On Prospects and Analytics

David Stearns has taken heat for moves he hasn't made this winter, but he is laying the groundwork for a transformational season.

The Mets organization has no history of being a player development juggernaut. There have been some good homegrown players over the years, even a few great ones. But there has never been a significant era in the Mets' existence fueled by a farm system continually delivering talent to the major league club. Over many decades, this has been a primary reason why the club has been unable to sustain winning.

Finding Value

If the Mets are to take a step forward under David Stearns, it will be because the organization finally figures out how to unearth value in building a deeper roster.

With the regular season all but over, we await the official beginning of the David Stearns era with the Mets. Although there has been plenty of speculation regarding what that might mean for the club, we won't really know what sort of changes Stearns might bring to this organization until the new PBO officially takes over. That should happen sometime on Monday. The time will depend on whether the suspended Mets-Marlins game from Friday needs to be completed to determine a Wild Card spot or seeding.

Advanced Biomechanics, Meet the Mets

The Mets pitching lab is open for business in Port St. Lucie. Now the challenge for the club is to properly implement the expensive gizmos they invested in.

One of my biggest frustrations when the Wilpons owned the Mets was how far the team had fallen behind other, more progressive organizations in taking advantage of analytics and technology. Teams in much smaller markets operating under relatively small budgets were miles ahead of a team playing in the greatest city in the world. It's been reported that the Mets' front office was frequently frustrated by their inability to convince ownership that investing in technology would ultimately make the organization more efficient in developing ballplayers. This reluctance pre-dated the nosedive the club's finance took with the collapse of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. The Wilpons were notoriously unwilling to spend on anything they couldn't understand.

Bad Actors

Bad Actor: a mean, ill-tempered, troublemaking, or evil person.

Dictionary.com

As the 2023 New York Mets' season grinds down to what surely will feel like a merciful death, most of us Mets fans are hoping and praying for a 2024 season that is at least compelling, if not triumphant. How that plays out depends on who suits up for the team next year, and that, of course, will greatly depend on who is making what is sure to be a series of significant decisions this offseason. David Stearns, or whoever calls the shots, must hit on most of those calls. The implications of those choices go way beyond 2024 for the Mets. The idea of sustained winning still feels like the ever-elusive white whale for long-time fans like myself. And even Steve Cohen isn't going to stomach massive deficit spending forever.

Too Much of a Good Thing

2021 was a disappointing season for the New York Mets. The pitching staff was beset with injuries. Jacob deGrom and Carlos Carrasco, the two pitchers penciled in as 1 and 2 in the Mets' rotation, made only 27 combined starts. That was only the tip of the injury iceberg that sunk the Mets'season — all told, 42 starters and relievers toed the rubber for the Mets last year. That was not a recipe for success.

The Road Not Taken

I spend a lot of time thinking about the New York Mets. Fortunately for my mental health, it's been a much more pleasant experience since Steve Cohen bought the team than it was previously. Sure, 2021 didn't turn out to be the year that Mets fans hoped for, but the club has done a good job addressing the root causes of last season's disappointment — at least until the lockout brought MLB operations to a halt. Conversely, in the final years of the Wilpon ownership, time spent pondering the Mets inevitably brought on persistent feelings of helplessness and despair.

Microbes, Gizmos, and Being a Bit Greedy

As I expected, the rest of the weekend series against the Nationals was postponed, and now we have to wait until Monday for the Mets' Opening Day. As much as that sucks, it seemed inevitable once the first game was called off. The only thing that's going to put an end to all of these "out of an abundance of caution" covid stoppages will be when most MLB players and coaches are vaccinated. It will be a relief not to have the ever-present threat of having baseball taken away with no warning hanging over our heads any longer. In the meantime, this is proof-positive that, while normal may be in sight, it's not here yet.

Analyze This

Just in case you thought there was one correct way to successfully integrate analytics into running a baseball team, that's apparently not the case. A couple of days ago, I was reading a terrific piece in The Athletic by Brittany Ghiroli and Eno Sarris about how teams were using the position of quality control or quality assurance coach to maximize their use of data: