We are all guilty at times of becoming too focused on statistics when it comes to determining a player’s worth. Sometimes we overlook the value of being able to take the ball whatever the situation. Ultimately, that was Carlos Torres‘ greatest attribute.
Over the past three years, Terry Collins stretched that rubber arm of his to a breaking point. Torres served as a spot starter, long man, and set-up guy in his three years with the Mets. In his time with the Mets, he averaged over 1.1 innings per appearance. Torres’ rubber arm allowed Collins to rest the other arms in the Mets bullpen. There is immense value in a pitcher that can constantly take the ball in a variety of spots.
However, saying Torres’ value was taking the ball whenever needed is underselling him. Torres was an effective pitcher with the Mets. Torres had a 3.59 ERA, a 1.253 WHIP, and an 8.2 K/9 in his three years in Flushing. He was a good pitcher. Unfortunately, after all the time and hard work he put in with the Mets, Torres was hampered by a hamstring injury which prevented him from pitching in the postseason.
However, that’s not to say he didn’t have an impact on the 2015 season. He started and finished the most amazing defensive play of the season:
We also discovered he might’ve been the fastest Met on the team. Finally, he gave up his number 52 for Yoenis Cespedes. I expected nothing less from someone who was a team first guy.
With the Mets signing Antonio Bastardo, there wasn’t any room for him left on this Mets team. It’s a cruel twist of fate we see all too often in sports. A guy gives everything he has to help a losing team, and when things begin to turn around, he is sent packing. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the way things work. Sure, Torres deserved better, but that still doesn’t mean there was room for him on the 25 man roster.
With that said, it shouldn’t come as no surprise that Torres didn’t return to the Mets. Not even on a minor league deal. Instead, Torres signed a minor league deal with the Braves. He should have no problem making their Opening Day roster as Torres can fill any role he teams needs.
Teams always need a player like Torres, and I’m sure at varying points of the season, so will the Mets. He was a player who brought real value to the team. It certainly leaves a hole in the organization not having him and his rubber arm around anymore. He was a good Met, and he will be missed.
Thank you Carlos Torres.
Last year, I made sure to bring my son to Steven Matz‘s first start. I wanted him to be there to see what we all presumed was the last installment of what was to be a Mets super staff.
It was a great day. Matz allowed only two runs over 7.2 innings. He went 3-3 at the plate with four RBI. It was such an amazing first start that his celebrating grandfather became a legend in his own right:
Matz followed that up with a terrific start in Los Angeles allowing no runs over 6.0 innings recording eight strikeouts. After that, Matz was shut down with an torn oblique that Dan Warthen checked out himself before the Dodger start.
He would’ve pitch again for another two months. He came back, and he went 2-0 with a 2.86 ERA in four starts. However, those numbers seem better than he pitched. In those four starts, batters hit .297/.330/.374 against him. He has a 1.45 WHIP. He would then have a back injury. This injury would not prevent him from being named to the postseason roster.
Matz wasn’t great in the postseason. He was 0-1 with a 3.68 ERA. He pitched into the sixth inning once in his three starts. He had a 1.432 WHIP.
What can we glean from all of this? Absolutely nothing. Matz’s first two starts were exciting, but they were only two starts. The four starts at the end of the season were after two months of complete inactivity. His postseason starts came more than two weeks after his last regular season start. His second postseason start came eight days later. His World Series start was 10 days later. He wasn’t getting enough work to stay sharp.
As of today, he’s probably a favorite to be the National League Rookie of the Year. Most Mets fans expect him to be an ace. I think that’s not fair. Matz hasn’t showed himself to be that good yet. The projections for him aren’t that rosy.
I don’t know what’s driving those numbers. I don’t know if his injuries last year are driving those low innings projections. It could be his two injuries last year.
I’m not sure how it is to presume Matz is injury prone. While he did have two freak injuries last year, it’s not fair to say he’s injury prone. So far, all we have is the two injuries this year and a longer than usual rehab from Tommy John surgery. So while I’m sure the Mets will have an eye on his innings pitched, I also believe, he has a reasonable chance to be healthy for a full season.
The next issue is why do the projections see Matz having such a high ERA next year. My presumption is that this is based on Matz’s 3.61 FIP last year. Based upon his FIP numbers, the projected ERAs are certainly justifiable. However, again, four of those starts were made after Matz had no baseball activities for two months due to his lat injury.
We all have hope Matz will be great in 2016. However, there is nothing from his 2015 season that can establish he will be good or bad next year. Whatever happens, I’m going to enjoy the ride.
During Jeurys Familia‘s time answering questions on the Mets Twitter account, the dumbest baseball argument was resurrected:
A sandwich is a sandwich, a hot dog is a hot dog! #AskFamilia https://t.co/rht7efanCs
— New York Mets (@Mets) February 9, 2016
Sigh.
I guess it’s a sign that the Mets are in such good shape for the upcoming season that we’re back to arguing about whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich.
Alright, let’s start with the basics. It should be fair to say that most people do not believe they are ordering a sandwich when they are ordering a hot dog at a game. However, there’s no reason why that should be dispositive. For example, most people, the State of New Jersey, and the Supreme Court believe a tomato to be a vegetable. It’s not. A tomato is a fruit. No matter how you argue it, it’s a fruit.
Now, I bring this up because there are many arguments on the tomato. The arguments are similar. It’s a gut feeling, or wanting to tax an item, that is the driving force. If you want to rely upon tax codes and the Supreme Court, I refer you to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance who clearly defines a hot dog in a bun as a sandwich.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to rely on that. Tax codes and the like aren’t written to be correct. Rather, they are written to exact as much revenue as possible. So let’s try another route.
The dictionary definition of a sandwich is two or more slices of bread, or a split roll, with a filling. So yes, under the dictionary definition, a hot dog on a roll is a sandwich. It’s a position food experts seem to share:
— Alton Brown (@altonbrown) February 4, 2016
I’ve heard all the contrary opinions. When you order a sandwich, you’re not expecting a hot dog. Maybe, but when I order peanut butter and jelly, I’m expecting that to be on bread.
When you go to a game and order a hot dog, you expect to get a hot dog on a bun. True, but when your spouse tells you to get hot dogs from the grocery store, do you bring them home already cooked and in buns, or do you purchase them separately?
Look, it’s not a sandwich, it’s just a hot dog. To me this is an argument that just seeks to prove its underlying point. It’s like saying Lucas Duda isn’t a good first baseman because of one throw while ignoring his 57 homers in two years.
So overall, whether we like it or not, a hot dog on a bun is a sandwich. Now, can we please move onto more important topics like who will pitch the sixth inning for the Mets this year?
Yesterday, the Mets signed Roger Bernadina to a minor league deal. Anytime the Mets sign a player on a minor league deal, I think it’s a great low risk high reward move.With that said, I’m curious why the Mets signed Bernadina.
Bernadina is a 31 year old outfielder that was originally signed by the Montreal Expos. He played three full seasons with the successor Nationals before being released. Bernadina bounced around a bit since, and he spent all of 2015 in the minor leagues. He’s a career .236/.307/.354 hitter. He’s played all three outfield positions in his career reasonably well. Considering the Brandon Nimmo injury and the Darrell Ceciliani trade, this was a good depth move. Or was it?
His current deal with the Mets he has a June 15th opt out clause. That’s the same day the Mets can trade Alejandro De Aza without any restrictions. This begs the question whether Bernadina was signed as minor league depth, or whether he was signed so the Mets could trade De Aza? Is Berndina slated to be the fifth outfielder or is he really just depth to protect against injury?
Time will tell. In either scenario, this was a solid organizational depth move by the Mets.
Last season, the Mets trading for Tyler Clippard was the first sign that the Mets were all-in on the 2015 season. The Mets gave up a very promising prospect in Casey Meisner for three months of a middle reliever.
When Clippard came to the Mets, he immediately locked down the eighth inning. When the division was still in doubt, from July 28th to September 16th, he pitched 26.1 innings in 26 appearances with a 2.73 ERA and a 1.03 WHIP. He limited batter to a .182/.257/.364 batting line. He combined with Jeurys Familia to make Mets games seven inning games. Combined with the Mets starting pitching, you have a 20-8 August and the Mets putting away the Nationals and the NL East.
With that, Clippard completed his goal of “chasing down [his] old teammates there in Washington.” He wanted bragging rights over his old teammates, and he got them.
Unfortunately, Clippard suffered a back injury. His production fell off significantly. He wasn’t the shut down reliever he was when he first joined the Mets. That Clippard was missed in the World Series. He was the loser in Game Four, which was probably the turning point in that series. After that the Mets apparently felt he didn’t deserve the two-year deal they gave Antonio Bastardo.
Personally, I thought with the offseason, Clippard would’ve had time to heal and become that eighth inning option again. I’m still surprised the Mets thought he was worth a potential ace, saw him perform well, and now think he’s not worth a two year deal. Well now, the Mets loss is the Diamondbacks gain. Now, Clippard is an ex-Met after him doing everything he could do to help the team win the NL East. He leaves with those bragging rights.
The Mets now have bragging rights over everyone in the National League. With that, we all owe him a small debt of gratitude. When he comes out of that bullpen door come this August, he deserves to be cheered. He deserves that much.
Thank you Tyler Clippard.
I’m not going to criticize Cam Newton and his performance at the post-Super Bowl press conference:
He was sullen and depressed from losing the biggest game of his life. In the background, you can hear a Bronco player bragging about how they shut down Cam Newton and the Panthers. He was literally asked the same question over and over again. Do you really expect him to be ecstatic and loquacious?
Of course not. The narrative will be either how he didn’t play well or how he was shut down. He has a long flight ahead of him. He’s 3,000 miles away from the Panther fans. It’s just a terrible situation.
Juxtapose that with the Mets losing the World Series. The team lost three games in which they had a lead with their seemingly invincible closer on the mound. Perhaps the cruelest defeat was Game Five when the Mets arguably had their ace carry a shutout into the ninth. They had a lead from two homeruns from their future superstar leftfielder. They blew the game like they blew the rest of the series. They lost in front of their home fans.
Cam Newton had to hear how he got beat. He got asked the same question repeatedly. Here’s the treatment the Mets players received:
The setting allowed the fans and team to celebrate a great season together. Yes, it would’ve been different had the Mets been on the road. Conversely, the passionate fans would then have a chance to celebrate their teams World Series title:
Did you hear or see any of the exuberance yesterday? No. That’s the effect of playing a game at a neutral site. There’s no rejoicing when your team wins. There’s no celebrating a season that fell just short. In short, there’s no shared experience.
In the end, baseball is about a journey. It’s a shared journey between the team and their fans. Football ignores their fans and leaves their players out to dry. It’s why baseball will always be superior.
For some reason when they built my home, they put no cable on the main floor. No idea why. I didn’t realize it or care when I purchased the house. There’s cable in the bedrooms. I have a great set-up in the basement. It wasn’t an issue until my son was born.
Having a baby changes your life forever. What was once a great set-up becomes a death trap. It used to be no big deal running up and down two flights of stairs. We weren’t doing that with our son, especially as an infant. You’re too tired to do that. You really watch less and less TV. However, as a fan, you still don’t want to miss the big events. As such, I put a TV on the first floor, and I got a Roku stick.
Last night, the Super Bowl was streamed on the CBS Sports App. I watched the entire game on it. I saw the same plays you saw. I saw the same commercials you did. Judging from Twitter, there was a palatable 5-10 second delay from TV. At halftime, I gave my son a bath and put him to bed. I went back downstairs and watched the end of the game. Overall, it was great, but it did raise one important question. Why doesn’t Major League Baseball do this? Honestly, I can’t think of one justifiable reason.
If you talk about cable money, keep in mind other companies have figured it out. In order to stream ESPN, HBO, Showtime, etc., you have to log in through your cable provider. In essence, you can’t watch without establishing you already pay for the service. I have no idea why SNY, or even YES for that matter, doesn’t do the same.
If you want to argue that you can never watch a game on a mobile device, you’re wrong. I have the Optimum App on my phone and other devices. I can walk around my home with the Mets game on my phone. However, I can’t sit down and watch a game using the Roku (unless you have Time Warner cable).
Now, I can watch games on the MLB app. However, I can only stream out of market games. Even if I could stream a Mets game, I would need to purchase a MLB subscription for a service I already paid good money to watch. It’s time for MLB to stop these arcane practices and allow their games to be streamed in local markets.
I’m tired of Major League Baseball lagging behind the NFL. It needs to stop.
Families and friends will gather around the TV tonight to watch the Super Bowl tonight. Some gather for the game. Some gather for the commercials. With some Mets already at Spring Training, I’m sure they’ll get together to watch the game.
One person we know who will not be there is Juan Uribe. No, not because he’s a free agent. He’s not watching because he really hates football. He only wants to watch baseball. If he was there tonight, he’d probably tell David Wright to turn on the baseball game. Unfortunately for Uribe, there’s no baseball games being televised during the Super Bowl tomorrow. No, not even on the MLB Network.
So who knows? Maybe Uribe breaks down and watches the Super Bowl tonight. If it’ll help him to know that Cam Newton loves baseball or that his former teammate Todd Helton was a former teammate of Peyton Manning at Tennessee.
In any event, after tonight, it’s all about baseball just like Juan Uribe wants it to be.
My favorite Mets jerseys are the ’86 Mets jerseys. I love the orange and blue racing stripes along the sides of the jerseys. Now that the Mets are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the ’86 World Series title, the jersey is coming back:
Mets will wear '86 uniforms multiple times throughout the season as an alternate — not just during weekend honoring 30th anniversary.
— Adam Rubin (@AdamRubinMedia) February 3, 2016
At first, I was ecstatic. I never thought the Mets should’ve gotten rid of those jerseys. I love seeing them out on the field. It reminds me of a time when the Mets were great. It reminds me of when the Mets once owned New York. Those days are long past. The Mets have moved on from that time.
First, it was the black jerseys. They had a good run through the 90’s. Then it was a transitional period where we saw less of the black, more of the snow white jerseys, and variations of the pinstriped jerseys.
Now, the Mets have settled on a new group of uniforms. It’s a mixture between the simpler old-style uniforms and the nice alternate blue uniforms.
These are new uniforms for a new generation of Mets baseball. While I agree the Mets should be wearing the ’86 jerseys to celebrate the last Mets World Series championship team, I do not agree they should be worn throughout the season. Instead, I’d like to see the Mets update the patch the Mets wore on the ’86 jerseys.
Recreate this patch with the years 1986 and 2016 for the 30th anniversary. Put these on the new Mets uniforms. The uniforms that belong to the ’16 Mets. Let these Mets wear their own uniforms.
Hopefully, they will be the same uniforms another Mets team will wear 30 years from now.
Last year, the Mets were carried by their pitching. It helped them sustain an anemic offense until the Mets got healthy and made trades. It helped carry them to the World Series. It’s the promise for the future.
That future first comes into question around 2019. That is the year that Matt Harvey becomes a free agent. Zack Wheeler could become a free agent the same year or the subsequent year. Two years later Jacob deGrom becomes a free agent. After that, the Mets will have to address the free agent case of Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz. Naturally, this prompts the discussion of who the Mets should extend and when they should do it.
When these discussions take place, I find everyone to be extremely short-sided. Yes, it’s important to make a decision on the Mets starters, especially on Harvey, deGrom, and Syndergaard. However, I find that these discussions ignore Jeurys Familia. Like Harvey, Familia will be a free agent in 2019.
Familia was an exceedingly important part of the 2015 Mets. He was the stabilizing force at the back-end of a beleaguered bullpen. During 2015, Familia had the fifth most appearances. Of players who were strictly relievers, he had the third most innings pitched. He lead the league in games finished. He tied the Mets single season record for saves.
The advanced statistics also loved Familia’s 2015 season. He had an ERA+ of 200, which is astounding. It was the best amongst Mets pitchers. In fact, it’s a tick below Mariano Rivera‘s career 205 mark, which is the best in major league history. Familia’s FIP was 2.74, which, unsurprisingly, rates him as an excellent pitcher. Mariano’s career mark was 2.76. In essence, Familia’s 2015 was Riveraesque.
Keep in mind, Collins initially deployed Familia like Rivera. When it came time to close out the NLDS, Familia pitched two shutout innings. In the whole postseason, Familia had 12 appearances, and of those 12 appearances, he pitched more than one inning five times. He pitched 14.2 innings in those 12 appearances. Yes, he blew three saves in the World Series, but he only allowed one earned run the entire postseason. In reality, the blown saves were not on Familia but the Mets team as a whole.
Its important to lock-up some starting pitchers. If Harvey, deGrom, or Syndergaard leave, the Mets have other starters to keep having a strong rotation. If Familia were to leave, the Mets do not appear to have another reliever to take Familia’s spot. This makes extending Familia absolutely imperative.
So when it comes down to which Mets pitcher I would extend first, my answer is Jeurys Familia.
Editor’s Note: this article also appeared on metsmerizedonline.com