Reading another Mets site and came across this passage – “No matter what the Mets do — and whether it’s via free agency or trade … center field must be addressed.” There’s a word that comes to mind reading that. And the word is:
Hogwash
There was a must for the Mets coming into the offseason and that was to add to the starting rotation. And they did that with Marcus Stroman, Carlos Carrasco and Joey Lucchesi. If there was a second must, it was at catcher, where the Mets added James McCann.
The Mets didn’t need to upgrade at shortstop but they did, getting Francisco Lindor. And the same thing holds true at center field. They don’t need to “address” center but perhaps they’ll do something there. Yet, it’s a hundred miles from a sure thing if they can actually upgrade, though, with George Springer now off the board.
People love to talk about being strong defensively up the middle. But at the end of the day, you have to look at a player’s total contributions to winning. Just because Player A is great at defense, doesn’t mean he does more to push the team forward compared to Player B, who is great at offense.
Lets’ look at another key up-the-middle position – shortstop. The 1986 Mets featured Rafael Santana there as their primary starter and he was strong defensively. Meanwhile, the Indians had Julio Franco at short, who was so bad defensively that two years later he would move to second base. We don’t have the standard advanced defensive metrics available for ’86, the best we have is Total Zone. TZ has Santana at +9 and Franco at (-5).
The glossary at FanGraphs breaks down what a TZ number means. A 10 in a season is the equivalent of a “great” defensive player, while a (-5) is someone who is “below average.” Essentially, Santana was 1.5 wins better defensively at shortstop than Franco in ’86.
Of course, fielding is only part of the equation. Franco had a 105 wRC+ in ’86, while Santana posted a 49 mark in the category. Additionally, Franco was a negative baserunner that season, while Santana was league average. Add it all together and Franco held a 2.4 fWAR edge over Santana, despite Santana’s far superior defense and better baserunning.
Undoubtedly, there will be people who say that the ’86 Mets were so good offensively that all they needed was someone to catch the ball to play shortstop. And from a strict 1986-only point of view, those people are right. But what about when everything else doesn’t go right? What about, say, 1987? Santana was still a better defensive player but Franco put up better offensive and baserunning numbers than he did in ’86. It’s possible – although not a slam dunk – that playing the offensively superior Franco at SS in ’87 over the Santana-Bill Almon combo that the Mets did would have resulted in a division title and a chance to defend their championship, even with all of the other stuff that went wrong that year.
Things are going to go wrong and you don’t want to count on others to pick up the offensive slack from carrying a defense-first player as a starter. The last time the Mets made the World Series, they took off when, among other things, they replaced defensive whiz Juan Lagares and his 79 wRC+ in CF with Yoenis Cespedes and his 156 wRC+. And that’s even though Cespedes had a (-19.5) UZR/150 in his time in center with the Mets.
Now that Springer has signed with the Blue Jays, you hear a lot of fans talking about Jackie Bradley Jr. as someone the Mets should get to play CF. And to state the obvious, Bradley is a terrific defensive player. And last year he was really good offensively, too. Bradley put up a 120 wRC+, which is 30 points better than what he did in both 2019 and 2018 and 31 points better than what he did in 2017.
As you might imagine, the hits fell in last season for Bradley. He posted a .343 BABIP, which wasn’t as outrageous as Michael Conforto’s .412 mark, yet was still 48 points above his career mark in the category coming into 2020. And the increase in his wRC+ was almost entirely the result of singles falling in. Yes, there was a slight bump (9.9 to 10.6) in his BB% but his ISO fell from .196 in 2019 to .168 last year, with his 2020 ISO within five points of his career mark in the category.
If you look at Bradley’s FG page, two of the projection systems have an fWAR forecast for him. Steamer has him at 1.3 while ZiPS has him at 1.5 for 2021. Both of these computer models show him being a better defensive player than he was in 2019 – his last full season – yet still a below-average player.
Meanwhile, Steamer and ZiPS both have Nimmo putting up a worse defensive year than he’s ever had in the majors. But both models still have him as a better player than Bradley. Steamer gives Nimmo a 2.7 fWAR and ZiPS gives him a 2.5 mark. And for what it’s worth, Steamer and ZiPS both massively undervalued Nimmo offensively in 2020, a season where his BABIP ended up below his career mark, not 48 points above it.
As Nimmo (and Bradley and Conforto, too) proved last year, projections aren’t perfect. What they are, rather, is the best estimate we have of a player’s true talent level. And that’s what you should be making decisions based upon – talent, rather than fortune.
Random things happen all of the time. And that’s a good thing. If we could predict what would happen with 100% accuracy, there would be little or no reason to watch. Still, we don’t want to forecast, or worse yet – chase, randomness. Odds are massively against Bradley putting up a .343 BABIP again in 2021 or any future season.
Pulling numbers out of thin air, let’s say that Bradey has just a 5% chance of putting up a BABIP within a few points of his 2020 number. Let’s also say the Mets ignore that and sign Bradley anyway. And then he goes out and puts up a .340 BABIP in 2021. That would be a great outcome for the Mets. It would also be the equivalent of taking two dice and rolling a combined total of three. It absolutely could happen – but you wouldn’t want to wager on it.
And when you’re assembling the team in your mind or on paper, what you want to do is to maximize your chances of a good outcome. You want your wagers to be on rolling a seven, not rolling a three.
You don’t maximize your chances at winning by ignoring true talent level in favor of narrative. And just among narratives, the story that the Mets must address center field is a pretty poor one. You’d think anyone who experienced the Mets in 2015 would recognize how foolish that particular one is.
Brian,
As always you make a lot of sense. I just saw way too much of Nimmo in CF and Dom in LF. I was hoping for Springer in CF, Nimmo in LF, and Dom on 1B with Pete the DH. I thought that would be a big upgrade for next year…in 3 years, maybe not.
One interesting thing is how can Springer be a plus defender in CF but have a negative DRS in RF? Could it me because of his arm?
Welcome John – great to see you at the new site!
Springer’s (-3) DRS in RF last year came in 53 innings, which is a tiny sample and strange things can happen in short time frames. The one year he played RF full-time in 2016, he had a +5. His year with the next-most innings, he had a +7.
Also, it looked like DRS is docking him for his range last year. Looks like he didn’t get to a couple of balls that he should have compared to other RF. So, it wasn’t his arm dragging down his rating.
You are an expert at the new stats. Thanks again.
Terrific post, Brian!
If there’s no DH, then I’m OK with Nimmo in CF and Smith playing a lot in LF.
If there’s a DH, then I would like to see a better fielding CFer, with Nimmo moving over to LF.
And for the latter option, we need to sign a RH batter. My pick would be Kevin Pillar (32 years old, 2.5 WAR for 2019-2020)
Good Morning Brian.
This is a tough one. I certainly see your point and I really like what Brandon Nimmo brings to the game as well, but I am a proponent of maximizing the value of players by not playing them out of their best position, as well as a big fan of great defense, particularly up the middle.
With that said, I would absolutely like to see them sign Jackie Bradley, Jr. to a reasonable contract (3 years $28M ? ) and move Nimmo to left. Now it becomes what I view as the real question, is Dom’s bat in left field worth more than JBJ’s glove in center? The DH decision would solve that problem in a hurry, but even without it, I think JBJ in center, with Nimmo in left, Dom and Pete trading at-bats at first is the better team.
A second point is that great defense automatically makes better pitching. Now I get it that the Mets staff last year was a mess, but without going through every ball hit last year, maybe, just maybe, if (a) more balls that were hit in gaps were caught or (b) the pitchers had more confidence to throw to contact, the results would have been better. There were times when innings were extended because of the lack of good defensive execution. It’s not just the earned vs. the unearned runs that are the story. I apologize for not spending the time to deep dive into stats for balls caught vs. not, etc., and my thought process might be wrong, but I just feel that good ‘D’ lifts the entire team.
My last thought on JBJ is the added team speed. Although not a high base stealer, he does add a speed element to the basepaths that Smith, Alonso, Davis, McCann, McNeil, or even Nimmo and Conforto do not.
On another note, I have been struggling over the last couple days to put thoughts down on another topic that has struck me – that of the imbalance that permeates the entire organization.
It is hard to see exactly where and how to spend the money to build the best 2021 team, but also set up for 2022 thru 2024 and beyond. The centerfield discussion is part of this. I think there is another bigger piece to be written concerning the entire issue.
The big unknown in all of this is how good Dominic Smith is.
The Steamer and ZiPS projections have him being in the same ballpark as Bradley overall – a below-average regular. I think the power he showed the past two years is real. But he’s not going to post a .368 BABIP in 2021.
His production last year pro-rates to a 4.9 fWAR over a 162-game season. If the power is real, the defense is the same as last year and the BABIP falls back significantly — what do you have? I guess I have a hard time thinking he’ll be worth less than 2.5 fWAR
As 69 writes, it’s always best to maximize your players’ best qualities by putting them in the best position to succeed. But I disagree on whether some players can fake it at a position. Nimmo can fake it in CF and I wrote a piece on the center fielders of the last 10 championship teams last month, and Nimmo was certainly not an outlier defensively or overall. In fact he was better than a few.
However, I don’t like Smith in LF. Alderson has straight up said that Smith isn’t a left fielder and I agree. I’ve banged the drum since November of trading whoever they get the best deal for, Alonso or Smith. Even with the DH, Alonso wants to play the field we learned in a short sample the DH will affect him. Anyone think in a large sample it won’t? So, he’ll have another less than happy year with not good numbers and a decreasing value.
I don’t know if the Brew Crew will trade Cain for Matz, and I don’t know if the Rays want to play ball on Kiermeier and something for Alonso or Smith, but if either is on the table, I go there first. If not, Bradley is the best CF left, sign Bradley.
There was some chatter a while ago on one of the sites .. not sure if it was this one or Mack’s, but it never seemed to go anywhere: Can Pete play left field as well as Dom? Can he be coached to? If so, swap the two and play the far better fielder (Smith) at first and the equally poor fielder in left.
I wonder . . .
Smith was an outfielder in high school, so he has experience on the grass. Alonso was a third baseman in high school, he doesn’t even have any mobility to call upon. In A+Ball, the Mets tried Alonso at 3B. It lasted like two or three games. Smith never played the outfield in the minors.
I really don’t like the idea of trading either Alonso or Smith – it is the depth discussion we have had all winter. If they trade Smith, and Alonso goes down for 6 weeks with a high ankle sprain or broken hand, then what? Martinez? Ugh.
Somehow they have to just figure out a way to rotate players to get them the at-bats and playing time they need. Also, if they are a better team with Smith at first and Alonso at DH, then that is how they need to do it. If Alonso wants to play in the field, then he gets a lot better or they can trade him somewhere they don’t have anyone better.
Trade Alonso? Heaven forbid… among the five best things ever to happen to the Mets… Pete Alonso.
I think Almora is the better option to Bradley. Younger, cheaper, RH hitter (a must). Bradley may have already peaked in his career, where Almora is still rising. Not even a contest for me.
Other needs: get a quality RH bat for infield utility. They whiffed on Kike Hernandez, but need someone similar. Good glove, some speed, pesky hitter. A RH Guillorme.
Also, they need some insurance at catcher. Nido is ok as a backup, but what if one of the two catchers gets hurt?
It would be nice to address the centerfield defensive issue but without the DH there are limited solutions. Bradley or any other free agent is not an upgrade to the present starters. Any trade would have to center around Alsono or Smith because if they don’t then Smith is the leftfielder which doesn’t solved the leftfield defense. It would be very difficult to formulate a trade package of equal value. At this juncture they should get the best available defensive centerfielder free agent for the role of a late inning replacement.
+1
Yeah, I feel like Springer was the guy, and JBJ is not that. Frankly I’d rather have Nimmo-Marcell Ozuna-Conforto left-to-right in the outfield if they’re going to sign anyone for centerfield. But it’s not so much of a need that they have to sign someone. Springer was an upgrade, I’m not sure JBJ is.
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Very interesting idea Joe. Is Ozuna playable in CF? His last full season in CF was 2016 and he had a -17 DRS, as well as a -6.1 UZR. In 2017, he played just 18 innings there over 3 games and never played ever again. I’d imagine he’s weaker there after not playing in four years, although he should be stronger than Smith in LF. But, what do you do with one of your first basemen while keeping your CF defense less than optimal to sign Ozuna, when offense wasn’t the problem last year?
Preojectinf out OF alignment is impossible until we know for certain if there will be a DH. Can the league and players union please make a decision already?! I think we all agree that regardless of that outcome, we have to keep Dominic Smith’s bat in the lineup. With no DH, he has to play left field, for better or worse. In this scenario I think we can get by with a good 4th OF who can play CF and oreferably hit right handed. If there is a DH, Dom and Pete split first and DH and then who fills out the OF? In the DH scenario, you could argue we need 2 OFs.
I think the Mets view Guillermo Heredia as the righty hitting CF/4th-OFer
If there is a DH, you can make a very strong case that J.D. Davis should slot there.
I thought that JD was a decent LF option. Except for his speed, he played the position better than Dom and threw people out with his remarkable gun. To me, his playing out in LF is still on the table… adding more lineup flexibility. Martinez, too, adds a RH bat, uncannily good hitter.
Still, the Mets need to add a consistent, RH hitting, defensive CF… I like Almora. But they are not bereft should no deals materialize by spring. The Yankees played Yogi Berra in LF for years in the 60s as well as Hector Lopez, and they made the WS consistently…
I still like the flexibility in the Mets roster these days, even if some of those parts are compromised. Successful seasons come down largely to injuries, and who stays in the lineup. McNeil worries me some, seems less durable, and infield play is punishing. Wong would be a sweet pickup, but another LH bat.
Wong would be a good addition. I love Bradley’s defense, but his bat is a negative. The narrative goes beyond 2021. I would hold out until we could make the right moves.