Some Thoughts on Our New Manager

The new Mets manager had an impressive introduction to the fan base. Now the hard stuff begins.

I wasn't planning to watch Carlos Mendoza's introductory press conference but was home at noon, so I decided to tune in. He came across as knowledgeable and enthusiastic and has received good reviews in most things I've read. He clearly knows what he's getting into by taking a manager's job in New York. According to SNY, he'll make about $1.5 million per year for three years, with a club option for a fourth. So, even if Carlos lasts out his entire contract, he'll make less total money than Craig Counsell will make next year alone. Carlos Mendoza will need to enjoy some success as a manager if he hopes to get closer to Counsell's income level.

Welcome to the David Stearns Era

The new President of Baseball Operations is officially on the job. Here are some quick thoughts on Day 1 of the David Stearns era.

We've been talking about David Stearns for a while in this space, particularly since the Mets announced on September 12 that Stearns would, indeed, be taking the PBO job. What was especially gratifying was that, after almost three years of constantly reading why potential targets were afraid of taking on the job, Stearns confirmed today that he was eager to accept the position. This is even though Stearns — a native New Yorker who grew up a Mets fan — understands all too well the pressures of the top job in this market.

Creating the Next Generation of Mets' Pitchers

The free agent pitching market is expensive and unpredictable. The solution is for the Mets to get back to producing more of their own pitching talent. What will that take?

I've been rooting for the New York Mets for over 50 years. Although the Mets have developed some excellent position players over the years, this is an organization that, by far, is known for developing some great starting pitchers. However, the current edition of the Mets had to stock up their rotation on the free agent market. It was quite expensive and, at least up to now, a huge fail. As the dreadful 2023 season has shifted our focus to the future, we ponder how the Mets can develop some of their in-house arms into effective Major League hurlers and reduce dependence on the pricey free agent marketplace.

Reasons For Hope and Concern in Week One

Even this guy might not be
able to fix Carlos Carrasco

Some analysis and one big item of worry from the first few games of the New York Mets' 2023 season.

Since I last wrote here, the New York Mets enjoyed a pretty good opening series in Miami, followed by a very bad first game in Milwaukee. The Mets have now navigated a full turn through their starting rotation. While Kodai Senga showed promise of being a good MLB pitcher in his first time pitching here in the States, Carlos Carrasco did nothing to alleviate the concerns I had about him heading into the season. Every pitcher in their bullpen has pitched at least once, with Dennis Santana already appearing 3 times.

Small Things

Hiring Eric Jagers is a smart move that could pay big dividends in the future.

Shortly after extending closer Edwin Díaz to a record-breaking deal, the New York Mets hired Eric Jagers as their director of pitching development. The 27-year-old Jagers will oversee the development of all the Mets' minor league pitchers. While the Díaz signing will justifiably garner much more attention from both the media and Mets fans, Jagers will be taking over a job that will be crucial for the club's hopes of taking some of the talented arms in their minor league system and turning them into cheap, controllable major league contributors.

Wisdom From the Captain

We have it on excellent authority that the current main concern of New York Mets fans is the health of Jacob deGrom. While we at MikesMets.com would never reveal a confidential source, let's just say that he looks an awful lot like the guy on the right. Our source also revealed that human beings need oxygen to function properly, although he didn't offer any data to back up that assertion. As far as the deGrom revelation, that was pretty much a given when Jake exited last night's game against the Cubs after the third inning. While it's fair to say that the news that the MRI on his shoulder came back clean was welcome, it's also fair to note that the unexplained nature of deGrom's physical problems this season is becoming a story in and of itself.

Building Better Pitching

Tim Britton had an outstanding piece in The Athletic today about the Mets organization's efforts to create a state-of-the-art pitching development program. Under the Wilpons, the team had been notoriously reluctant to buy into the latest trends in player development. This likely reflected some skepticism towards new technologies on their part and a certain cheapness towards investing in something that didn't pay obvious and immediate benefits. That's probably a good reason why the Mets have historically lagged behind the top organizations in developing talent. Fortunately, new Mets owner Steve Cohen sees the benefits of investing in the future. That should pay dividends for the club and its fans going forward.

What Needs to Happen

I was doing the dishes and some laundry this morning, two fairly necessary but quite boring tasks. We have a Google Hub Max in the kitchen so, to divert my attention a bit, I put on last night's Baseball Night in New York from my YouTube TV DVR. I know, I know, a lot of it is mindless sports talk radio-caliber stuff, but some of it can be pretty good. Former Met Anthony Recker, in particular, can be funny and say really smart things sometimes. SNY's Andy Martino can be irritating at times, but he could be interesting, too. It depends on the day. At least with the DVR, I can skip the really dumb stuff along with the commercials.

Cracking Down on Sticky Stuff, Hefner's Positive Impact

Last year before the start of spring training, there was talk that MLB would be cracking down on the use of substances by pitchers to enhance their grip on the baseball and increase the amount of spin on their pitches. This, in turn, is one of the contributors to ever-increasing strikeout numbers in baseball. The topic took a back seat to worries about surviving a baseball season during a pandemic, but it's back now this spring as the country slowly moves towards a post-COVID world.

Building a Better Bullpen

Given the scattershot nature of spring training telecasts, it's been difficult to judge the performance of Mets pitchers so far. This is particularly the case for relief pitchers, who you're only going to see for an inning, even when a game is on tv. That holds true for Miguel Castro, the young pitcher acquired from the Orioles by Brodie Van Wagenen last season. I've personally only had the opportunity to watch the man pitch once. I liked what I saw, but I understand that it's folly to extrapolate a good inning into a potential full season's performance.

The Bullpen Is Still a Work in Progress

There's been much discussion in the local media about some of the Mets' relievers this spring. This isn't surprising, as the bullpen is probably the biggest question mark for the club in the early going. The questions run from closer Edwin Díaz on down, but one of the biggest questions is certainly who will be the most frequently used late-inning setup men. Only Trevor May and Aaron Loup look like locks for those jobs currently, while many other candidates jockey for the other slots.

Coming Soon to a Ballpark Near You, Baseball That Looks Familiar

2020 will always be remembered as a bizarre baseball season, by far the weirdest of my lifetime. The only seasons that approached it in sheer peculiarity were 1981, where a strike shut the game down for two months from June 12 - August 9, and 1994, when baseball just packed up and shut down for the rest of the year without crowning a champion. Still, at least to my mind, 2020 stands alone. Not only for the dramatic accommodations MLB had to make to play an abbreviated season at all, but how very weird all of our lives became outside of the game itself.

No Free Pass for Luis Rojas This Time Around

Tim Britton had a good profile of Mets manager Luis Rojas up on The Athletic earlier this week. All in all, Rojas endured a strange year in his first season on the job. It started with Carlos Beltran resigning as manager three weeks before spring training started, thanks to the Astros sign stealing scandal. That spring training came to a screeching halt, but not before it was revealed that his second-best pitcher Noah Syndergaard needed Tommy John surgery. Then, after we all sat around for a few months, waiting to see if there would be a baseball season in 2020, everything ramped up way too quickly for the weird 60-game season that followed. Before that season even began, his now second-best pitcher Marcus Stroman opted out of the season. The abbreviated slate of games was barely underway when his star player, Yoenis Céspedes, also opted out in a manner that was equally poorly handled by the player and the club. To put a cherry on top of it all, Rojas was given a roster, particularly the pitching staff, which proved woefully inadequate, and Brodie Van Wagenen did a poor job of juggling the useful pieces the Mets did possess.

Free Agents, Post-Coronavirus Baseball and the Weight of Expectations

Joel Sherman had an article in the New York Post yesterday about the Mets' reported pursuit of pitcher Jake Odorizzi. According to Sherman, the Mets seem to be viewing Odorizzi as more of a fallback, depending on how the free agent dominoes fall this winter.  Which makes sense. They're probably not going to sign Trevor Bauer and Odorizzi unless they strike out completely on position players and settle for cheaper options there. It might go the other way, too. They might lose out on both Bauer and Odorizzi and look elsewhere for starting pitching. You never know how the free agents will start to fall. Remember, in 2005 the Mets were never looked at as the frontrunners for Pedro Martinez or Carlos Beltran. Sure, Omar Minaya was aggressive, but some of it was beyond the Mets' control. If the Red Sox wanted to keep Pedro and the Yankees were more interested in Beltran, neither one of them would have wound up as Mets.

Comings and Goings

There have been a few minor player additions since Steve Cohen and Sandy Alderson have taken over the team, but inking reliever Trevor May earlier this week represents the first significant move of the offseason. It wasn't quite the Trevor signing that everyone wanted to see, but it was a decent first step to building a better team for next season. Assuming that Jeremy Hefner remains the pitching coach, he'll be reunited with a pitcher that he previously worked with successfully as a bullpen coach in Minnesota. The one big red flag for May is that he is somewhat homer prone, but the same thing could be said about much of the Mets bullpen, including the current closer.

Where Did We Go Wrong?

In The Athletic this week, Tim Britton had a very good look into what went wrong with the Mets this season. The obvious starting point was the rotation, which was pretty much a bad bet on the days deGrom wasn't pitching. David Peterson was fairly impressive in a 9-start audition for 2021. Seth Lugo was more miss than hit in 7 starts, winding up with an ERA over 6 as a starter. Everyone else was just plain awful. Neither Rick Porcello nor Michael Wacha proved to be any help. Steven Matz has gone from looking like a really solid pitcher just a few years ago to a non-tender candidate this offseason. The promise that Robert Gsellman seemed to offer as a 22-year-old in 2016 has evaporated. As Britton pointed out, the 2020 Mets had the worst starting rotation ERA in the history of the team. That's quite an accomplishment for Brodie Van Wagenen to put on his resume.