Meet the 2016 Mets, A Good Enough Team

Mets fans will associate it with loss, more than gain. Many came to adore Yoenis Cespedes and he (or a bat like him) is thought of, more than anything else, as the type of piece needed for a return trip to the World Series. The failure to re-sign Cespedes (which is more of a refusal to sign Cespedes on part of the Mets) has drawn the ire of those same fans. I mean, my brother is a pretty calm and reasonable person, and I get e-mails like this:

“The Mets fucked themselves. Royals go out and steal Gordon for 4/$75M. What a joke. If Cespedes goes for this number, it will be an absolute shame.”

The truth is that Cespedes was a great fit for the Mets at the trade deadline but he was always an awkward fit in the long-term.

First, the Mets need a center fielder and while Cespedes can play center field, he is not a center fielder. He compiled a -4 DRS and -3.2 UZR in 312 innings in center field for the Mets last year. If you look back to his time in Oakland the results were similar. He’s played 912.1 innings in center field over his career and has compiled a -17 DRS and -12.6 UZR. So, if he’s not going to supplant Michael Conforto and you can’t make room for him in right field with Curtis Granderson having two more years on his contract, there is no home for Cespedes in the field.

Second, his acquisition coincided with the additions of Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe, the debut of Michael Conforto, and the returns of Travis d’Arnaud and David Wright from injury. Cespedes probably ignited something qualitative in the team, while blasting 17 home runs after the trade, but the Mets have ample opportunity to replace his 1/3 of a season impact with a full season of the other things that propelled them to a NL East title.

These are arguments against bringing back Cespedes, but don’t even touch on the most obvious inevitability  —  Cespedes is unlikely to replicate his performance in August and September, nor his performance over the entirety of 2015. Cespedes is a very good baseball player, but he’s not the baseball player the Mets are looking for.

The real key to the 2016 Mets offense is Travis d’Arnaud. d’Arnaud is oft-injured, but when he is not he is a great player. He could be the best catcher in baseball, but he may also cobble together a half-season of play, losing multiple battles to the disabled list. d’Arnaud provided 2.3 fWAR and 1.7 bWAR in 2015 while only playing 67 games. When he plays he is an elite catcher, and a very good hitter, ranking 3rd in wRC+ (.131) and wOBA (.355) for catchers, trailing only Buster Posey and Kyle Schwarber. A full season of d’Arnaud could exceed the value of Cespedes in 1/3 of a season…by a lot.

In the outfield, the Mets are banking on what they have. A full season of Michael Conforto would be as impactful as a full season of d’Arnaud. Conforto provided nearly identical value to Cespedes down the stretch of the season, contributing 2.1 WAR, by both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference’s measure. Cespedes value was measured at 2.7 or 2.3 WAR, respectively. It’s unlikely that Conforto can extrapolate that performance over an entire season, but he doesn’t need to.

 The signing of Alejandro De Aza indicates the Mets are pushing it all in on Juan Lagares. Lagares will never be a great hitter, but if his elbow is healthy and he can revert back to something resembling the center fielder he was in 2013 and 2014, then Lagares will add a couple more wins in 2016 then he did 2015.

The team needs to hope that Conforto is an impact bat in the middle of the order, and Lagares reverts to his old form, because they should expect some sort of meaningful regression from Curtis Granderson, who will play his 35-year-old season this year and is coming off one of the quietest great seasons of 2015, where he contributed 5.1 WAR, the 19th highest total in the league.

The front office seems to have a strong belief that the depth provided by Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe provided a large amount of value. This is the simplest rationale of the signing of Asdrubal Cabrera and a combined $14 million given to Cabrera and De Aza for 2016

Terry Collins will be able to shuffle the middle infield around injuries and match-ups with Wilmer Flores, Ruben Tejada, and Cabrera all capable of playing SS and 2B. Tejada and Flores will likely be able to slide over to 3B to relive Wright, who seems on track to start in an abbreviated amount of games in order to manage his spinal stenosis.

Finally, the Mets traded Jon Niese for Neil Walker. Walker provides equivalent value as Daniel Murphy and allows Dilson Herrera to spend one more year in the minors, or alternatively, gives the Mets a valuable trade asset to improve the team in July. Both make sense, although Herrera appeared to be ready to grab the second-base job — but between Herrera’s age (he won’t be 22 until August) and potential trade value, picking up Walker was the right move.

In sum, the Mets’ off-season wasn’t really one of gain or loss. Walker was the most obvious move: He provides nearly identical value to Murphy, while giving the Mets a little more glove in exchange for a little lighter bat. It wasn’t really an addition, but a replacement. Other than that, there were no other “moves”; just gambles. d’Arnaud is fragile, Conforto is young, and Lagares may not be good enough to start, at least in the context of this lineup. If all these gambles pay off, then the Mets’ off-season acquisitions will make perfect sense. Depth in the infield and outfield may be all they need. It just seems so rare, particularly for the Mets, that all these gambles pay off.

These do not feel like long-shot bets though. They seem reasonable and calculated. If you couple these bets with the belief that, in the aggregate, 3/4 of the season with Wright, a full-season of Matz and Syndergaard, and a full season of bench depth is worth 5–6 extra wins, then the Mets are a better team than the 2015 version, at least on a full-season basis.

And if it’s not good enough? Well, that’s what the prospects are for. Trade some. Unless it’s really not good enough, in which case, it was never going to be good enough. And that too is what the prospects are for  — the future.

If it wasn’t for last season’s World Series run, we’re probably more focused on the future of the Mets: Herrera replacing Walker; Dominic Smith replacing Duda; Brandon Nimmo platooning with Lagares and Granderson in 2017, all in tandem with a developing Conforto and the “young pitching.” However, the pitching staff is so good, the Mets can never abandon the present, but they also can’t screw up the future.

In light of all of this, the Mets’ off-season wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great, and it wasn’t exciting. It was good enough. They are taking a plunge into what they have, in light of what is coming and in fear of investing in a potentially flawed team. We’ll never know exactly what the Mets are thinking, but we know what they have done. The 2016 Mets were built with one eye on the future, one eye on the past, with neither taking too much time to glance at the present.

The following projections for 2016 were made using Steamer Projections. 

2016 Mets wOBA Expected Runs — 670 (.311 wOBA)

2016 Mets FIP and Def Expected Runs — 584 (3.57 FIP, -16.1 Def)

2016 Mets Pythagorean W-L — 92–70