On the morning of July 31, less than 24 hours after the trade deadline, in an article entitled, The surging Jeff McNeil and the impact of the Baez deal, the following question was asked:
If the real reason for the deal wasn’t a longer than expected IL stint for Lindor, wouldn’t it have made more sense to get Kris Bryant, who’s also an impending free agent and one who hits LHP even better than Baez?
With about one week’s worth of playing time to examine after the trade, things are not looking great for picking Javier Baez over Bryant. Here are their stats with their new teams, Baez with the Mets and Bryant with the Giants:
JB – 34 PA, 66 OPS+
KB – 29 PA, 185 OPS+
Bryant also held the edge offensively this year with the Cubs, as he had a 26-point lead (133-107) over Baez. And as for their production versus southpaws, Bryant has a 1.117 OPS compared to a .905 OPS for Baez.
Maybe the Cubs got a better prospect haul for Bryant than they did for Baez? The following comes from a FanGraphs’ piece ranking the prospects traded at the deadline. Pete Crow-Armstrong, the guy the Mets traded for Baez, ranked 11th on their list, while the two players the Cubs received for Bryant – Alexander Canario and Caleb Kilian – ranked 17th and 24th, respectively. Here’s what the FG piece said about the two guys received from the Giants:
Canario is a tooled out corner outfielder who hasn’t put it together in games.
Kilian is a command-over-stuff guy who locates four average pitches. Back-end starter is the dream.
To be fair, FG compared Crow-Armstong to Jackie Bradley Jr. While my opinion is that the Brewers’ outfielder, currently with a 45 OPS+, is massively overrated, he does have a 5.3 fWAR season under his belt. Does either Canario or Kilian have that type of upside? It’s hard for me to think the price that the Giants paid for Bryant was any better than what the Mets paid for Baez plus a non-descript pitcher currently toiling in Triple-A.
The only way prioritizing Baez over Bryant makes sense is if Lindor is going to be out for the rest of the season. And even then, it’s hardly a slam dunk choice.
While not to the degree of Bradley Jr., my opinion of Baez before he became a Met was that he was overrated, too. While he has great hands and makes highlight-reel plays in the field and has power that can rank with just about anyone, he’s the type of guy who can be pitched to very easily, a guy who willingly flails at pitches outside the strike zone. In his seven games against the Mets with the Cubs this season, he had just a .167 AVG or pretty much what he’s done since joining his new club.
My way of coping with Baez is to think of him as Dave Kingman. Baez hits for a better AVG but otherwise they were both big HR/big K guys. Now we just need Baez to go on one of those famous Kingman HR streaks. And while Kingman rarely hit above .230 – he also produced OPS+ seasons of 129 and 123 while playing for the Mets. It would be nice if Baez could get close to that level this year in Queens.
And at the end of the day, the frustration has to be directed at the front office, too. Nobody knows how much influence Lindor/Steve Cohen had in bringing Baez here. But my opinion is that if Cohen was pressuring interim GM Zack Scott into getting Baez, this is where Team President Sandy Alderson should have stepped in and said, No.
And if this was Scott’s idea, then Alderson should have said, No, too.
It’s hard to determine which is worse – making no move at all or making a trade that doesn’t move the needle and costs you a key prospect from a thin farm system. My guess is that most people would prefer that the Mets made a move at the deadline rather than sit on their collective hands. People are still upset at Carlos Beltran for not swinging at that pitch in 2006. Now we’ll get to see if they feel better about Baez swinging and missing by a foot.
This move wreaked of making a move just for the sake of making one. Scott/Anderson admitted such right afterwards. I hold nothing against Baez, as football coach once echoed, he is exactly what we thought he is. I also didn’t cover PCA individually, but I saw him as an asset in a system needing depth. My preference also was for Bryant, but I don’t think that really matters as I’m not sure one guy could propel this offense. We’ll see.
Knowing the uncertainty of deGrom, with Syndergaard and Carrasco delayed, and with a league bottom team offense, parting with assets didn’t make much sense. Now, in fairness, Cohen Anderson and Scott would have been lambasted had they stood pat, especially in light of the post deadline free fall.
This actually has a Jeff Wilson aroma to it. Going forward, who knows what will occur with the labor issues etc, but I can’t see a fit with Baez. I don’t think that even Cohen can afford $600 million plus on two infielders with sketchy offensive projections. Maybe Bryant will wind up here anyhow and be a better fit going forward.
I think the Mets overrated their season and the potential to go deep in the playoffs. We traded Kelenic, now Crow and had a fiasco with Rocker. That is depleting your system not much.
For an expensive player next year I’d rather go in a different direction than Baez. His on base percentage has never really been good. For Citi field I’d rather have a good doubles hitter, baserunner and defender.
The Mets are last or near last in most offensive categories. You cant expect to win with that kind of output.
Before the trade deadline, Brian Kenny did an analysis of the “mercurial” Javier Baez. In his assessment, they closest comp was Dave Kingman. The first 6 minutes of the video below reviews Baez.
https://www.mlb.com/video/brian-kenny-on-javier-baez
I think Baez was the wrong move at the right-ish time. This team needed consistent hitting to drive in runs, not a free swinging, high K, low BB, shortstop wild card. Sure he’s dynamic, but we have that in Lindor. I would rather have had Bryant experiment at 3B, a hole that has been there since Wright last played healthy in the previous decade.
What we see no matter how is went down was a break down in ownership and FO management. As president of all things baseball, this lands on Alderson as the only baseball “grown up” in the room. It forms another in a long line of bad moves engineered by Alderson, who no longer belongs at the helm of baseball decision making. During the trade deadline deadline, I heard another quote from Alderson who was “shocked” at what teams were asking for in prospects for high profile rentals. I mean seriously, how could that be a surprise? Of course trading for a redundant position player who cannot hit is really the crime here.
We finally see a time when the team can field the ball, and now for whatever reason can no longer hit/score or pitch.
If current trends hold, and this team ends up battling the Nationals for 4th place, then what will the future/off season bring us? Will the 2021 Mets share the moniker of the 1992 squad of being the “Worst Team Money could Buy”?* I hope not, since unlike that team, there aren’t really ***holes in the current squad.** But so much like the 1992 squad, so much more was expected of the current team.
It’s a shame really, as we all have to acknowledge the tenacity of the team during April, May & and June, as injuries decimated the squad; but the bench and bench substitutes kept things afloat. It made for a good story, but the basic issues of FO & and management ineptness was overlooked or glossed over. Whatever goodwill this team generated with the fans and press has evaporated though, and I believe a new dark age is upon us in Mets land.
*the collapse of the NY Mets by Bob Klapisch & John Harper; worth a read (again).
** if we are to believe the writers & media pundits of today
Let’s see… everybody knew Wheeler was very very good… let him walk and to a division foe. Thank you, Brody van Douchebag.
Getting Baez was plain stupid. Already he has left ducks on the pond that even a minimum of contact would have changed the complexion of a couple of games at least. He stinks. Thank you Francisco Lindor.
Team listless and incompetent at the plate… gotta fire somebody… the hitting coach is obviously not helping… nor is the completely hopeless feeling from the very first inning of every game… Thank you, Luis Rojas.
Hitting coach and trades are on Alderson. The listless play is on Rojas, but this team has the wrong FO, and the wrong players, and approach. They should beg chili Davis to come back and get this preposterous experiment they have going on – starting with Alderson – out the door ASAP.