Good Morning,
We talk today about Jacob deGrom’s increasingly absurd dominance, and catch you up on the latest news. But first, please help us out by filling out this quick user survey about our newsletter (click the blue box below). We make this newsletter for you, so your feedback is greatly appreciated:
⏰ Catch me up in 60(ish) seconds…
🐐 UNREAL: While Jacob deGrom proved he is human by giving up his first run of the spring, he continues to look dominant, throwing 100 MPH in the Mets’ 8-3 win, while striking out six batters and allowing only two hits in four innings of work (more on deGrom in a bit).
SAVE IT: It’s possible deGrom will get his final tune-up in an intrasquad scrimmage instead of facing the Nationals again on March 26. The two-time Cy Young Award winner is set to open the season in DC on April 1.
🍎 HELLO: If you were worried about Francisco Lindor’s 3-19 start to camp, hopefully you were watching yesterday. The star shortstop hit his first home run wearing a Mets uniform after ripping another hit earlier in the game.
💰 EXTENSION: A week after beginning contract negotiations, Lindor praised the Mets while telling reporters extension talks aren’t serious yet and reiterating he will not be negotiating during the season.
COMFORTABLE: “We are all trying to win, all trying to get better, so I am liking the organization, I am feeling more comfortable,” Lindor said. “This is a good workplace. I am happy right now, so we’ll see what happens.”
FOCUS: “I’ve got to give everything I’ve got into winning baseball games,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “So if [an extension] doesn’t happen in Spring Training, I’ll go to free agency and we’ll talk in November.”
🔥 RED HOT: Pete Alonso is hitting the ball hard (10-24 with 3 HRs this spring) and in ways nobody else has hit it before:
⬇️ OPTIONED: The Mets announced on Tuesday they have optioned right-hander Sam McWilliams and outfielder Khalil Lee to their Triple-A roster.
McWilliams was signed this offseason to much fanfare — given that he received more money than Pete Alonso got after swatting 53 homers, despite the hurler having just a mediocre minor league resume. But he is still raw and struggled to command the strike zone this spring.
Lee was acquired in a three-team deal from the Royals and lived up to his scouting report of having raw tools but trouble with contact, striking out nine times in 15 Grapefruit League plate appearances.
👍 ALL GOOD: Right-hander Carlos Carrasco completed a bullpen session on Thursday: "He threw 18 pitches and he felt great," Rojas told reporters via Zoom. "Next step is throw against live hitters/sim games on Thursday."
Spin axis of evil
🧓 by Jeffrey Bellone
Jacob deGrom reminds me of the cool kid in high school who spends every summer turning his hormones into muscle while everyone else’s turns into acne. At an age when he is supposed to see his velocity and performance start to decline, the two-time Cy Young Award winner is only getting better.
Following a startling trend of velocity improvement over the past several seasons, he is throwing even harder this spring, clocking over 100 MPH on his fastball. It’s no wonder he has struck out 16 batters in just nine innings of work. When he isn’t throwing pure gas in March contests designed to get loose, he is dropping a devastating slider and occasional change-up to remind everyone he can fool hitters in multiple ways.
But you don’t read this newsletter to learn how good deGrom is; you already know that. You want to learn something new, and there was something interesting about his fastball yesterday worth pointing out.
Tuesday wasn’t just the first time fans got to see deGrom on their television sets this year; it also brought Statcast data to one of his outings for the first time this spring. And while it is only one game — a Spring Training game at that — it appears he was throwing with a slightly different spin axis yesterday.
How do we know this?
For deGrom to generate elite “rise” on his fastball, he must throw it with the right spin rate, speed, and efficiency. Essentially, he is trying to release the ball into the air at a spin axis that produces pure backspin. If you suddenly see more arm-side movement from the pitch, it is a sign that something has changed in the spin axis.
As you can see in the graphic above, while it’s only one game, deGrom’s horizontal movement on his fastball on Tuesday demonstrated more arm-side movement than in 96% of his starts since 2017. It doesn’t mean the pitch was ineffective—and as baseball goes, the long ball he served up was on a fastball with the least amount of run yesterday — but it’s something worth noting.
Interestingly, his release point was a bit higher yesterday, which suggests he was throwing more over the top, and would indicate the change in spin axis could be mostly a product of a change in the orientation of his hand and fingers upon release, but it’s not clear enough to draw a conclusion at this time.
There will always be a range of outcomes in baseball, as well as outliers, and that is what makes it a beautiful sport from a numbers perspective. And without detailed Statcast data on deGrom’s previous spring starts, we don’t know how much his fastball run is an outlier versus a developing trend.
In the end, it’s a minor detail about a pitcher who has somehow figured out how to get better each year. But when you are dealing with near perfection, it’s the minor details that you are left to comb through in trying to find something human within a pitcher with superpowers.
⚾️ Cleveland’s experiment with playing INF Amed Rosario in centerfield got off to a shaky start as the former Met committed three errors in three innings.
⚾️ LeBron James is set to become part owner of the Boston Red Sox, per Michael Silverman of the Boston Globe.
⚾️ The Blue Jays exercised their 2022 contract option on manager Charlie Montoyo.
🔗 Bobby Bonilla and the True Story Behind Baseball’s Most Notorious Contract, an excerpt from Devin Gordon’s new book, So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin' True Story of the New York Mets―the Best Worst Team in Sports (released yesterday), via BusinessWeek:
Now that the Wilpons are gone, though, and the coast is clear, it’s time to reveal the hilarious truth: The deal worked beautifully for the Mets… It paid instant dividends, triggering moves that led to a World Series appearance in 2000 and a deep postseason run in 2006. And yet that same contract has become a shining symbol of the cloddish Mets, a blunder of such epic proportions that fans have memorialized it with a sarcastic holiday. Somehow the Mets managed to get it wrong even when they got it right.
🔗 The Technology Road Map That Can Turn the New York Mets Into World Series Champions, by Joe Lemire, SportTechie: “SportTechie has taken the liberty to put forth the Baseball Technology Roadmap that the Mets—or any club playing catch-up—should follow to keep pace with the Dodgers of the world. And just how wide is that chasm between the World Series champs and the distant hopefuls?”
🎧 LISTEN: Joe DeMayo and Connor Rogers were joined by Mets VP of Scouting Tommy Tanous on the That’s So Mets Podcast to discuss his decade with the franchise, his road into the league, and provide an inside look at the Mets’ most recent draft classes.
🎧 LISTEN: Doug Williams and Keith Hernandez drop an all-new Shea Anything podcast, where Keith previews the Mets’ chances, and explains why he was talking to his cat on the air during a game.
And we leave you with this high-res view of deGrom’s slider grip and action…
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