The Metropolitan: Chicago Hope
Everything to know about tonight’s (scheduled) game at Wrigley
Good Morning,
After another off day, the Mets are back in action tonight against the Cubbies at snowy Wrigley Field (weather permitting). We will get you ready for the three-game set and talk about Joey Lucchesi’s role on the team, but first let’s catch you up on the latest news.
⌚️ ON TIME: After collecting four hits over the weekend in Colorado, Michael Conforto believes his timing is starting to come into place: “I think we are getting there,” Conforto said, via the NY Post. “I have been taking good at-bats. I just feel more balanced at the plate, it just got me on time. Before I look at mechanical things I want to make sure I am on time, in a place to hit, and that is really all we focused on is making sure I am not getting down late and not making my moves too late to the ball.”
CATCHING UP: As we discussed last week, you can see in the split frame below how Conforto’s timing has impacted his ability to hit fastballs this season: In the 2021 frame (left image), he is slow to move his hands after he loads to swing. His bat is still angled above his shoulder as he prepares to enter the zone and try to hit the pitch. Focusing on the 2020 frame (right image), when he plants his foot and begins to launch, he moves his hands in sequence, which allows him to release the barrel and enter the zone at an angle where he can drive ball.
🏆 GOLD GLOVE: After a Denver Post reporter questioned Marcus Stroman for flashing his gold glove in celebration of his miraculous play on Sunday, Stroman responded, “Taunting? I flashed the gold on my glove to MY dugout. Clearly. Not even slightly towards the Rockies dugout. I have nothing but respect for everyone in the league. Stop reaching for clicks while trying to cause controversy. Poo-poo take sir!”
📻 HOWIE IS BACK: Beloved play-by-play voice, Howie Rose, announced on Twitter that he will return to the booth tonight after missing a week of action due to an undisclosed medical reason.
GIVING THANKS: “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your kind thoughts and wishes this past week,” Rose tweeted. “I’ve been dealing with a medical issue which is being treated but thankfully will be back in the booth tomorrow night. Missed you a lot and can’t wait to return. Much love to all.”
⏭ NEXT UP: What you need to know about the Cubs
🔻 TRENDING DOWN: After starting the season 3-1, the Cubs have lost eight of their last eleven, including 2 of 3 over the weekend to Atlanta to start their current homestand.
🔌 ALL FOR POWER: While the Cubs rank dead last (30th) in team batting average with a putrid .192 mark, they have hit the sixth most home runs in baseball (22), led by Kris Bryant (5) and Wilson Contreras (5).
🦆 SITTING DUCKS: Following a dreadful start, the Mets have received some timely hits over the past week, but their struggles with runners in scoring position are well-documented. But as bad as the Mets have been overall this season, the Cubs have been worse, batting a league-low 14-102 with RISP.
🏥 STOPPING THE SPREAD: The Cubs did an excellent job avoiding a teamwide spread of- COVID-19 after first base coach Craig Driver and bullpen coach Chris Young both tested positive last week.
☃️ FORECAST: Could there be another postponement to a Mets game? While the game won’t be played until tonight, here’s the forecast for the early part of the day in Chicago, along with the next few days (triple-header on Thursday?):
⚾️ CUBS’ SCHEDULED STARTER: Many of you probably rooted against the rumors this offseason that the Mets might be interested in veteran starter Jake Arrieta. He ended up back with the Cubs, and despite giving up some hard contact, he is off to a solid start with a 2-1 record and 3.18 ERA. The reemergence of his curveball has been key as an action pitch against lefties.
🔥 MEANWHILE: If they play tonight, the first-place Mets will send RHP Taijuan Walker (0-0, 2.61 ERA) to the mound tonight. He’s looked very sharp in his two appearances to date, scattering 3 runs on 7 hits across 10.1 innings, and racking up 12 K’s.
Optimizing Joey Lucchesi
🧓 by Jeffrey Bellone
Joey Lucchesi made his first start in a Mets uniform on Saturday, struggling in the first inning and then settling down to pitch a few scoreless innings before he was pulled in favor of Robert Gsellman (yes, he still pitches for the team).
Figuring out the best role for Lucchesi is still something the Mets need to figure out. Is he a starter? Does he require an opener? Is he best out of the bullpen? The answer is baked in his pitch arsenal.
The concern with Lucchesi is that he only has two effective pitches—his sinker and churve. He also throws a cutter, but it would be more accurate to describe it as a batting practice pitch, since it doesn’t move very much and it gets hit really hard. It’s not easy to be effective as a major league starter when you only have two quality pitches, especially when one of those pitches only lands in the strike zone about once every three pitches.
However, if you believe in Lucchesi as a starter, he gave you some reason for optimism in Colorado—his unimpressive line score (3 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 3 SO, 0 BB) notwithstanding. By commanding his churve both in and out of the strike zone, he was able to create deception without needing a deep arsenal.
He showcased this in the second inning against Garrett Hampson. He started him off with a 90 MPH sinker, setting himself up to toss a churve that landed up in the zone with a sharp velocity gap at 76 MPH, something Hampson wasn’t expecting as he considered bunting for a hit.
Ahead 0-2 in the count, he went back to his churve, but this time adding a few MPH and nose-diving it well below the strike zone, getting Hampson to chase, and striking him out on three pitches.
Lucchesi threw his churve 27 times on Saturday, generating 10 swing-and-misses, while landing it in the strike zone 44.4 percent of the time. It doesn’t happen often, but when the southpaw is able to command his churve for strikes, it almost gives him a third pitch to mix with his true command pitch (his sinker) and the put-away version of his churve.
That said, we also saw the limitations of Lucchesi as a starter on Saturday. While it has become a theme throughout baseball to limit the number of times a starter faces the opposing lineup, with Lucchesi, it is particularly important. Almost all of his opponents’ slash line stats (avg/obp/slg) jump 100+ points when facing him a third time. This is why the Mets have experimented using an opener with him, and why he got the quick hook on Saturday, despite only throwing 55 pitches and after finding a good rhythm (he also hadn’t pitched in multiple days).
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. At least that’s how hitters must be thinking when facing Lucchesi multiple times in an outing. His wind-up and different-looking curveball might be enough to throw off a hitter once or twice, but if he’s not commanding his breaking stuff, there’s no real reason to swing at anything but his sinker once the batter is ahead in the count.
With drastically different release points between his churve and fastball, along with a low spin efficiency on his churve that offsets any real mirroring effect normally achieved when a fastball/curveball are set to polar opposite spin directions out of the hand, Lucchesi can quickly go from deceptive to an easy target.
BOTTOM LINE: If he can only make it through 4-5 innings (on a good day) and if he needs to command his churve at a rate he hasn’t demonstrated he can consistently do in order to be effective, perhaps a traditional starting role isn’t best for Lucchesi.
We saw him come out of the bullpen earlier this month and he looked lights out, throwing front-door sinkers to right-handed hitters and earning several called strikes, something he hasn’t done in the past as a starter. If this was 1997, I would suggest the bullpen is the only suitable place for Lucceshi, but since teams are more willing to use openers and limit their starters to 4-5 innings these days, perhaps the Mets can get away with using him until their rotation gets more healthy next month; they just need to be careful.
⚾️ Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani will make his first pitching appearance in weeks tonight, in a start against the Rangers.
⚾️ Reigning AL Rookie of the Year outfielder Kyle Lewis of Seattle is set to make his 2021 debut after a bone bruise on his knee.
⚾️ Old Mets nemesis LHP Cole Hamels continues to work out in the hopes of landing with a team soon. He made just one start last year due to a variety of ailments.
🔗 Meet the independent analytics guru helping Marcus Stroman and other Mets players, by Tim Healey, Newsday: “Among Fisher’s 50 or so clients across 26 major-league organizations is a trio of Mets righthanders: starter Marcus Stroman (0.90 ERA in three starts), reliever Drew Smith (injured list) and [Trevor] May (5.40 ERA in four games). His primary product is highly specialized heat maps of the strike zone, customized for every pitch a pitcher throws and every batter he might face, created by Fisher’s proprietary algorithm.”
🎧 LISTEN: Baseball insider John Harper joined Andy Martino on the Shea Anything podcast to discuss the strong start to the season for the Mets starting pitchers, including what the financial future may now look like for Jacob deGrom and Marcus Stroman.
🔗 Sandy Alderson Is Sick Of These Stories About His Many Creepy Mets Coworkers, by David Roth, Baseaball Prospectus ($): “This is the challenge of Alderson’s job, now. It’s not just to be more sympathetic than some of the biggest jerks ever to own a sports team, but to take the gnarled and unworkable systems they cultivated and somehow make them work for the people they’d been warped to work against. Saying “knock it off” isn’t going to do it.”
And… we leave you with Mets reliever Trevor May attempting to morph into Jacob deGrom on TikTok:
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This is where in all sports there are too many teams and not enough of quality players - Lucchesi should not be on a major leagye roster.