Is James McCann really second best?
Plus an overview of the Rule 5 Draft
Catch me up in 30(ish) seconds…
Rule 5 Draft: Mets selected a player who they immediately traded, before adding several new faces in the minor league portion of the draft, while also losing some players, none of whom you have probably heard of unless you are a prospect nerd (more in a bit).
Catcher search: Mets continue to be linked to James McCann, while the Angels remain in the mix (more in a bit).
Bullpen help: Mets have shown interest in free agent reliever Liam Hendricks, per SNY.
All-MLB: Jacob deGrom was named to the All-MLB First Team, while Michael Conforto took home All-MLB Second Team honors.
Former Mets: Right-hander Chris Flexen has signed a major league deal with the Mariners, per Michael Meyer of Metsmerized.
Division Rivals: The Phillies shocked the baseball world yesterday with reports they are hiring Dave Dombrowski as president of baseball operations, as the Mets continue their search for a general manager under Sandy Alderson.
Minor Leagues: As MLB trims down the number of minor league clubs, the Mets have announced their affiliates, with the Brooklyn Cyclones being named their new High-A affiliate.
AAA: Syracuse Mets
AA: Bighamton Ruble Ponies
High-A: Brooklyn Cyclones
Low-A: St. Lucie Mets
Rule 5 Draft
FIRST PITCH
The Mets selected and traded pitcher Luis Oviedo, while losing right-hander Dedniel Nunez in the Major League portion of the Rule 5 Draft. They added five players in the minor league phase of the draft, while losing four.
WORKING THE COUNT
Just as Mets fans were Googling Luis Oviedo’s name, we learned that he was traded to the Pirates for cash considerations. I think Evan Roberts sums it up best…
Rob Biertempfel reports the Mets will either receive a player to be named later or cash for trading Oviedo. What this deal really comes down to is the two respective clubs’ viewpoint on contention this upcoming season. The Mets plan on being good (imagine that!) while the Pirates will probably be bad. Therefore, Pittsburgh has more appetite to take a chance on a pitcher like Oviedo to make their active roster for the entire season (or else, based on how the Rule 5 Draft works, he is offered back to his former team).
A few picks after the Oviedo selection, the Mets lost right-hander Dedniel Nunez to the San Francisco Giants. This is a bit disappointing because Nunez has some real potential. The 24-year-old was a late international signing in 2016, but has yet to pitch above High-A and was shutdown in 2019 due to a shoulder injury. Here is what FanGraphs prospect expert Eric Longenhagen has to say about him:
Nunez was among the 2019 leaders in fastball spin rate, which is impressive considering he doesn’t throw all that hard […] Nunez’s fastball actually misses bats, generating a 15% swinging strike rate even though as a starter he sat just 89-93 (I have him touching as high as 96). He also has a good two-plane curveball that works best when it’s dumped into the strike zone after one of his fastballs is located at the letters. He could be a bullpen weapon if he throws harder in relief.
If Nunez does not stay on the Giants’ active roster for the entirety of 2021, the Mets will have the option to claim him back for $50,000.
The minor league phase of the Rule 5 Draft is for the extra nerdy baseball fans. Players selected in these rounds might not sniff the majors for several years. And if they eventually do, and turn into interesting players, someone will remind you they were once a Rule 5 selection which will elicit a corresponding hmm response (and not even with an exclamation point, but like the “hmm” you say when your mother tells you she ran into one of your old teachers at the supermarket).
These are the players the Mets added to their minor league system:
Drew Ferguson, CF, Astros
Justin Dillon, RHP, Blue Jays
Drew Jackson, INF, Dodgers
Jesus Reyes, RHP, Reds
Jose Zorrilla, LHP, Reds
Meanwhile, New York lost four players in SS Sebastian Espino (Blue Jays), C Wilfred Astudillo (Reds), RHP Ezequiel Zabaleta (Rays), and 2B Mitchell Tolman (Giants).
THE PAYOFF
As a team looking to compete next season, it didn’t make much sense for the Mets to reserve a roster spot for an unproven Rule 5 selection. They used the minor league phase of the draft to stock up on depth in the higher levels of the minors, which is incredibly thin.
Second best option?
As an average Joe with a modest salary and student debt to pay off, when I go shopping for a new thing, my choices are usually pretty limited. I can buy the shirt on the sale rack for $19.99 or the one next to it for $14.99, and hopefully one of them is the color blue.
In talking to some Mets fans about the team targeting free agent catcher James McCann, the sentiment I get is that it feels like we’re standing in front of the discount rack at J.Crew, even though we were given a company card to purchase whatever we want.
Which is fine. As long as being cost-effective on one thing is offset by spending somewhere else. Nobody cares if you are wearing a discount t-shirt while rolling up in your new Mercedes Benz (the Benz being George Springer and/or Trevor Bauer).
An argument in favor of signing McCann usually goes something like this: why overpay for JT Realmuto, when you can sign the second best option on the market and then splurge everywhere else?
This is a tidy argument, one that can even be articulated in 280 characters on Twitter, and one that I made myself in a newsletter last week. But there is a fundamental flaw in this logic: can anyone state with confidence that James McCann is actually going to be the second best catcher among the options available right now? Or will he remain the second best option over time?
Just two seasons ago, he was non-tendered by the Tigers, meaning they didn’t think he was worth the low-end of an arbitration amount that would have been based on his sub-par performance the season before (.220/.267/.314 slash line).
After finding a new home with the White Sox, McCann suddenly became one of the best catchers in baseball in terms of wins above replacement level (WAR) in 2019. He then improved his pitch-framing ability in 2020 to turn himself into a legitimate two-way backstop. It is based off this sample size of one season plus 30 games that the market dynamics are pushing for him to make potentially up to $10 million per season over four years.
But is he worth that?
We know the Mets need a catcher. If you look at the current 2021 WAR projections (and Mike Petriello provides a nice color-coded table below), the Mets projected WAR at the backstop position ranks 25th in baseball, which, after letting Wilson Ramos go, is actually worse than the 20th ranking they finished at last season.
But overpaying for the catcher who is considered at this moment in time to be the second best option on the market might not be the prudent thing to do, even if you have the cash to burn.
Let’s take a look at some of the other catchers on the market.
As you can see, McCann falls into a group of free agent catchers who are all clearly not as good as Realmuto, but it’s debatable whether there is any discernible difference between their projected performance going forward. And if we trust the FanGraphs’ salary projections, with the reported estimate of McCann’s contract sandwiched in between, you can see something is off.
The Mets would be putting a lot of faith in McCann’s exit velocity trends and pitch-framing improvement over an extremely short sample of games last season.
If you’re life was on the line, would you bet on McCann outperforming Mike Zunino next season? What about even Wilson Ramos? You might make a friendly wager if you trust the upward trajectory of McCann’s underlying numbers, but gun to your head? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
If signing McCann instead of Realmuto gives the Mets “flexibility” to sign other more expensive players, then signing an even cheaper version than McCann accomplishes the same goal, and then some. What’s the difference between the shirt marked $14.99 versus $19.99 anyway?
The Mets don’t need to decide on their everyday catcher for the next 4 years this offseason. They can find a bridge to the bridge to Francisco Alvarez through a variety of avenues. Maybe you ride it out with what you have until a better alternative emerges. Or maybe the better alternative is someone not named James McCann.
So if the question is: if the Mets don’t get Realmuto, then who will be the catcher next year? My answer is anybody! Get creative!
I can already paint the picture if they sign McCann: it’s mid-June, and instead of starting off the year hot like he did over the previous two seasons, McCann is hitting as he did in the second half of those years, struggling to reach the .250 mark at the plate. Mets fans are calling WFAN to complain about Cohen taking the cheap route when he should have just spent the money on Realmuto, who is hitting .334 for the Blue Jays.
Maybe McCann is pressing and he figures things out to end the year strong. But it’s not impossible to believe that he has a season in which his numbers at the plate are completely unimpressive, as they were for the majority of his career. While his defense isn’t horrible, unless you subscribe to this newsletter, you probably won’t notice his pitch framing or how well he calls a game because those things are difficult to translate in simple metrics. And we still don’t know if McCann has actually learned how to do these things on a consistent basis.
Meanwhile, a catcher emerges on the market because of the unique financial situation surrounding the league in the shadow of the pandemic. The Royals are looking for someone to take Salvador Perez’ contract off their hands. By picking up the full tab, the Mets are able to swing a deal without giving up much from their thin farm system.
We are several turns into this hypothetical choose your own adventure, but you get the point. The baseball market is dynamic. Nothing stands still. So while it appears that McCann is the second best option relative to paying an exorbitant amount for Realmuto right now, that doesn’t mean he will remain the second best option over the next four years, or even the next calendar year.
Let’s see what happens, but something to think about.
Call to the bullpen
For today’s additional reading, I’m actually going to pivot and recommend a podcast listen. Newly-acquired reliever Trevor May appeared on The Athletic’s Rates and Barrels podcast, which you can listen to via the Metrospective podcast feed below. May goes into a lot of detail about how he found his slider last season, and talks about some of his off-field ventures, too. Enjoy!
Thanks for reading! More to come on Monday!
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The main issue is this how Alderson always operates - we have been made to belive it was the Wilpons - starting to think this was Alderson all long - take a injured player from 2 years ago and hope it will work out.