores and d’Arnaud hit better with RISP next year. I hope Duda, Walker and Conforto all play in over 140 games next year.
And I also hope that we don’t panic and bring in the 2017 versions of Eric Young Jr. to up our SB and triple numbers. The Diamondbacks led the league in triples and they finished 24 games under .500 last year. The Brewers led the league in SB and they finished 16 games under .500 for the season.
People love to tinker. If only we did this or had that, they think, the offense would be perfect! I don’t care how perfectly designed your offense is – if you OPS .605 with RISP, like the Mets were in mid-August, you’re not going to be in the top of the league in runs scored.
Give the Mets league average results with RISP and they’ll win 90 or more with this offense and any kind of reasonable health.
The Mets will be able to offer Minor League deals with Player Opt Outs…if The “Big 5” are healthy from the get-go, the guys with options can pitch and opt out…. probably the best kind of deal for a “retread” looking to re-establish value….even a guy like Niese.
Neise,hmm, if healthy again he might be the ticket. He could also be a decent RP.
I agree with you. We have other holes to fill first. Rather spend the money on other needs. Loved Bartolo, but not at 12.5 million.
We’re seven deep, but could really use a better alternative to Ynoa, Verrett and Montero. It’s not a wise place to spend money, but we could take a flyer on a veteran minor league deal or maybe get someone useful in return for Bruce.
Had Bartolo Colon signed elsewhere for 3 or 4 million I think we’d all be justifiably annoyed. But to spend $12.5 million on someone who is not guaranteed a rotation spot would be foolish.
Matt, I actually think it is total peril to count on any innings from Ynoa, Verrett, and Montero. None of those are acceptable major league options to shoulder more than an injury spot start.
Where did the name Montero creep in?
Brian mentioned Gilmartin and somehow his name was replaced by Montero. While neither one thrills, at least Gilmartin has had a little success at the ML level. Let some other team try to resurrect Montero.
Spend the money on the bench or the bullpen, but I do feel apprehensive about counting on Wheeler for much.
Interesting that the two pitchers that Metsblog mentioned were both lefties, understandable due to the balance of Mets starters. However, what Alderson said about Conforto and has done with trusting the young starters, will truly be put to the test today. Today is the last day to decide on tendering Juan Rivera or not. Alderson’s moves so far this winter have been to put faith in the youngsters and inject youth into the fibers of the team. He said Conforto will play everyday, he has not even made an offer to Colon, and now he has to decide if Plawecki can handle the backup role.
I don’t see why everyone is expecting the starting pitchers to all get hurt again, but, I’m talking about Mets’ fans. I guess I should know better. The important thing is that every team needs to clear space for the youth. Even Mother Nature cannot grow a tree among thorns but rather in a cooperative and fertile environment that nurtures growth. So, when the collection of quality arms is this deep, it becomes time the team grows and moves on from the placeholders acquired over the last two or three years.
Gus, I would be surprised to imagine that “youth” is a movement of some sort. The bottom line on every team is money, and to tread water, this team needs to spend a lot of cash. Besides, I think the point is not “youth” v. “old”, but putting the best product on the grass every day. In reality, that will be a mix of ages and experiences. A youthful team like the Cubs, was anchored by key vet presence, such as David Ross, John Lester, Jake Arrietta, Jason Heyward. As much as Heyward’s lousy season had been documented, post game 7 reports were that his after rain delay dugout presence and words were the key to overcoming and winning. I am completely baffled by “play the youth” as a general baseball decision. Thats great if you have Bryant, Harper, Trout, Corea, Lindor and the like. I think it is a huge mistake to conflate that group with with Flores, TJ Rivera, Cecchini, Reynolds and the like.
On to the Mets. Conforto really has no place to go, so he will be played daily, but bet money, if mid May comes around and he’s hitting .204 and striking out 3x a game, his status will change. As for Mets pitching. Why should we all be concerned. Umm, the facts:
1. Wheeler is still not back, and has had multiple setbacks from TJ. At the start of the season it will be 24 months past surgery. Right now there is no idea what he will do in returning. Recovering from season ending surgery.
2. Since 2014, Harvey has spent 1.5 years on DL and now coming back from ToS surgery, which has little guarantee of post-operative success. Recovering from season ending surgery.
3. deGrom has had TJ surgery and season ending surgery to move his ulnar nerve in his pitching elbow. Recovering from season ending surgery.
4. Steven Matz is the poster child for injury. TJ, blisters, back problems, lat problem, bone spur in pitching elbow…he sounds a lot like TdA. Recovering from season ending surgery.
I am not predicting the Mets staff will get hurt, but lets be honest, it would hardly be surprising. I would say counting on this cohort not to spend significant DL time would be wildly surprising. I am ever hopeful that 2017 brings these guys back 100% fit and without restrictions.
What’s the basis for TO surgery having little guarantee of success? There have been so few of them (that I’m aware of) that I don’t think you can say one way or the other. You hear Beckett and Carpenter but they had way more mileage than Harvey. Matt Harrison had it and saw his velocity increase. Jaime Garcia had it and has come back and made 50 starts. Alderson reported Harvey’s already long tossing, which certainly sounds encouraging to me.
A slight correction on Matz, who has not yet had surgery for the shoulder injury that kept him out the end of the year. He did have surgery to remove the bone spur that he pitched with for several months. The bone spur surgery is not a big worry. The shoulder is another story entirely. Supposedly you can do a lot of exercise to build up the muscles around the shoulder. Hopefully rest and rehab do the trick but I don’t blame anyone for being nervous here.
As I said, there is not enough data on ToS recovery at the the elite level. Alderson and Boras have both said he is throwing freely, doing long toss etc. and that is great. But thats a long way from bearing down in a game. Both are obfuscators of the highest order protecting an asset. All I am saying is that it is also an unknown.
I never mentioned a shoulder surgery for Matz. Matz’ shoulder impingement is certainly treatable from a PT perspective. The point is that he has been sidelined for a myriad of issues (most non serious except TJ) – and DL is DL regardless. He did have season ending elbow surgery to deal with the bone spur, and multi-month recovery.
The bone spur that required surgery is not why he stopped pitching, it was the shoulder injury. Plus, he didn’t have surgery for the bone spur until after the season ended. It’s wrong to say that he had season-ending surgery.
Apologies. He did finish season on DL but it was not from surgery. Thanks for correcting that.
Chris, on this team, youth is a movement. When Collins explained to us that he doesn’t play youngsters because Leyland had told him that they cost you games, he shows that he is the biggest fool ever. While proving that he has lost more games than any youngster ever did, he forgets that Leyland took a light hitting 19 year old SS named Jay Bell and had him bunting endlessly at the #2 spot to teach him bat control. Bell went on to have a nice career and developed into a power hitting middle infielder due to the discipline Leyland taught him. Would Collins put a young outfield of Bonds, Bonilla and Van Slyke together? Please don’t say yes, that’s laughable when he wouldn’t play the Mets’ top prospects or was quick to doghouse them. Collins has never learned to invest in a player. I have seven examples of him crapping on his youngsters that I can think of, but I’m sure you remember well, too.
So, think about it: Alderson came out and said publically that Conforto will be playing everyday next year and it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet. As a GM who obviously fights the bottom line, Collins’ insistence on veterans has cost the Mets money and please don’t tell me he manages the clubhouse because it’s hard to see his players respect the crapping he consistently gives his young guys. Also, he wasn’t managing it when he threatened to send every player to Las Vegas if they didn’t perform, but yet they followed up that “motivation” by being swept at home by the Diamondbacks.
I confess, I did not follow anything of what you wrote. Conforto is playing because he cant be parked in AAA and he is cheap. And he potentially is a quality player…weve seen it in him. I am optimistic for him. I expect Bruce to be moved freeing up space in the OF. But I dont want to hear about Nimmo, Flores, Cecchini, Reynolds, TJ as the future. I’ll take a middle infield of Droobs and Walker all day every day over any pair of “youth” we have ready to go.
I wasn’t talking about those five players, all I said is its nice to let youth advance.
While you may not like Nimmo, he can fly, he hit the longest homerun by a lefty Mets hitter at Citifield last year, and when allowed to bat at the top of the order as is his comfort area, his numbers were very good. While you don’t like Flores, he plays a pretty good second base, not too many middle infielders are 20+ homerun threats, and he carried the Mets for about a month. While you don’t like Cechinni, he almost knocked down the left field fence with a ringing double in one of the very few at bats he was given. He knows how to barrel a pitch and those guys develop power later. Reynolds is a AAAA player. Rivera is a backup.
Chris, young players have value too, and if you don’t let them grow another team will. Look at Turner, or Pagan; Even championship teams find room for youngsters. Only Collins can’t.
Of course young players have value, if in fact they are valuable players. I dont imagine there is an everyday major leaguer in Nimmo, Flores, Cecchini, Rivera, or Reynolds. Just throwing them out there because they are young is not a baseball decision — like to win a Championship. Walker and Cabrera is a great baseball decision. I will say I am very much looking forward to Rosario’s arrival for sure.