🔥 Hot Stove season begins
Morning Dose: Monday, November 6
☕️ Good Morning: It’s officially Hot Stove season. The Mets could have a new manager soon. Yoshinobu Yamamoto makes impression before posting. Brooks Raley returns. JT Schwartz flashes the leather in AFL Fall Stars Game. Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!
Happening now: We could be hours away from learning who the next Mets manager will be. All reports indicate Craig Counsell will make a decision by early this week.
Either Counsell will make the leap to the Big Apple, Carlos Mendoza will be announced as the new manager, or the Mets will be sent back to the drawing board.
The A’s granted permission for Mark Kotsay to interview with the Mets, but he is no longer part of the process, per Ken Rosenthal.
David Stearns will try to close the deal as he arrives in Arizona for the annual GM Meetings.
What happens at the GM Meetings? Don’t expect a lot of flashy signings. Those happen during the Winter Meetings in early December. The GM meetings are an opportunity for executives to discuss the state of the game — things like rule changes, medical issues, playoff format, etc.
Read more: MLB GM meetings primer with each team’s key offseason needs as trade, free-agent talks begin, via The Athletic ($)
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🔥 Hot Stove season begins
Free agents can start negotiating with new teams today. How the Mets navigate the market after last year’s record-setting offseason is a bit of a mystery. But there are two names who are impossible to ignore.
Shohei Ohtani: There has never been a free agent like this one. The two-way star, who will not pitch next season after undergoing elbow surgery to fix a torn UCL, is expected to sign a contract worth anywhere between $500 - $800 million. Crazy money for most teams but a select few, one of whom happens to be the New York Mets.
*By matching each free agent since 2018 against Ohtani the hitter and Ohtani the pitcher, ESPN ranked them by similarity using a weighted average of each player's WAR over the three seasons before free agency; the more recent seasons carrying more weight. Taking the two max deals on that list would put Ohtani’s value over $600 million.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto: The Japanese starter showed why he is also a top target this winter with an eye-popping performance over the weekend. Yamamoto willed the Orix Buffaloes to victory in a must-win Game 6 of the Japan Series by allowing only one run while striking out 14 and walking none in a complete game, 138-pitch gut check.
Yamomoto was formally posted by the Buffaloes on Sunday. He will have a 45-day window to negotiate and sign with an MLB team.
The 25-year-old right-hander finished his pre-posting season with a sparkling 1.21 ERA and 0.844 WHIP with 169 strikeouts in 164 innings.
Incredibly, Yamamoto’s strikeout rate is unaffected by the time through the order penalty: 28.0% first time through the order, 24.2% the second time, 28.6% the third time.
Bargain shopping: If David Stearns loses out on these marquee names or decides to take a more cautious approach in his first offseason bankrolled by Steve Cohen, he could target some cheaper options.
J.D. Martinez might not come cheap, but he won’t command a long-term deal at 36 years old. He’s coming off his highest home run total (33) since 2019 and could give the Mets the stable DH presence they have been searching for.
Teoscar Hernández could be cheaper in dollars but more expensive in draft capital with a qualifying offer likely attached to him (the Mariners must extend one by 5:00 PM ET today). However, he would give the Mets much-needed outfield depth.
Related reading:
💰 Mets pick up Raley’s option
Brooks Raley will be back in the bullpen in 2024 after the Mets picked up his $6.5 million option (his buyout would have cost them $1.25 million).
Modern specialist: The three-batter minimum rule has changed the role of traditional lefty specialists, forcing southpaws to pitch to multiple hitters rather than a single left-handed match-up.
Raley shined in this role last season, pitching to a 2.80 ERA over 54.2 innings.
Buck Showalter was also effective in finding spots where he could end an inning, circumventing the three-batter-minimum rule, resulting in over 1/3 of Raley’s appearances (27 outings) requiring less than three outs.
Reverse Splits: The 35-year-old held righties to a minuscule .273 slugging percentage over 130 plate appearances in 2023, even better than the .398 slugging mark put up by lefties.
Organizational depth: The Mets have three lefty starters in José Quintana, David Peterson and Joey Lucchesi. But Josh Walker is the only other left-handed bullpen arm on the 40-man roster besides Raley.
🔹 Dansby Swanson beat out Francisco Lindor for the National League Gold Glove Award at shortstop. Swanson led all fielders with 20 Outs Above Average (OAA); Lindor was 11th among shortstops with six.
🔹 Old friend Mark Canha was traded from Milwaukee to Detroit for minor league reliever Blake Holub.
Sidebar: This is why I thought Canha was a bit undervalued at the trade deadline last year. The possibility of the Brewers doing exactly what they did — exercising his $11.5MM club option to turn him into an offseason trade piece — meant they could both reap the short-term benefit of adding him at the deadline while later offsetting the original cost to acquire him in a new trade. We will see if Holub turns into a better player than Justin Jarvis, whom the Mets netted in the Canha deal.
🔹 Despite a .182/.239/.379 slash line in 17 games, Kevin Parada was selected to the Arizona Fall League Fall Stars Game. He joined eight other Mets on the team, including first baseman JT Schwartz, who made this highlight-reel catch:
🔹 Cuban reliever Yariel Rodríguez was declared a free agent by the MLB Commissioner’s Office. The Mets are one of several teams linked to the 26-year-old right hander who sat out the 2023 season after pitching to an impressive 1.15 ERA as a reliever with the NPB’s Chunichi Dragons.
◾️ The Marlins hired Peter Bendix to run their baseball operations department.
◾️ Joey Votto expressed gratitude for his time in Cincinnati after the Reds announced they would not pick up his $20 million option for 2024.
◾️ Clayton Kershaw announced he underwent a surgical procedure to repair the gleno-humeral ligaments and capsule of his left shoulder. He is “hopeful to return to play at some point next summer.”
◾️ Add Marcus Stroman, Eduardo Rodriguez and Tim Anderson to the list of free agents after Stroman and Rodriguez opted out of their existing deals and the White Sox declined Anderson’s $14 million option.
🔗 Mets landing Craig Counsell as next manager an absolute necessity, by Jon Heyman, NY Post: “By public accounts at least, Counsell stands as the only proven as excellent big-league manager in the running for the historically tough-as-hell Mets job that came open when very veteran skipper Buck Showalter was dismissed. That reality raises the stakes.”
🔗 Mets face questions about their next manager, Stearns’ front office and more at GM Meetings, by Will Sammon and Tim Britton, The Athletic ($): “The New York Mets’ agenda for this offseason runs long. President of baseball operations David Stearns needs to hire a new manager. He needs to build out his front office. He needs to make many key roster decisions ranging from finding ways to improve the organization’s floor to determining which top players in the market remain worth zeroing in on.”
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Enjoyed the pod. Looking forward to more content.
Love podcast will you be planning to have guests on show once you get more into it ?