The Metropolitan: A Polar Bear migrates home
The Mets head to Tampa, while Kelenic makes his debut
Good Morning,
The Mets were off last night, but with the Phillies losing, they gained 0.5 game on their first place lead in the early-season standings. Meanwhile, someone named Jarred Kelenic made his major league debut for the Mariners last night, going 0-for-4.
In another debut of sorts, Mets Fix’s Peter Kauffmann talks below about the role speed has played in the Mets’ success thus far. But first, let’s preview the team’s upcoming series in Tampa Bay, home to the Alonso family.
⏭ SERIES PREVIEW: The Mets are in Tampa Bay for the first time since 2015 to play a three-game series against the defending American League champs. The Rays are off to a 20-19 start, fourth place in the competitive AL East, but just three games behind first-place Boston.
🤼♂️ MATCHUP: Tonight’s starter for the Mets is lefty David Peterson (1-3, 5.54 ERA), who’s had an up-and-down season so far, generally alternating good outings with bad (he didn’t make it out of the second inning in his start a week ago). He faces former Pirate prospect turned Tampa Bay ace Tyler Glasnow (4-2, 2.37 ERA), who’s now one of the top pitchers in the American League.
⚾️ ABOUT GLASNOW: The 6’8” righty from California features a sharp-breaking curveball and mid-90s heater that seems even faster given his oversized wingspan. Selected in the fifth round of the 2011 draft by Pittsburgh, Glasnow climbed up prospect charts but ultimately had trouble with command. In a trade they’d live to regret, the Pirates dealt him along with outfielder Austin Meadows to Tampa Bay for Chris Archer in mid-2018.
ACE: Glasnow was electric in 2019, pitching to a 6-1 record with a 1.78 ERA and 76 K’s over 60.2 innings. Last year, he had a 14.3 K/9 along with 3.5 BB/9, numbers he has come close to replicating this season.
🏡 HOMECOMING: For the first time as a major leaguer, Pete Alonso will play in front of friends and family at his hometown ballpark. “It’s going to be a joy,” Alonso’s father, Peter, told the Tampa Bay Times. “We’re very excited about it. Pete’s really excited as well. I’m sure it will be a special weekend for everybody. Plus, Friday is my birthday.”
🚀 KELENIC TAKES OFF: Seattle outfielder (and did we mention, former Met?) Jarred Kelenic batted leadoff in his major league debut last night in a home game against Cleveland. He swung at the first pitch he saw, and fouled out in his first at-bat, followed by a strikeout, groundout and flyout. For what it’s worth, another former top prospect for the Mets, Amed Rosario, went 1-for-4 in the same game for Cleveland, in which Dan Plesac carried a no-hitter into the 8th inning.
⛑ REHAB START: Brandon Nimmo played in his first rehab game for Triple-A Syracuse on Thursday. Playing centerfield and leading off, he went 0-for-3. He is expected to play two more games with Syracuse before returning to the Mets’ lineup.
🚜 ON THE FARM: Mets top prospect Francisco Álvarez left the game for the St. Lucie Mets yesterday after a collision at the plate, but was said to be fine afterwards, with minor bruises. The 19-year old catcher is off to a blazing start this season, with a ridiculous triple-slash of .571/.677./.857 (1.535 OPS).
INJURED: Outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong was placed on the 7-Day IL (retroactive to Wednesday) with a right shoulder injury. The Mets’ top draft pick in 2020 is off to a fantastic start to the minor league season, with a 1.063 OPS, along with two stolen bases and seven walks in 6 games for St. Lucie.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Shortstop prospect Ronny Mauricio is off to a hot start at Brooklyn, with 3 home runs and a 1.113 OPS over six games thus far. He was named the High-A East Player of the Week. His teammate, third base prospect (and first-round pick in 2019) Brett Baty has reached safely in his first seven games, and collected 8 RBI in his first 20 at-bats, for a 1.257 OPS.
🥵 HOT STREAK: Relying mostly on their pitching, the Mets have won seven in a row (their starters have compiled a 1.80 ERA during the streak); however, there are several everyday players starting to heat up, and don’t forget about the shutdown bullpen:
PILLAR: Kevin Pillar has hit safely in nine of his last 10 games, going 14-41 (.341) with two doubles, a triple, two home runs and seven RBI.
CONFORTO BACK: After a much-maligned slow start in clutch situations, Michael Conforto is batting .636 (7-11) with eight RBI in RISP situations in May.
LINDOR LOCKED IN: Francisco Lindor now has a hitting streak of six games.
LEADS ARE SAFE: With their blow-out win on Wednesday against Matt Harvey, the Mets improved to 15-2 when scoring at least four runs.
🧑🏫 SOUND SMART: With Kelenic’s call-up, six former Mets are now on the current active roster for the Mariners: Kelenic, Justin Dunn, Chris Flexen, Paul Sewald, Rafael Montero and Sam Haggerty (h/t Michael Mayer).
📚 ON THIS DATE IN 1972: In his first game as a member of the Mets, Willie Mays hits a home run.
Can the Mets run their way to victory?
🧑 by Peter Kauffmann
As we’ve noted in recent days, the Mets lead their division while placing 29th out of 30 in the Major Leagues in slugging percentage. That’s mostly thanks to dazzling starting and relief pitching — but the Mets are also scoring runs in a small-ball fashion that would be commonplace in 1985, but is unusual in 2021. They’re dead last in home runs with 22, and tied for 24th in triples with 3.
Is it possible to win in 2021 while eschewing the long ball? Can a team win by running and stealing their way to victory, like the old Cardinals teams of the ‘80s?
We all know teams don’t steal anymore. But why? In large part, it’s because of analytics — more specifically, something called run expectancy. Using a run expectancy matrix, you can find how many runs a team is expected to score, given every base-out situation. For example, with a runner on first and no outs, an average team is expected to score 0.831 runs. Now, if that baserunner steals second with no outs, the run expectancy increases to 1.068, an increase of over 1/4 of a run (0.237 runs). The problem is if the baserunner is thrown out while trying to steal, the run expectancy drops from the 0.831 starting point (runner on 1st, 0 outs) to 0.243 (bases empty, 1 out), a drop of over 1/2 of a run (0.588).
Put simply, teams today have largely opted against risking roughly one-half of a run in order to gain a little more than one-quarter of a run. That is, unless they are good enough at stealing bases that they can almost guarantee that 0.588 run expectancy increase.
Here’s where things get really interesting: it turns out that teams across baseball have finally reached that threshold this season, as Andrew Baggarly and Eno Sarris pointed out in The Athletic yesterday:
It’s only a worthwhile gamble if the baserunner has a success probability of roughly 75 percent. For the first time, league-wide, they do. You’ll probably hear a version of this in every major-league front office: “If we can steal successfully 75 percent of the time, we should.”
Why 75%? You can see how the math works in the graphic below.
Have the Mets reached this magical threshold? Not yet. While the league is stealing bases at an amazing 76 percent success rate, the Mets, as a team, have only been successful 64 percent of the time (9-for-14).
But there’s more you can do with your legs than just steal bases, and Mets fans have recently gathered anecdotal evidence of the value that speed brings to the game. Take the baserunning of new addition Jonathan Villar.
Just this week, Villar’s speed helped deliver a walk-off win against the Orioles when he scored from third on a sharp grounder to the first baseman:
And there was also Villar going first to third on a line drive single by Jose Peraza that was knocked down by Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins … before he lazily tossed the still-live ball to second baseman Nick Manton… giving Villar just enough opening to sprint home with what was then the tying run in an eventual one-run win against a division rival.
Villar is clearly making a difference on the basepaths. And if the Mets take advantage of his base-stealing ability, they will surely benefit. Look at his career stolen base numbers; he consistently reaches the 75% threshold to make the analytics people happy.
Of course, playing with speed is how baseball used to be played in the days before launch angles. Instead of watching batter after batter strike out while waiting for someone to hit a home run, managers had to manage. They called hit-and-run plays, gave speedsters a green light to steal and bunted runners over.
The idea was to use speed to put pressure on the defense. When pressure is applied, the thinking goes, some players buckle. It’s a lot harder to throw a strike when you’re worried about that walk you just gave up turning into a double or triple, as you peek at a runner bouncing off first base.
Just ask the Mets pitching staff of the mid-80’s what it was like dealing with Vince Coleman and Willie McGee, the table setters of the great St. Louis Cardinals teams. Coleman averaged 108 steals over his first three seasons, as the Mets and Cardinals took turns winning the NL East.
The Cardinals’ manager back then was Whitey Herzog, who prized speed and baserunning so much that the phrase “Whiteyball” was coined to capture his speed-first philosophy. The Cardinals lone slugger, Jack Clark, summed it up best: “The bottom line is that, in every sport – hockey, football, basketball, baseball – speed kills. It puts so much pressure on you and forces you to rush and hurry everything so much.”
Clark understood that more than a handful of his 340 career HR came off distracted pitchers who grooved fastballs while keeping one eye on baserunners. That team speed also helped Tommy Herr drive in 110 runners in 1985 while hitting only 8 home runs.
But that type of pressure has been mostly absent in today’s game. In 1982, Rickey Henderson set the Major League record for steals with 130. In 2019, Mallex Smith led both leagues with just 46.
As noted above, the numbers (up to a certain threshold) may substantiate the argument against taking a risk on the base paths, but it’s harder to track the impact a base stealer can have on a pitcher’s ability to focus on a hitter.
The numbers also can’t capture the excitement of seeing Lou Brock or Rickey Henderson take a lead, knowing that it was just a matter of time before they made their way around the bases. So, while run production may have become more efficient nowadays, the game has lost something in terms of strategy, excitement and entertainment value.
In recent weeks, Jonathan Villar has brought some of that fun back to Queens.
⚾️ Atlanta’s Ronald Acuna, Jr., homered yet again, giving him an MLB-leading 12 home runs on the season. Cleveland’s Jose Ramirez also went yard, giving him the current silver medal with 11.
⚾️ Once projected to be a favorite to win the AL Central, the Minnesota Twins have lost four straight and now have the worst record in the majors (12-23).
⚾️ Future first-ballot Hall of Famer Albert Pujols is now officially a free agent, after getting released by the Angels.
🔗 Luis Rojas’ temperament exactly what these Mets need, by Ian O’Connor, NY Post: “Luis Rojas seems to be the right guy with the right touch at the right time. In the middle of a pandemic, with so much uncertainty usually attached to the most uncertain franchise in the most volatile market, it’s good to have a manager who keeps his head — even while people around him are losing theirs.”
🔗 These prospects could be future closers, by Jim Callis, Sam Dykstra and Jonathan Mayo, MLB.com: “Mets: Ryley Gilliam, RHP. Gilliam has been a full-time reliever dating back to his days as a sophomore at Clemson in 2017, and he has the mid-90s fastball and plus curve to work well in the role. Like so many, control is his biggest bugaboo due to a delivery that can be too high-effort at times. But Gilliam has fanned 90 batters in 59 2/3 innings in the Minors thus far -- a sign that the heater and curve are enough to keep any hitters off-balance.”
🔗 Noah Syndergaard made fun of Tom Brady, then went full Tom Brady, by Dennis Young, NY Daily News: “Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard has always been a wellness obsessive, and with endless time on his hands after Tommy John surgery, it appears that his quest to educate himself has taken him into some pretty dark corners of the internet.”
And… we leave you with this 2018 scouting report of Jarred Kelenic, by the Mets’ former Senior Director of Baseball Operations (and current Mets Fix contributor) Adam Fisher:
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