Please use this thread all week to discuss any Mets-related topic you wish.
Last night in the Game Chatter, Name asked me about tendering a contract to arbitration-eligible Trevor Williams. He’s been pretty good in a short sample for the Mets and FanGraphs listed him as having multiple options available so my response was a “yes.” Name wondered if you wanted to pay the arbitration raise Williams would get and if you wanted to potentially send the payroll over the luxury tax for someone you hoped wouldn’t make a start for the MLB club.
After all of the starters and TBAs used by the Mets this year, no one should dismiss the value of having depth around. It’s why re-upping with both Rich Hill and Williams makes sense to me.
But why has Williams had success with the Mets? Last night’s homer on the first pitch allowed is the first gopher ball he’s given up in the majors since the trade. It’s nice when you go from a 1.5 HR/9 to a 0.3 ratio, instead. But Williams has also improved his K/BB ratio, posting a 3.43 mark in the category. Looking at his pitches, he’s not throwing any harder with the Mets. But he’s throwing more changeups and fewer curves. Now, neither of those pitches have been very good for him from a results basis. But perhaps because he’s throwing more changes, he’s having better results with his fastball. FanGraphs’ Pitch Values shows his fastball going from a negative offering with the Cubs to being a plus pitch with the Mets.
Again, it’s only 27.1 IP with the Mets and this could easily be the whims of a small sample. But Williams has over 600 innings in the majors under his belt and has a 14-win season with the Pirates in 2018 on his resume. He’s the type of guy you want around as a depth starter. His lifetime 4.41 ERA isn’t anything to get excited about as a primary starter. But it’s the high end of a replacement SP once the season has started.
He’s been healthy and he’s pitched fairly well. I wouldn’t have any issues with seeing him again in 2022. Rich Hill too for that matter.
Sign Baez, sign one of Stroman,Syndergard, get a CFer and move Nimmo to LF, get a hitter Castalannos,Schwarber,Duval, and sign both Williams and Hill to be emergency starters and 2-3 inning relievers.
Yes on Baez. Sign both Stroman and Syndergaard (QO or 2 years at $30 million). Marte for CF on a 3-year deal would be OK. No QO for Conforto and signing one of your abovementioned hitters—Yes! Keep Williams and sign Hill. Loup could be a 2-inning reliever, along with Lugo.
Not sure about the reviled Familia. He might be worth keeping for much less money on a 1-year deal.
Williams has done well for the Mets in limited time. For 2022, the Mets most certainly can use a guy like him – spot starter, rubber arm, multi-inning relief. He is very similar in toolset to Gsellman. Both have one more year of arbitration. Williams has certainly been healthier. I’d be interested in knowing if either has options left…those options are quite useful for pitchers filling out the staff for multiple reasons.
I would consider Hill as well, but only as a #5, and it would really depend on the rest of the staff. That could get tricky based on whether they retain Syndergaard, and if he is retained, how they plan to use him. If they see him as a starter day 1, it should be the #5 spot, and this will certainly carry some type of innings limit that would require him to miss starts at some point in the season.
I agree that optimally, the Mets have a starting 5 that was deep enough to start both Megill and Peterson in AAA, as well as carrying a Williams-type that could either open, piggy-back a #5, or be stretched out.
Like Williams… no reason not to keep him. He throws strikes and gets outs. Sold.
Hill? 42 next year… looks tired a lot, but then performs ok. Still, Father Time usually wins.
Sign Stroman.
Probably will lose deGrom one way (injury) or the other (free agent). So keep Thor, too.
Williams was better stastically than Megill, Peterson, Walker and Carrasco this year. It is a small sample. When if compare his carreer ERA, FIP and WHIP they’re better than Megill and Peterson’s career numbers. If his career numbers were plug into the Fangraphs leader board for this year, he should ranked (based on 140 MLB starting pitchers) #88 in Era, #91 in FIP and #109 in WHIP. That would be a #4 starter. I am not saying that I would like him as the Mets #4 starter but he would be a good depth starter that has options. You can never have enough pitching.
I don’t think the intent of my original question was clear.
A better phrasing is : “Should the Mets go through the arbitration route with Williams and tender him a contract?”
The arbitration route is 99.5% going to result in a raise for Williams and it’s probably going to be $3-4m and if they decide to release him before Opening Day, 20% of that is sunk cost.
That’s a hell of a commitment for a guy who no one wants to see at the major league level and even for a deep pocketed owner.
It just seems like nontendering him and then trying to sign him to a lower base or a split contract seems more prudent. There’s a max you should pay for depth and i think Williams arb cost exceeds that price. And if he decides he wants a more stable job in an org that doesn’t need to win right away, there are plenty of other Trevor Williams types out there that would be willing to fill the depth role at a more reasonable cost.
Gotta hope Lugo finds himself next season. Clearly Luis Rojas never accepted that he wasn’t the same Lugo. He kept bringing him into high leverage situations and kept getting burned.
Please find us a manger who pays attention and makes smart baseball moves. Tired of Luis’s pre-determined decisions.
I thought Taijuan’s start today was very important. It shows what he can do on any given night. He’s a quality pitcher and a valuable athlete. Yes, he got weary halfway through the season… hopefully will lean from it and avoid it next season… again, need a better manager to negotiate this…
Alderson on Rojas returning:
“I’m big on process but ultimately results matter,” Alderson said. “If you don’t have good results over a period of time, then the process may not survive. So I’m appreciative of all those positives that have been mentioned over the course of the year and Luis’ relationship with the player but ultimately we have to be governed, to some extent, not just by the process of what goes into the results but the results themselves. As we approach the end of the season we have to be realistic about the result and what the results have been.”
Luis, it was a good learning experience. I hope you can take time to digest it all and make it back someday.
Honestly, while Luis is probably a good guy, he seems like a stubborn guy. I like a manager that takes in all the information and then runs the game on instincts. Luis gave me no confidence that he was “actively” in the game.
He was simply waiting for certain prompts and then doing what he was programmed to do.
A typical prompt: a starting pitcher is getting near the end of his pitch allowance, gives up a hit, and Luis goes to the mound. Never, truly never do I remember Luis going out to the mound and letting the guy convince him to stay in the game, get through an inning, shorten the game for the bullpen. The result of this pre-programming is that players start to respond by playing “flat”. This is my best description as to why the Mets offense went so quiet. Very little creativity regarding instinctive moves that kept players sharp, on their game, juices flowing, rising to unexpected opportunity.
I don’t pin everything that went wrong on Luis, but I do see where he failed to provide spark and failed to motivate change. Inert, predictable baseball.
I think he’s just not ready for the challenge of everyday ML managing. Not everyone has the talent.
For those worried about the game trending older:
ESPN’s viewership for the 2021 season of Sunday Night Baseball presented by Taco Bell was up 18 percent from 2020, according to Nielsen. Sunday Night Baseball averaged 1,456,000 viewers across its 24 telecasts.
This year marked the 32nd season of ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball – the exclusive, national Major League Baseball game of the week. The franchise saw significant growth in the coveted 18-34 demos compared to last year, including:
Women 18-34: up 43 percent;
People 18-34: up 25 percent;
Men 18-34: up 17 percent.
Sunday Night Baseball viewership for 2021 was also up double-digits from 2020 among Women 18+ (20 percent), Women 18-49 (16 percent), People 12-24 (20 percent), People 18-49 (12 percent), People 12-17 (11 Percent) and People 18+ (18 percent).
In addition, ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball saw double-digit gains across the 18-34 demographic when compared to the 2019 season:
https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2021/09/espns-2021-season-of-sunday-night-baseball-presented-by-taco-bell-up-18-percent-in-viewership-from-2020/