NEW YORK METS

‘09 Record: 70-92, 4th in NL East
Pythagorean Record: 72-90 (-2 differential)
Current PECOTA Projection: 77-85 (4th in NL East)
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2009 Review

Do we have to? Injuries, power outages, shirtless tirades, awkward fights with beat reporters, getting swindled by Bernie Madoff, a World Series featuring their two biggest rivals, what else could happen? For the Mets, the best thing about the 2009 season is that it’s over.

2010 Outlook

General Manager Omar Minaya and manager Jerry Manuel appear to be on their last chance in their respective roles of power in 2010 and that puts a Mets fan in a very odd position. Of course, you can’t root against your favorite team, but Manuel and Minaya — Minaya especially — have already proven beyond a shadow of a doubt they’re not worthy of their roles. Just take a look at how Minaya handled Billy Wagner. Wagner, recovering from injury, returned to the Mets in the summer and was promptly shipped to Boston for four-A 1B/OF Chris Carter. The Red Sox then made Minaya look foolish by offering Wagner arbitration, knowing he would not accept, and then claiming two first-round draft picks when Wagner signed with the Braves.

On the bright side, that means 2010 is also a win-win. If the team does well — which PECOTA does not expect it to, projecting the Mets for a second-straight fourth-place finish — then everyone’s happy. If not, well then the inevitable addition-by-subtraction can finally, mercifully take place.

2010 Team

Catcher

Minaya took the “throw-a-bunch-of-things-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks” approach to the catcher position this off-season. Omir Santos is technically the incumbent, but he’s unlikely to get the bulk of the playing time. Rod Barajas looks to be the front-runner to open the season as the no. 1 catcher after Minaya penned him to a one-year deal that will pay Barajas between $900,000 and $2 million. And that’s not great news for Mets fans because, despite 19 homers and a career-high 71 RBIs in Toronto last season, Barajas sported a downright offensive .258 OBP.

Henry Blanco fulfills the mandatory wily veteran who handles the pitching staff well quota for the Mets, and he figures to be Johan Santana’s personal catcher. Throw in fringe guys Shawn Riggans and Chris Coste to the fold as well. The guy who most Mets fan hope will earn the job at some point is Josh Thole, a solid left-handed gap-hitting prospect who will likely open the season in AAA to work on his defense.

Infield

You can’t make this stuff up. Just when you thought Jose Reyes might be able to get back on the field, he gets pulled out of spring training because of a thyroid imbalance. The condition isn’t considered serious, but you never know with Reyes, who was also recently questioned by the FBI about a former doctor. Dynamite when healthy, Reyes played only 36 games last season because of a hamstring injury. Manuel is considering slotting Reyes into the three-hole in the lineup, at least until Carlos Beltran returns from injury. The move in and of itself shouldn’t scare Mets fans, but if the domino effect results in more at-bats for Luis Castillo and Daniel Murphy, then it’s counter-productive.

The focus on David Wright this season is whether the 27-year-old superstar can regain his power stroke after a Wiggintonian 10 home runs in ’09. Wright never hit fewer than 26 home runs in a full season before last year so how much of the drop-off was Citi Field-related and how much was just an outlier remains to be seen. Fortunately, PECOTA projects a bounce back with 31 home runs for Wright.

Despite the question marks, Mets fans still have faith in the left side of the infield. The same cannot be said for the right side. At second base, Luis Castillo enters the third year of an insane four-year, $25 million deal. Castillo’s 2009 season will always be remembered for his generosity to the Yankees, but truth be told he wasn’t awful, posting a .302/.387/.346 season in 142 games. Castillo is what he is: a slap-hitter with a good walk rate who will always be BABIP dependent. The Mets pitching staff, especially sinker-ball pitcher Mike Pelfrey, should not be happy to have Castillo back though, because he is one of the league’s worst defenders with range reminiscent of a young Bob Hamelin.

At first, the job is Daniel Murphy’s to lose. Better suited as a utility player, Murphy does not have the bat of a starting first baseman, though he was better defensively at first in 2009 than expected for someone with little experience at the position. However, a platoon of Murphy and Fernando Tatis is at least passable, considering Tatis’ production against left-handed pitchers. Minaya also brought back one-time Met Mike Jacobs to compete at first, he of the -0.6 WAR in 2009.

Outfield

The Mets’ big foray into free agency this winter was the acquisition of Jason Bay. He is a good player to be sure, but not exactly someone who fits the espoused formula of pitching, speed and defense that Minaya stated before the off-season began. Perhaps Minaya was simply course-correcting because, as Jonah Keri tweeted, “Omar Minaya traded Jason Bay at age 23 for Lou Collier. Nice job correcting the problem with a multi-year mega-deal at age 31.” Nonetheless, Bay is a productive player, albeit one who the Mets will be paying to decline.

Carlos Beltran is one of the game’s best overall players when healthy, but like every other living thing the Mets touch, he’s had trouble doing so. The uber-athletic center fielder is expected back in May or June and his performance will go a long way in determining the Amazins’ fate.

Until Beltran returns, a battle rages between Gary Matthews Jr. and Angel Pagan for the starting spot, though it’s a battle that shouldn’t even be taking place because Pagan is clearly the superior player. Despite Minaya’s praise for Matthews’ defense, every defensive metric rates Matthews as one of the league’s worst, especially in center field. Pagan had a career year in ’09, posting a .306/.350/.487 to with a career-best 2.8 WAR. He’ll likely regress in 2010, but he’s still the best option in center until Beltran returns when Pagan becomes a viable fourth outfielder.

And then there’s Frenchy. Much to the chagrin of any Mets fan with a laptop, the Mets acquired Jeff Francoeur from the Braves last season in exchange for Ryan Church. Francoeur is best known for two things: 1) His outrageous throwing arm, which remains a not-always-accurate cannon, despite his limited range. 2) His penchant to swing more often than Benny Goodman. Rest assured that if a pitch is anywhere near the plate, it will entice Francoeur, who has a truly anemic walk rate. Francoeur’s plate discipline will not improve, but he can still be productive in 2010 if he continues to hit for power consistently.

Bench

Behind Castillo and Reyes in the middle infield is the man with arguably the most inane contract that Minaya has ever signed – and that’s saying something. Minaya was so happy with Alex Cora’s below replacement level production last season that he jumped on the opportunity to re-sign Cora for $2 million with a vesting option in the very beginning of free agency. Casting aside Cora’s nebulous leadership qualities, better, younger, more durable players than Cora can be had for the league minimum. And then there’s the issue that for an organization that purports to be working on a finite budget, Cora’s $2 million – along with the $2 million paid to Gary Matthews Jr. – could have been better used on free agents the team missed out on i.e. Ben Sheets.

Jacobs or Chris Carter will make the team as a power bat off the bench and the loser of the center field job will be around as well. Longtime prospect Fernando Martinez could be a factor by mid-season and, if healthy, could have a chance to supplant Francoeur in right field.

Starting Rotation

Ignoring the cries of Mets fans everywhere, Minaya failed to seriously address the starting rotation in the off-season. They still have one of the league’s very best atop the rotation in Johan Santana. Santana’s 2009 wasn’t his best, as his strikeout rate (7.88/9) and walk rate (2.48/9) were his worst since becoming a full-time starter in 2004. The good news and bad news is that Santana had surgery on his throwing arm in August. On the bright side, if he’s fully healthy his performance should rebound to the best-in-league level it was before. On the flip side, arm trouble for a 31-year-old pitcher is never a good thing. Mike Pelfrey is a solid, if unspectacular, ground-ball pitcher who needs better defense to get back to his 2008 success level. John Maine appears to be a five-inning pitcher at this point. With his balky shoulder, Maine could be better suited for the pen — a luxury the Mets don’t likely have.

The fourth spot belongs to Oliver Perez, who posted a sterling 6.82 ERA in 66 innings in 2009. Perez is said to have ramped up his conditioning this off-season and is supposedly ready to rebound in 2010, but color everyone in Blue and Orange skeptical. The fifth spot appears to be a race that is Jonathon Niese’s to lose. Niese, still technically a rookie, tore his hamstring last summer but is healthy and pitching this off-season, sporting his trademark 12-to-6 curveball. The one thing going against Niese is that he retains minor-league options, whereas his competitors, Nelson Figueroa and Fernando Nieve do not.

Bullpen

A year after Minaya proclaimed to have solved the bullpen problem by importing two closers, the bullpen still has plenty of question marks. Francisco Rodriguez is the closer, and is the best finisher the Mets have had in years, despite his declining peripherals e.g. a career-worst K/9 (9.66). Rodriguez, stop me if you’ve heard this before, played through pain in 2009, as his performance dropped way off following a mid-season hospital stay for back spasms. Setting him up is likely to be injury-question marks Kelvim Escobar and Kiko Calero, along with yeoman lefty Pedro Feliciano, Sean Green and Bobby Parnell.

AROUND THE HORN WITH THE NEW YORK METS …

Breakthrough Performance…

Jonathan Niese

Whether or not he makes the rotation out of spring training, Niese is likely to be a major factor in the Mets rotation this season. Niese is a complete pitcher with four good pitches — most notably the aforementioned curveball — and has good command. Niese is a polished pitcher who, if healthy, is ready to contribute as a solid no. 4 starter right now.

Ready to Rebound…

David Wright

You have to believe Wright is ready to get back to where he was two seasons ago. Consistent 30 home run hitters don’t just lose their power and Wright should at least approach his power numbers of years past in 2010. Last year, Wright made up for an increased strikeout rate with a league-best BABIP. While the BABIP won’t stay so high, he’ll make more contact and walk at his normally-productive level as well. Expect Wright, 27, to return to his status as one of the game’s best.

Ready to Disappoint…

Jeff Francoeur

There’s simply too much damning evidence to expect Francoeur to continue to produce at the level he did for the Mets in the second half of ’09. Surprisingly, Francoeur posted an admirable second half of the season in Flushing, rediscovering a long dormant power stroke to post a .498 SLG with the Mets. Francoeur attributes a lot of his second half success to the help of Mets hitting coach Howard Johnson, but he cannot be expected to replicate the results in 2010. After all, we are talking about a guy who put up a 72 OPS+ in 2008.

Don’t Be Surprised If…

The Mets aggressively promote Jenrry Mejia to the majors too soon. Mejia has already drawn (preposterous) comparison to Mariano Rivera this spring, and for an organization that has consistently been over-aggressive in their assignments and that is fighting to save jobs, it only makes too much sense that Mejia will find a spot with the big club sooner rather than later. The problem with this is that Mejia, a phenom with an electric arm that pumps high 90’s fastballs, still needs time to develop as a complete pitcher and should not be slotted into the big league bullpen.

Be Shocked If…

Ike Davis isn’t the starting first baseman by August. First, Davis can’t be ruled out as a potential big leaguer by opening day. But with the meager offerings at first base for the Mets, Davis, 22, will likely be given time to develop on a big league level. The Mets have very high hopes for Davis, perhaps too high, but there’s reason for optimism after the former first-round draft pick who dominated in A+ and AA last year. Be cautious with Davis though, because he strikes out often and doesn’t handle left-handers well at all.

Rock Steady…

Pedro Feliciano

Feliciano led the National League in appearances for the second straight season in 2009, and there’s no reason to believe he can’t pull of the hat trick this season. Feliciano is especially valuable to the Mets because of the litany of left-handed hitters in the NL East, including the Phillies’ duo of Chase Utley and Ryan Howard.

Achilles Heel…

Omar Minaya

As a general manager, Omar Minaya is a great recruiter and not much else. Entering a season with a general manager known to be on his last chance is always an unsettling situation for fans. Will Minaya mortgage the future to save his job in the near-term? It’s a terrifying thought for Mets fans, who have come to know Minaya’s failings – reflexive thinking, attachment to personal favorites (see Franco, Julio), inability to think outside the box, insistence on not having depth, ignorance of advanced metrics … – all too well.

In the Next Three Years…

The Mets will still be paying Bobby Bonilla.

Goosebumps Moment…

The first game that Wright, Reyes and Beltran are all in the same lineup again. It would be even better if Santana were on the mound.

With seven previews in the books, we’re more than 25% complete with our 2nd annual written tour of this year’s major league teams. Up next is Brian Joseph’s preview of the Houston Astros. While the team on the field took a few steps backward, is their hope on the way? Check back tomorrow for BDD’s Astros outlook for ‘10.

Previous Previews
Washington Nationals
Pittsburgh Pirates
Baltimore Orioles
Kansas City Royals
Cleveland Indians
Arizona Diamondbacks

In Philadelphia, Boston and New York, almost every home game carries an intensity (from fans and media) that is a close facsimile to playoff baseball. And when you do get to October, the frequently cold, wet, blustery weather provides something else to battle, too. I started thinking about East Coast Baseball as I watched the Dodgers and Angels go 0-4 in Philadelphia and New York in the LCS, all the while looking like they were not up to the challenges of the crowd and the weather. And then I thought, is there something to West Coast teams not measuring up to East Coast Baseball in October?

So I looked at all the West Coast teams — the Dodgers, Angels, Athletics, Padres, Giants, Mariners and, because they fit the criteria except for a nearby beach, the Diamondbacks — who have played East Coast Baseball in the postseason in the wild-card era, since 1995.

In addition to New York and Philadelphia, other cities that fit the definition of East Coast Baseball at the time they hosted West Coast teams in the playoffs were Boston, Detroit and Baltimore.

It turns out there have been 22 playoff matchups when a West Coast team ventured into East Coast Baseball. The result: the West Coast teams are 10-36 in East Coast Baseball venues, a .217 winning percentage. In other words, get them out of their laid-back, warm environment and into the nasty conditions in the East, and they’re not even the 1962 Mets.

Now, Verducci is definitely cherry-picking matchups a little bit, but I was intrigued enough by the notion to look further into it. First, I needed to get the baseline for the winning percentage of home teams in the playoffs. Since 1995, the first year of wild card play, home teams are 259-216 (.545). — A bit of trivia: There have been only two seven-game series since 1995 in which the home team has won all seven games. See if you can remember them, answer at the bottom — So the difference between the expected success of away teams (.455) and Verducci’s analysis of West Coast teams playing on the East Coast (.217) is quite significant. But to what ends can this actually be attributed to playing in, as Verducci puts it, East Coast baseball?

The thing that should be made clear from the start is that, for the most part, the East Coast teams Verducci is talking about are simply better baseball teams and have had, with the exception of the Angels, longer, more sustained runs of success. But I was less interested in Verducci’s loose criteria for eligible teams and more interested in whether there was a significant difference between West Coast teams playing on the East Coast and East Coast teams playing on the West Coast. So I looked at all playoff series since ‘95 that took place between teams that played their home games on Eastern Standard Time and teams that played on Pacific Standard Time. That means the Mariners, Angels, Dodgers, Padres, Athletics, and Giants against the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Orioles, Phillies, Rays, Marlins, and Braves (if Nationals and Pirates fans want me to include them in the group for posterity’s sake, that’s fine).

So, the record of West Coast teams traveling to the East Coast was a paltry 15-36 (.294), and the record of East Coasters going West, updated after game 5 of the ALCS, was an impressive 32-20 (.615). That’s a pretty jarring difference. It says to me that yes, maybe West Coast teams are less equipped to play on the East Coast than vice-versa, but again, perhaps it just means the East Coast teams have been better.

My next question was, does the cross-country flight make any difference? So I broke down all the games between East Coast and West Coast into the first two games, the set of games after the first cross-country flight, and, if necessary, the games after the second cross-country flight. Here are the results:

1st Two Games: West Coast Home (10-17 .370) – East Coast Away (17-10 .630) – West Coast Away (7-17 .292) – East Coast Home (17-7 .708)

After 1st Flight: West Coast Home (10-13 .435) – East Coast Away (13-10 .565) – West Coast Away (6-17 .261) – East Coast Home (17-6 .739)

After 2nd Flight: West Coast Home (1-2 .333) – East Coast Away (2-1 .667) – West Coast Away (2-2 .500) – East Coast Home (2-2 .500)

So, we already knew the East Coast teams were superior in the coast-to-coast matchups, but it looks like there really is little effect on the outcome of the game based on which team opens up at home. The one slightly interesting jump in numbers, albeit in an extremely small sample size, is the difference after West Coast teams open up on the East and then travel back home. They go from a .292 mark up to .435. And that’s sort of how it played out in this year’s ALCS, with the Angels holding a slight advantage over the Yanks after the flight back West, but, of course, that could have just been a result of Joe Girardi’s overmanaging penchant.

In the end, the numbers probably don’t bode too well for Mets fans. It looks like we really are going to get that nightmare Yankees-Phillies matchup.

— Trivia Answer: The 2001 World Series and the 2004 NLCS

The Good

Adam Dunn over 33.5 HRs – Even though the big guy fell two bombs short of what would have been an amazing five straight seasons with exactly 40 homers, this one was almost too easy.

Brian McCann +3.5 HRs vs. Magglio Ordonez – This turned out to be the biggest blowout of my “wins,” with McCann edging Ordonez 21 to 8, and I’m not sure why the line was this way to begin with. Ordonez was clearly on a downward trend, and McCann, in the prime of his career, hit two more home runs than Ordonez in 2008.

Florida Marlins +7.5 wins vs. Atlanta Braves – I was quite high on the Marlins, as I, theoretically, would have also gone with the over on 76.5 wins. The Marlins outperformed their preseason expectations, grabbing 87 wins to the Braves’ 86, and yet they still might fire their manager. Go figure.

Chicago Cubs under 91.5 wins –The prohibitive favorite in the NL Central entering the year, the Cubs had quite the forgettable year, and trail only the Mets in terms of NL disappointments.

Milwaukee Brewers under 80.5 wins – I would have just barely hit this one by a half-game, so a very nice line by Vegas. Apparently they had a very good handle on the Brewers, as you’ll see below.

The Bad

Ryan Braun over 33.5 HRs – Braun ended up with 32 jacks, so they were right on point here also. It is a little surprising though that Braun played seven more games than last year and managed to hit five less homers in his 25-year-old season.

Jaime Moyer under 11.5 Wins – Another one nailed by Vegas, as Moyer ended up with 12 wins. I stand behind this bet though, considering Moyer’s performance, and if it weren’t for two wins picked up in relief during rain-delayed games, this would be a win.

Tampa Bay Rays over 87.5 wins – I stand by this one too, since the Rays fell apart down the stretch and still only fell four games short of getting to 88. The Rays were my biggest weakness going into the season – I was convinced they were going to be a better team than in 2009 and would be one of the three best teams in baseball, along with their two AL East counterparts. I feel hard on Joe Maddon’s crew, also circling their + 6.5 win spread against the Red Sox, + 7 win spread against the Yankees, and +1400 odds to win the World Series.

The Ugly

Oakland A’s + 7.5 wins vs. Anaheim Angels – I was definitely guilty of wearing PECOTA-colored glasses when it came to the AL West. This looked like a cinch to me at the time, and I also targeted the A’s over 81.5 wins and the Angels under 89.5. I’ve learned my lesson to never question the Angels again, as they ended up besting the chic preseason-pick A’s by a mere 22 games.

Colorado Rockies under 77.5 wins – Another team I couldn’t have been more wrong about. I questioned the Rockies pitching and was down on the offense following Tulowitzki’s dismal 2008. I wasn’t the only one who was wrong about the
Rockies though, as they bested their Vegas projection by 14.5 games and, of course, snagged the NL wildcard.

New York Mets +0.5 wins vs. Philadelphia Phillies – Oh, the misery. It seems like years ago that the NL East was considered to be another toss-up between the Mets and Phillies, and, as a Mets fan, I was too optimistic. You can’t expect an offense with no depth to succeed when relying on four good players who all played at least 159 games the year before.