The Metropolitan: Matz' all, folks
A busy day in Mets news
Good Morning,
Today we will talk about a crazy day in Mets news that included the team naming Zack Scott as interim GM, former GM Brodie Van Wagenen getting a new job, the Mets signing a lefty for the bullpen in Aaron Loup, and trading Steven Matz.
⏰ Catch me up on the Mets’ busy day…
🍎 FRONT OFFICE: The Mets officially announced Zack Scott as the interim general manager on Wednesday. After finishing runner-up to Jared Porter in the initial search, and later being recruited to join his former colleague from Boston, it is perhaps bittersweet for Scott to take over under the circumstances (but we’re sure he’ll take it).
ANALYTICS: Scott’s addition to the front office was originally viewed as a counterbalance to Porter’s scouting background, giving the Mets a strong voice within analytics. Scott will need to take a broader lens in his new role. In terms of analytics, the team recently hired Ben Zauzmer away from the Dodgers to run their Research & Development program.
🚨 TRADE: After many debated whether the Mets should tender him a contract for this upcoming season, the Mets have turned Steven Matz into three prospects from the Toronto Blue Jays, while also shedding his entire $5.2 million salary. The trade was first reported by Michael Mayer of MetsMerized Online.
Does this mean Trevor Bauer is coming to the Mets?
Before Mets fans even cared to look at the return for Matz, upon reading the news on their timelines of him heading to Toronto, the immediate next question was whether this means the team is putting themselves in position to sign Trevor Bauer.
What we don’t know for certain is whether the Mets are operating under a tight budget relative to the luxury tax. We have received plenty of hints that Steve Cohen doesn’t want to spend like he’s bailing out a hedge fund from Reddit traders, but it’s still not clear how much the Mets care about exceeding the initial tax line of $210 million.
This is important because creating a few extra million dollars in breathing room under the tax shouldn’t really be a precursor to signing a pitcher of Bauer’s stature for a potential record salary. That said, there are a variety of ways the team can now use their payroll to improve the roster.
If you are looking for non-financial signs of Bauer coming…
DAMN, REDDIT: As if Reddit hasn’t been making enough fuss in the businesses related to the Mets owner, someone noticed on Mets Reddit that the Cohens are following Bauer on Twitter (the post claims they just started following him, but the timing is unclear).
ANGELS OUT: In real news, the Los Angeles Times dropped a report on Wednesday night saying the likelihood of the Angels signing Bauer is “practically zero.”
CALLAWAY: Coincidentally, the report cites Bauer’s rocky relationship with former Mets manager Mickey Callaway (who is now the pitching coach in Anaheim) as one impediment.
What does the Mets’ payroll look like now?
By adding left-hander Aaron Loup (more on him in a bit) for an estimated $1 million, along with two of the right-handers netted from the Matz trade (Sean Reid-Foley and Yennsy Díaz) on the 40-man roster, I estimate the Mets are roughly $35.7 million below the initial tax line.
It was reported yesterday that the Mets have made an offer to Bauer that “approaches” Gerrit Cole’s record $36 million annual salary, so if you put their offer to Bauer in the $30-$35 million range, it would appear the Mets have just enough room to add him while keeping their payroll relatively close to the tax line.
Of course, there is a real possibility the Mets upgrade the team by making moves that don’t include Trevor Bauer. They still could target a centerfielder, like Jackie Bradley Jr., or a third baseman, perhaps in trade. They will find a way to spend that extra money.
Who are these prospects the Mets got for Matz?
Back to the details of the Matz trade. I still can’t believe they turned a pitcher who they could have easily let go for nothing into, let’s count them, three prospects.
Yeah, that’s a pretty good start to the Zack Scott era, even if it was a collective effort to get the deal done.
Now, these prospects aren’t anything particularly special. But New York gained three right-handed pitchers in the deal, two who provide depth as Triple-A starters on the 40-man roster (with options), and another (Winckowski) who is a little further down the development ladder, but perhaps the most intriguing.
Yennsy Díaz, 24, ranked 33rd on FanGraphs’ recent prospect list for the Blue Jays. He came up in their system as a starter, but it seems like most prospect watchers believe he is destined for the bullpen. After missing all of the 2020 season with a severe lat strain, he pitched in the Dominican Winter League where his fastball velocity was hitting the mid-90s, according to FanGraphs. As with all up-and-comers, the question is his secondary pitches, and whether his control can be consistent.
Sean Reid-Foley, 25, has major league experience but has been limited due to control issues. Baseball America sums him up best with this description: “Reid-Foley's stuff is good enough to stick around in a relief role, but he has to improve his command for that to happen, otherwise he puts hitters into too many advantageous counts and issues too many walks.”
Josh Winckowski, 22, was left unprotected in the Rule 5 draft. By acquiring him in trade, the Mets are not restricted by any roster requirements. Baseball America ranked him 39th in their 2021 ranking. He pitched out of Toronto’s alternate site last season and throws a 97 MPH fastball. According to FanGraphs, he has also added a new splitter.
MLB Pipeline updated their prospect list in ranking Winckowski (26th) and Díaz (30th) among Mets prospects.
Mets get their lefty in Aaron Loup
🧓 by Jeffrey Bellone
You are forgiven if you’ve never heard of Aaron Loup. If you’re a Mets fan who has mostly watched the National League, you probably haven’t seen much of Loup since he has spent the majority of his career pitching in the American League East, mostly for the Toronto Blue Jays, before brief stops in San Diego and Philly, and then back to familiar settings with the Tampa Bay Rays last season.
For the Mets’ recently-appointed GM Zack Scott, who built his baseball knowledge in the hallways of Fenway Park, it would seem he would know Loup quite well. Perhaps that is why New York decided to sign the 33-year-old to fill their southpaw need in the bullpen.
In the traditional sense, Loup is the perfect lefty specialist with a deceptive 3/4 slot delivery and career numbers that show left-handers slug more than 100 points worse (.320) against him than right-handers do (.424).
Imagine: there’s 2 outs in the bottom of the 7th, the Mets need to get Freddie Freeman out to escape a jam, and in comes Loup…
This might be the only statistic Mets fans need to read: Freeman is 0-7 with 3 strikeouts against the left-hander.
The only caveat? Those match-ups mostly came in mop-up duty, with only one of the seven in a situation where the score was within three runs in the late innings. In fact, when looking at Loup’s performance, it is important to consider that only 8 of the 136 left-handers he has faced since 2018 have come in high-leverage situations (for comparison, Justin Wilson had 9 such match-ups out of 30 last season, alone).
A new pitcher?
After missing almost all of 2019 due to injury, Loup returned to pitch for the Tampa Bay Rays in the world of COVID and new bullpen rules. And looking at the way he was used, you can immediately see the impact of the 3-batter minimum requirement.
During his last full season in 2018, Loup pitched to only one batter 14 times, tied for 8th most in baseball. Of the 156 pitchers that appeared for only one batter last season (remember, you can skirt the 3-batter minimum by recording the last out of an inning), Loup wasn’t one of them. Overall, after being used for less than three outs 62.7% of the time in 2018, he did so only 20.8% in Tampa.
What this means is he needed to become more effective in utilizing his secondary pitches against right-handed hitters. He couldn’t survive with righties slugging .550 against him like they did in 2018, so he started to throw more cutters in place of his go-to sinker that he uses against lefties and in any situation when he needs to throw a strike.
The results looked good. Righties slashed .192/.246/.423 against him last year, a stark improvement from his career totals. But looking closer, there is some reason for concern about the sustainability of these numbers.
To understand why, let’s take a step back and look at Loup’s summary statistics. In a season in which he pitched to a 2.52 ERA and was effective against both lefties and righties, two numbers stand out that are closely related: he generated fewer ground balls and more lift (launch angle).
At first, I thought this was because something was up with his sinker. After all, it is his most used pitch and the entire point of it is to reduce square contact, often resulting in ground balls. But it’s his cutter that was the difference.
As you can see in the graphic above, Loup uses his cutter to attack right-handed batters inside (the zone charts are from the catcher’s POV). Prior to 2020, his cutter mostly ended down in the zone, either inside, or missing low and away. Last year, the location was less precise, sometimes missing up, and many times landing middle in.
When hitters made contact in that “middle in” region, they were 4-10 with 2 home runs and a double. Overall, his cutter held opponents to a measly .182 batting average. But his location of the pitch, combined with the resulting launch angle and exit velocity, help explain why right-handers still slugged .424 against it, and why he garnered less swing-and-misses.
What I’m not completely sure about because we only have detailed data from 2020 is whether Loup was purposefully playing around with the grip on his cutter, perhaps under the smart tutelage of Tampa Bay, causing it to spin all over the place, and perhaps impacting his command.
When we think command, we often think of balls and strikes, but even for a pitcher who threw a lot of strikes, looking at the movement of his cutter in terms of his release point (left graphic above) versus observed spin (right graphic above), it leads me to believe something was different in his grip throughout the season. It’s not uncommon for cutters to have a wide spin range, but Loup’s seemed to lack any real pattern relative to his release point. And his overall movement was relatively flat.
I was about 14 tabs and the start of a cool graphic deep into researching this when the Steven Matz trade broke, so I apologize I ran out of time to do more. But there will be plenty of time to examine this more over the next several weeks.
⚾️ Former Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen has been hired as COO of Roc Nation Sports.
⚾️ Masahiro Tanaka has officially agreed to a contract with the Rakuten Eagles in Japan.
⚾️ The Yankees agreed to a deal with lefty reliever Darren O'Day, per Lindsey Adler.
🔗 GameStop frenzy leaves Steve Cohen’s Point72 down 15 percent, by Kate Kelly, NY Times: “As the shares rose, Melvin was saddled with sudden losses and had to accept $2.75 billion in rescue capital from two outside investors. One of the rescuers was Point72, which already had roughly $1 billion under management with Melvin, said two people with knowledge of the relationship, and added $750 million to help stabilize Melvin this week. Because Melvin was investing money on Point72’s behalf, Point72’s results have also been hurt by the recent turmoil, said those people.”
🔗 Blue Jays newsletter perspective on the Matz deal, by Andrew Stoeten, The BatFlip: “Now, to be fair to the Jays — though perhaps a touch unfair to a trio of prospects of yore — they didn’t really give up anything of significance in this deal. Going to the Mets are former top pitching prospect Sean Reid-Foley, who is down to his last minor league option year and has lost the plot over the last two years, Yennsy Díaz, a middle reliever at best who has been hanging around the 40-man roster since 2019, and Josh Winckowski, maybe the most interesting of the three.”
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If the Mets are at the limit of the 40-man Roster and they make another acquisition or two, who do you think would be removed?