Please use this thread all week to discuss any Mets-specific topic you wish.
You probably know that Tomas Nido has been the personal catcher of Max Scherzer. You may not realize he’s been that for Carlos Carrasco, too. The only other start for Nido has been the Trevor Williams debacle. Meanwhile, James McCann has caught Tylor Megill, Chris Bassitt and Taijuan Walker/David Peterson. And obviously these guys have caught whichever relievers took over for the starters. Few people like CERA (Catcher’s ERA) because of the problems associated with which pitchers you catch. It’s easy to have a good CERA when you catch Scherzer. But, as long as you recognize its problems, you can still find ways to use it.
Overall, McCann has a 2.23 CERA while Nido has a 3.13 mark.
Nido’s numbers are being held down by the Williams start, as well as bad outings by Seth Lugo and Sean Reid-Foley.
McCann was behind the dish for bad outings by Trevor May and Joely Rodriguez.
It’s long been my belief that leverage and rest are the most important things to determine when to use a specific reliever, much more so than the platoon advantage. A thing to research in the future is if which catcher is behind the plate is something to consider, too. It’s way too early to look at 2022 numbers in this respect. But given that McCann and Nido caught many of these relievers in 2021, too, will help increase the sample size for some. Perhaps an All-Star break piece.
Don’t forget it’s a day game today in the final game of the series in St. Louis.
Baseball has to deal the issue of the baseball. Too many players are being hit. Bassitt says that the ball is not uniform and is is slick and MLB doesn’t give a damn. It is a billions of dollars industry and they can’t solve this immediately. Shame on them.
I don’t enjoy batter being hit or the bench clearing fights or pitchers who can’t control their pitches or foreign substances applied to the ball.
From an article this year on 3/5:
9. Better quality control with the actual baseball
Currently, an MLB baseball needs to be between 9.0 and 9.25 inches, with a weight of 5.0 to 5.25 ounces. Additionally, the league requires all baseballs to have a coefficient of restitution (COR) — in simple terms, the bounciness of the ball — ranging from .530 to .570. There does not seem to be any requirement on seam height, which has recently become an issue.
The balls are currently hand-sewn in Costa Rica. It’s mind-boggling that the balls are not assembled by machine here in the 21st Century. Make that a requirement, with the balls being constructed in this country and with regular inspections of the equipment. And there’s no reason that a machine couldn’t construct a standard-size ball in shape, weight, bounciness and seam height.
Tonight’s draft, Jets Johnson at four,Penning at ten….