T.J. Rivera had a great year last season. He raked in the minors at Las Vegas and when he finally got a chance to perform in the majors, he continued to hit. Rivera posted an .821 OPS and a .346 wOBA in 113 PA with the Mets last year. Because of 40-man roster issues, and perhaps others, he found himself behind both Matt Reynolds and Ty Kelly last year. Now that Rivera is on the 40 himself, that shouldn’t happen in 2017.
Still, it’s hard to see how he fits, at least initially. The starting infield seems set and Wilmer Flores and Jose Reyes seem to have the inside track for the backup slots. So, is Rivera left waiting for the inevitable injury to David Wright or does he have another path to the majors? It seems to me he has two other options potentially available.
If the Mets go north with Jay Bruce, Michael Conforto and Curtis Granderson as their starting outfield, would they want a righty OF bat to pair with Juan Lagares on the bench? Rivera did play a tiny bit in the OF last year in the minors and his position would be more “hitter” than “fielder,” anyway. The other thing not discussed much is if Flores will be ready to go on Opening Day. His injury lingered last year and he ended up having surgery on his hamate bone, an injury well known for sapping power in the short run. If Flores can’t repeat his 16 HR in 335 PA pace of a year ago, isn’t Rivera a more appealing option?
TRADER SANDY – That doesn’t just roll off the tongue, does it? If asked to name Sandy Alderson’s biggest trade while leading the Mets, nearly everyone would say the Yoenis Cespedes deal, which certainly was big. Other big trades include ones for Bruce, Tyler Clippard, Kelly Johnson and Addison Reed. But all of those deals came after the season started. What’s the biggest deal that Alderson has made in the offseason or during Spring Training? Is it the one for Andres Torres or Jerry Blevins? We all know past performance is no guarantee of future results. But gun to your head, would you expect a pre-Opening Day trade of Bruce?
WHO’S THE FIFTH STARTER? – For argument’s sake, let’s assume every starting pitcher candidate shows up healthy and ready to go for Spring Training. The first four are obvious choices but who has the inside track for the fifth slot? Certainly by name recognition it would be Zack Wheeler, hands down. Wheeler has both the pedigree and the results in the majors to be a worthy fifth starter. But isn’t the fact that he’s thrown exactly one inning of competitive ball the past two years at least somewhat troubling? What’s more important, that Wheeler had a stretch of 18 starts in 2014 where he was really good or that he hasn’t faced an MLB hitter in 26 months and counting?
Is 23.2 IP, the most than any Mets pitcher recorded last year in Spring Training, enough to gauge the effectiveness and/or readiness of Wheeler? Regardless of how he does in Grapefruit League play, wouldn’t the prudent thing to do be allow him to throw competitive innings in the minors to start the season? Wouldn’t you rather see him scrape off the remaining rust in Las Vegas, where the results don’t matter nearly as much?
My preference is to see Robert Gsellman break camp as the team’s fifth starter. That’s not in any way, shape or form a knock on Wheeler. Instead it’s an acknowledgment that what Gsellman did last year in his brief time was very impressive. If you were going to build a pitcher from scratch, you’d give him a high strikeout rate and a high ground ball rate and Gsellman did both of those things better than Wheeler did in his debut season.
While Wheeler checked in with a 3.42 ERA, 4.17 FIP and 4.21 xFIP in his first exposure to the majors, Gsellman posted 2.42/2.63/3.38 marks, respectively. Yes, Wheeler pitched more innings in 2013 than Gellman did in 2016, more than twice as much. But Gsellman was doing this pitching in 2016, which is way more than Wheeler can say.
There’s a school of thought, more prevalent in the NFL than MLB, that a starter should never lose his job to injury. But Tony Romo, as good as he’s been throughout his 127-start career, finds himself sitting behind Dak Prescott. And Romo didn’t miss two years, either. Perhaps an NFL-MLB comparison is a stretch. Still, gifting Wheeler the fifth starting job if healthy seems to be a less than ideal way to approach the season.
Niese for Walker
Indeed – good call.
Have to admit, i thought keeping Niese and Herrera and foregoing Walker was the right play. There’s still time for me to be right!
Herrara and for Bruce? Someone’s rolling in their grave.
I really hope we get a healthy Wheeler. I was watching a highlight reel the other day to remind me how nasty his stuff is.
Let’s not overlook the granddaddy of all Sandy trades – RA Dickey and Josh Thole for Travis d’Arnaud and Noah Syndergaard.
Oh man, I’m not doing well today…
An even better call.
Too, the Byrd/Buck trade for Herrera/Black seemed to be a rip-off at the time, but Herrera will be in Cincinnati and what ever happened to Black anyway?
His strike zone was measured by area code!
Brutal…
Black never seemed to bounce back from a back injury.
I think due to the probability of injury/failure to recover from previous injury to the pitching rotation there will be sufficient starts for both Wheeler and Gsellman.
Memory can be faulty, especially mine, but I remember Zach Wheeler as a talented pitcher who struggled to get through six innings. True, some of that struggle might have been the product of pitching with less than optimal health.
However, until Wheeler can show that he can be productive on a consistent basis, I agree with Brian that Gsellman is the better choice, at least in the early part of the season.
If Wheeler has any sort of pitch restriction to start the season and can’t throw 100 pitches, in no way shape or form should he be on the major league roster as a starter.
At 100 pitches, he routinely struggles to pitch 6. Supposedly control is the last element to be regained after TJ surgery, and he already had suspect control to begin with, so we could be talking about a 4 inning pitcher if he’s only allowed to go 80-90, which would unduly tax the bullpen.
And this leads to another point of if we should baby him this time around. No doubt the cause of his last injury was because of the abuse of TC allowing him to throw 110+ pitches in 13 of his 32 starts (in comparison deGrom, Noah, and Matz didn’t combine to throw that many starts of 110+ in 2016).
Wheeler’s only under contract for 2017 and 2 more seasons. Do we just go for broke and try to get the most out of him before we say adios?
Lets start with TJ… The Bronx-native is a hitter. In many ways, he appears to be a right-handed hitting Daniel Murphy, but with a slightly better defensive projection. Rivera has raked at every level and would have likely ended up as a regular if Walker had moved on and Wright was limited to few appearances. It will be a shame if he is relegated to Vegas. But his ascendancy seems to depend on the vacancy of others. Should Cespedes sign elsewhere, why not platoon TJ with Conforto for some real offensive production in LF? Just as certainly, the Mets can platoon in CF with Granderson or Nimmo matching with Lagares, which leaves RF to Bruce. The sad fact is that The Captain’s health issues really affect the depth chart in innumerable ways. TJ Rivera is a keeper and should be given at platoon role at the very least.
As for the fifth starter… I guess we have to assume that Syndergaard, deGrom, Harvey and Matz will all be healthy and ready to compete. If so, Gsellman and Lugo should have the upper hand due to their sensational starting records during the second half of 2016. These two have to be viewed more seriously by the Metsecutives than by the fan base, who seem to have a soft spot for Wheeler. The Mets brass may see Lugo as a terrific bullpen option, but he was even better as a starter. Frankly, the Mets would be wise to go with a six-man rotation during April/May and have Wheeler throw every 6th day at Vegas during the same period before finalizing a plan for the balance of the season.
TJ has earned his way up the infield the depth chart behind Reyes and Flores. If rosters expand to 26 then TJ should make the team. If not, then using him as a fifth outfielder (hitter) makes sense. He is 27 and has proven himself at AAA whereas the younger, more talented Nimmo should not be sitting on the Met bench.
Harvey had lost feeling in this fingers. Wheeler has not pitched in two years. Neither should just be penciled in, especially if they are not ready. Gsellman should get a fair shot at the starting rotation.
So it should be remembered gsellman threw about 150 innings and so I expect he will be capped. I get he had a nice call up, but the sample size is so small, I’m not sure what can be predicted. Wheeler will clearly be capped. Spring should be interesting for this competition, but I expect both to be around.
I like Rivera as a Bench Piece…I’m not ok with paving a road for him to get ab’s. He provides them with an option to allow guys to develop at AA/AAA while he fills a bench roll. His see pitch-hit Pitch approach makes for a good bench bat, and his ability to be “not brutal” at several gloves provides the flex you need at that roster spot.
Every time I hear D Wright’s name mentioned, I wince—I’m figuring that it represents at least 60-80 games of a bench that is effectively Shortened because he will never prowl the bat rack in late innings on days he doesn’t start. I think they need to address this very aggressively based on what they actually see in Spring Training. It’s fairy tail recover or Bust, in my opinion—you cannot carry this guy if he’s a dead spot in so many games.
2nd Thought—maybe they play him for 20-30 games, and disable him several times…. is that possible? He starts and plays continuously, then gets 2 weeks off