FIP

I’m going to continue my discussion of the Mets after a brief account of my day. I saw my gastroenterologist today. I’m not down to routine visits every five or six months. I asked her about the problems I had last week, and she suspects food poisoning. Makes sense to me. I’m back to a good stretch of digestive health. I’ve not needed Imodium in days. While I was there, I got my flu shot. It’s a little earlier than ideal according to some sources but she thought it was fine. As I was already there it made sense. The nurse that administered it has a magic touch; it didn’t hurt at all. Injections always hurt. She doesn’t know what she does differently than others, but other patients have told her the same thing. I also had blood drawn. The phlebotomist was also a miracle worker. My veins are very easy to find but they usually go through the procedure of putting a tourniquet around my arm and having me make a fist, then tapping and feeling the veins. Not her. She just grabbed a needle and put it in me by eye. She found the vein. I’ve never had blood taken so quickly.

I tried something new coming home, I walked the 4.2 miles. I wish I had dressed better for the weather. I was wearing jeans and it was 80 °F. I would have been happier in shorts or at least linen. Still I made it home without that much discomfort. Whatever my age and health issues I’ll feel healthy and young if I can easily walk four miles.

OK and now to the Mets pitching. I’m going to continue to use fWAR as my performance measure. You’ll get pretty much the same story no matter what you use, with a few exceptions that I’ll discuss.

For the season the Mets came 7th in the majors in pitching WAR with 20.4 Wins Above Replacement. The starters ranked 3 with 19.7, right behind the Dodgers at 19.8. You can find all these numbers here, Fangraphs team pitching. You do a little math and you see that Mets relievers were not good. They came in 24th in MLB with a WAR of, come on, you should have done the math yourself, of 0.7.

This was a tale of two season, the second half was quite different than the first. They hired Phil Regan as pitching coach and Jeremy Accardo as pitching strategist on June 21st. In the second half the Mets numbers looked like this. The Met pitchers had a team war of 12.8, second only to the Astros. I won’t make you do the math, In the first half it was 8.3, middle of the pack, 15th in MLB.

Here’s the breakdown by starters and relievers.
Starters 1st half – 8.7, 6th in MLB — 2nd half – 11.1, 2nd in the MLB
Relievers 1st half – -0.4, dead last in MLB – Second half 1.7, 9th in the MLB.

The starters went from good to great and the relievers from worst to good. Is it because of Regan and Accardo? I don’t know, but it seems likely they contributed. People mocked the Mets for signing a pitching strategist. Why? Because it’s new, and many people think that anything that is different from what it was when they were kids is wrong. I have to admit, I was not thrilled with signing 83-year-old Regan, but you can’t argue with those results. Sometimes I like to be wrong.

What will the Mets’ pitching be like next year? Good question and harder to answer than the position players. The starting rotation will be deGrom, Syndergaard, Stroman, Matz, and an unknown 5th pitcher. Here are their individual WAR.

deGrom – 7.0
Syndergaard – 4.4
Stroman – 3.9
Matz – 1.6

The person missing from this list was the Mets’ second-best starter Wheeler with a WAR of 4.7. The Met fans underappreciate Syndergaard and Wheeler. They were the 8th and 9th best pitchers in the NL. They were both victims of bad luck and bad defense. Their ERAs were higher than they deserved. They had excellent FIP, Fielding Independent Pitching. Wheeler is a free agent and I hope the Mets resign him. Because he is better than his traditional numbers indicate he might be well-priced. This was a career year for Stroman so I’m expecting worse from him next year just as I’m expecting better from Syndergaard; reversion to the mean is by no means assured but it’s the way to bet.

The bit problem is relief pitching. Lugo their best reliever has physical issues that prevent him to be used consecutive days so he can’t be relied on as the closer. The gave away the farm for Edwin Diaz who was bad after being unhittable last season. He’s still striking out over 15 men per nine innings, so he still has his stuff. I’m hoping that this season was a glitch and he’ll get back to being good, if not great. It’s how I’d bet. Perhaps the Mets should trade one of their two extra players, Dom Smith or J.D. Davis and trade them for relievers. They shouldn’t make the mistake they made last year and trade for closer, teams overpay for closers. Find a good relief pitcher that is not closing and make him your closer. Teams do that every year out of necessity but rarely out of planning. Yet it works as often as “proven closers” do.

If the Mets pick up Rendon or some other top free agent, and a few relief pitchers they could get up to 95 wins, maybe more with some luck. If they don’t, it will be more of the same. A team that is a little above 500 and if it gets lucky can win in the high 80s and sneak into the Wild Card. I would love to see the Mets commit to winning.