“I have seen enough to know I have seen too much.”
This line from Squiggy at the end of the final game in the initial AAGPBL season can be used for many occasions. Today it’s being applied to the Mets career of Tommy Pham. Back on the last day of April, here was my take on the Pham situation:
Likely, at this point it’s more tied to how poorly Canha/Marte/Pham perform than it is to how many reps Mauricio has under his belt.
Two weeks from now, if that trio is still struggling and Mauricio keeps hitting and doesn’t embarrass himself in the field, then perhaps we can seriously call for a promotion.
In his last 35 PA, Pham has a .167/.257/.200 line.
Overall this year, Pham is slashing .210/.298/.358 in 94 PA, which is an 82 OPS+. It’s right in line with the 87 OPS+ he had last year and the 75 OPS+ he had in 2020. It’s not as bad as the .229/.291/.295 that I forecasted for him before the start of the year but it will get there soon enough if they keep playing him. Pham’s numbers are boosted by three homers he hit early in the season. After his third blast, he had a .451 SLG. Since then, he’s lost 93 points of SLG.
Meanwhile, Mark Canha sits with an 85 OPS+ and Starling Marte after last night’s 0-4 has a 70. It’s safe to say that trio has not turned it around the first 3-plus weeks in May from April’s lousy performances.
As for Ronny Mauricio, he’s batting .398 in May and overall this year he sports a .991 OPS in 201 PA. And there have been no complaints about his defense since moving to 2B, which knowing how eager the Mets are to paint their prospects with the “bad defense” label, seems significant.
It’s time to cut Pham, promote Mauricio and install him as the club’s starting second baseman. Jeff McNeil moves to the outfield and Buck Showalter can manipulate Canha and Marte into the starting lineup on a rotating basis however he sees fit.
From what I read I think Mauricio had a few errors last week. But whatever. Let the kids play!
Sanchez or Alvarez? Are you kidding? Pham or Mauricio? Wow what am I missing? Give Vientos his ABs,it’s not like Vogelbach is doing much to help win games.
Bring up Mauricio!! Bring up Mauricio!!
As bad as Pham’s numbers are, remember he is playing overwhelmingly against lefthanded pitchers, imagine what his stats would look like if he faced some righties.
The Mets are not going to DFA Pham and they can’t trade the 82nd game because he was a free agent. Pham still has value. Mauricio deserves to be promoted and the Mets would be a better team. Escobar has been hitting for the last month. Maybe he would be appealing in trade?
The Mets cut Cano last year after 43 PA and a .501 OPS and he was owed a whole bunch more money than Pham. I don’t believe the Mets are going to DFA Pham anytime soon, either. But they’ve already displayed a willingness to admit a sunk cost with Cano, so there’s zero reason they couldn’t do it with Pham, too.
I think the big difference between their thinking on Cano and thinking on Pham is that Cano was Brodie’s mistake and not the current leaderships, so that made him easier to DFA. With Pham, he was signed by Eppler, so he will likely be more hesitant to give up so easily. I hope that’s not the case, but I suspect that comes into the thinking. Even with that, it’s basically impossible to justify keeping Mauricio down any longer and they need to do what’s best for the team.
I’d send Vogelbach packing despite some of his stats that shows he has value. He let’s strike one by each time and he waves at pitches. If he hit some home runs I’d be happier as well as if he could play somewhere in the field. Gosh maybe he’s injured (wink wink) and needs ten days on the IL. Escobar can share time with Baty and Baty can be the LH DH. With their lack of offense why not give Mauricio some playing time?
For those keeping tabs, Ronny Mauricio has reached base in 15 straight games (dating back to May 7) and in that time he has hit 12 doubles and a home run. He has only walked 4 times in that span but he’s only struck out 8 times. He has made a some amount of errors at second as his fielding percentage took a recent dip from .985 to .950 but his play at second had been fairly solid.
Pham needs to go. Mauricio needs to come up. We need to be playing our future stars now. This year looks like a transition year for us. What good is it to play a scrub like Pham who is just being Pham.