Having watched roughly every Mets games this season (give or take) I think I can say with a fair degree of certainty that this isn't a great team. They're old, injury-prone, and otherwise inconsistent in a lot of areas. For all of their individual faults, their biggest problem this season has been scoring runs. The pitching has been solid if unspectacular, ranking fifth in the National League with a 3.93 staff ERA. The offense has been generally unimpressive, ranking in the bottom half of the league in almost every conceivable category.

As bad as the Mets have been at the plate, I've had a sneaking suspicion for a little while now that they've been getting short-changed by Fortuna's stingy hand. Our eyes have a way of playing tricks on us, though, so it's always comforting to fall into the cold embrace of empirical data to give you that warm-and-fuzzy about our own oft-shoddy anecdotal memories. To see how the Mets have been doing in the luck department I used a couple of stats.

1. BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play), which is exactly what it says it is. How often are balls in play converted into outs? Leage average is around .300, with better hitters often scattered above and crummy ones sprinkled below.
2. eBABIP (Expected BABIP), which is calculated by taking a batter's line drive rate (LD%) and adding .12. It should be fairly intuitive that the harder you hit the ball the more likely it is to fall into play, so line drives = good.

Here are all Mets regulars (75 PA or more) with their BABIP, eBABIP and delta.

Player	BABIP	eBABIP	Delta
Brian Schneider	.352	.444	-.092
Carlos Beltran	.300	.360	-.060
Jose Reyes	.289	.337	-.048
Carlos Delgado	.252	.290	-.038
Ryan Church	.366	.402	-.036
David Wright	.303	.334	-.031
Angel Pagan	.342	.350	-.008
Luis Castillo	.274	.272	+.002

The first thing that jumped out at me was "Brian Schneider has a 32% line drive rate?" And it turns out that, yes, the man who didn't have an extra-base hit all year until a week ago hits a third of his balls in play right on the button. Beyond that, the Mets have six regulars who are significantly underperforming their expected balls in play average. Even Ryan Church, who has hit the heck out of the ball all year long, chould conceivably be doing better if he had been a bit luckier. I know it's easy to explain away statistical oddities by blaming the difference on luck, good or bad, but even the staunchest subjective baseball nut must concede that when you hit the ball "right on the screws", as they say, you're far more likely to have good things happen.

Offense seems to be down a bit all around baseball, so it's only fair to pick another team for comparison to see if the Mets are the exception or the rule. I ran the numbers for the Marlins, since many would agree that they have been playing *better* than expectations. Again, only players with 75 plate appearances are included.

Player	BABIP	eBABIP	Delta
Dan Uggla	.344	.262	+.082
Jeremy Hermida	.365	.290	+.075
Hanley Ramirez	.356	.300	+.056
Matt Treanor	.383	.328	+.055
Josh Willingham	.362	.307	+.055
Alfredo Amezaga	.264	.258	+.006
Jorge Cantu	.319	.315	+.004
Cody Ross	.170	.171	-.001
Mike Rabelo	.278	.292	-.014
Mike Jacobs	.270	.299	-.029
Luis Gonzalez	.293	.358	-.065

Luis Gonzalez and Mike Jacobs are both in the red, but the Marlins have five regulars who have dramatically outperformed their expected BABIP and seven with deltas higher than any regular position player on the Mets. That's a stark contrast, and it does help to explain why the Marlins have been playing so extraordinarily well despite countless predictions to the contrary.

I haven't run full team numbers, nor have I run player numbers for every team in the league, but this is at least a tiny snapshot of what the Mets have been dealing with. It's very easy to say that the Mets' hitters haven't been as bad as the results would indicate, but it certainly helps your argument when you have some data to pack up those outlandish claims. None of this changes what has already happened, but if the Mets continue to maintain high line drive rates then there is a very strong chance that their luck will improve and those liners will start finding holes in the defense.

While the fifth spot in the starting rotation is a trainwreck right now, it's comforting to know that the first three spots are looking bueno. Rounding out that top three -- after Johan Santana and Pedro Martinez -- is John Maine, who has had one helluva spring. Have a look at the progression of his starts (click the date link to see that game's boxscore and recap):

Date	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	ERA
2/28	1.2	4	3	3	1	2	0	16.20
3/4	3.0	4	1	1	0	3	1	7.71
3/9	4.0	0	0	0	1	3	0	4.15
3/14	5.0	3	0	0	1	6	0	2.63
3/19	5.2	5	1	1	1	7	1	2.33
3/24	6.0	1	0	0	1	7	0	1.78

The first outing wasn't very good, but since then Maine has been untouchable, allowing just two runs in 23.2 innings while striking out 26 and allowing just four walks. It's only spring training and most of his starts have come against something less potent than the opposing team's projecting Opening Day lineup, but you can't argue with the results. The strikeout rate has been off the charts, but the razor-thin walk rate is what excites me the most. I have very high expectations for Maine this season, and his success this season is of even greater import if we consider that Oliver Perez will probably be gone next season, and Pedro might go with him (though likely not to the same place; just away).*

*Neither of these are foregone conclusions; Pedro has indicated that he would like to stay with the Mets if they are interested, and that he probably won't negotiate a new deal until after the season, but considering his health and his advancing age, he will probably be looking for one last multi-year deal, and I don't know if the Mets are willing to go to three (or four?) years to keep Pedro in Queens until he retires. Of the two, Perez is probably the most likely goner, as his age (26) and agent (Scott Boras) mean he could fetch big money for big years on the free agent market, and the Mets may be better off spending those clams elsewhere.

Bullet my Tuesday...

• Nice fantasy rundown of five interesting Mets players over at Fantasy Baseball Generals.
• At No Bias Baseball, Jim Callis of Baseball America stops by for an interview. You can listen to the audio via the prior link, and around the 16 minute mark Callis talks about the Johan Santana trade and indicates that it was his favorite move of the winter.
• The Hardball Times continues their "Five Questions" series with a five-spot on the Mets by John Walsh. While you're at it, check out their Phillies (John Brattain) and Braves (Mac Thomason) while you're at it.
• We've got more THT love for ya, as they posted their updated projections for the upcoming season last week, and they've got the Mets going 99-63 with 836 runs scored and just 677 runs allowed. The projected standings are the average results from 100 iterations simulating the 2008 season, so this wasn't just a statistical oddity. I figure the Mets are a 90-95 win team, but if things break right for them they could push the cusp of the century mark before the year is through.
• Someone posted a wonderful diary at Lone Star Ball about the recent Dodgers/Padres exhibition game in China. Remarkable stuff.
• Not baseball related, but Shad Smith, a Mixed Martial Artist, recently revealed that he is homosexual, making him the first ever openly gay male fighter in MMA. Kudos to Smith for having the moxie to make this revelation while he is still an active participant in his sport, and here's hoping that his actions give other gay athletes the courage to do the same in their respective sports.

Conventional baseball wisdom suggests that pitching wins ballgames. Contemporary baseball wisdom posits that the team which regularly outscores its opponent wins ballgames. The Mets had a .775 team OPS last year, good enough for fifth in the National League, though they were closer to falling into eighth place than they were to bumping up to fourth. With Johan Santana chatter buzzing all around us, a lot of folks seem to think the Mets need further upgrades to their pitching staff in order to compete for the NL East title next year. Santana would obviously make some of the team's other problems easier to overlook, but I don't know that the Mets necessarily need an upgrade of that magnitude to be one of the league's better teams in 2008.

If we can put pitching aside for the moment, I thought it would be instructive to look at the Mets' offensive production last season and see where they may be likely to improve or regress this coming season. For lack of a better (read: easier) method, I decided to analyze the team position-by-position, relative to the league, and see where they might come out ahead/behind for 2008.

Right Field

2007 OPS: .724
NL Rank: 15th
NL Average: .786

There's plenty of room for growth here, as Shawn Green OPS'd .761 and it took the combined efforts of everyone else to drag that down to .724. Most of the damage was done by Carlos Gomez's ludicrously-tragic .196/.218/.275 batting line covering 51 at-bats. Endy Chavez hit .324, but slugged no higher as all twelve of his hits went for singles. Lastings Milledge hit .239/.343/.409 in 88 at-bats when he wasn't recording rap records and supposedly poisoning the clubhouse.

The Mets should get better in right, with Ryan Church getting most of the plate appearances and Damion Easley (who hit .318/.318/.500 in 22 at-bats as a right fielder last year) spelling him against some lefties. Church probably isn't enough to push that tandem over the league average, but they should definitely be able to put together a better showing than that of their 2007 counterparts.

Center Field

2007 OPS: .876
NL Rank: 2nd
NL Average: .762

Carlos Beltran collected 552 of the team's 642 at-bats in center field and was one of the most potent bats at the position in the National League. Milledge, Chavez and Marlon Anderson each filled in admirably during Beltran's occasional absence. On the surface, it might appear that the Mets could easily regress from 2nd overall in the NL, but they are probably a safe bet to be about the same in 2008. Beltran is still in his prime as a hitter, so a repeat of his 2007 performance is not out of the question.

The only team that outperformed the Mets in center field last year was the Phillies, and with Aaron Rowand recently fleeing for greener pastures out west, the Phils are likely to see some offensive regression as they try to fill his void.

Left Field

2007 OPS: .815
NL Rank: 9th
NL Average: .834

Moises Alou and his .340/.389/.525 line in left field accounted for slightly more than half of the Mets' offensive output, at-bat-wise, from the position, with nine other players accruing anywhere from three (Jeff Conine) to 84 (Endy Chavez) at-bats while Alou was on the disabled list/resting because he was so old. If Alou can somehow cobble together 400-500 at-bats, the Mets will probably get better in left. That probably won't happen, so the extra at-bats will go to Chavez, Easley, and whomever else the Mets can find to fill in the time.

Shortstop

2007 OPS: .777
NL Rank: 7th
NL Average: .755

This is basically all Jose Reyes, who looked like an MVP candidate in April but had degenerated to a Rey Ordonez clone by September. The projections I have seen peg Reyes to repeat his 2007 performance in 2008, though he definitely has the potential to improve for next year. His upside is boundless, but after starting 2007 as a superstar, he finished the season as the fourth-best shortstop in the division. He *should* improve, but there is little guarantee that he actually will. Assuming he's a Met next year, that is.

Third Base

2007 OPS: .951
NL Rank: 2nd
NL Average: .803

David Wright: what's not to like? Very little. He may even be able to move his rank up to 1st now that Miguel Cabrera has been dealt by the Marlins to the Tigers. Chipper Jones is still a threat if he can stay healthy, as is a full season of Ryan Braun in Milwaukee, assuming his leaden glove remains at the hot corner.

Second Base

2007 OPS: .752
NL Rank: .752
NL Average: .758

Four players collected more than 125 at-bats at second base for the Mets last year: Ruben Gotay (.804 OPS in 126 at-bats), Damion Easley (.775 OPS in 132 at-bats), Luis Castillo (.742 in 199 at-bats) and Jose Valentin (.690 OPS in 158 at-bats). Castillo, given good health, will get virtually all of the playing time next year. The bad news is that he doesn't figure to get any better, and as he ages he will probably only get worse. The really bad news is that the Mets bought themselves four years of finding that out.

First Base

2007 OPS: .797
NL Rank: 11th
NL Average: .846

This is Carlos Delgado, folks. The bright side is that he hit .242/.305/.435 before the All Star break and a far more adequate .285/.375/.469 after the break. If he can maintain that post-break performance throughout 2008, the Mets will be right around average for National League first-sackers, which will be a marked improvement over 2007. If not, well, you know.

Catcher

2007 OPS: .718
NL Rank: 6th
NL Average: .711

If the Mets are inclined to give Brian Schneider the lion's share of the catching duties next year, this mark isn't likely to improve any. In fact, it will probably just get worse, as the Nationals were 12th last year in catching OPS with Schneider getting most of the playing time. Ramon Castro is a much better hitter than Schneider and, actually, a better hitter than most of the catchers in the National League. I am hopeful that he will get close to half of the at-bats next year, but that's probably wishful thinking on my part. Some of it may depend on how Schneider starts out; if his hitting is truly dreadful early on and his throwing arm doesn't make up for it, the Mets might think twice about needlessly throwing away so many at-bats on such an obvious offensive black hole.

Overall, the Mets figure to get better in right, at first and at short, with minor regressions at second and catcher, and little change elsewhere. With a few breaks they could definitely be an improved offensive team in 2008. They probably won't be greatly improved, but I think they will be better overall.

Happy 2008 everybody! Like millions of others, my wife and I spent last night at home, on our couch, playing Wii and watching the animated remains of Dick Clark awkwardly count us down to the new year. I hope you all had as much fun as we did, lamenting the passing years as ABC trotted out some of the biggest musical acts of 2007, none of whose existence I had previously been aware.

As for the Mets, the boys from Queens roll into 2008 with roughly the same squad that finished one game shy of an NL East title in 2007. As for years ending in '8', the Mets have a short-but-prosperous history of performing better than they had in the prior '7' seasons. Arbitrary, yes, but with little else of substance to keep us going through these cold months, a trip down frivolous lane never hurt anybody.

Somewhat interestingly, the Mets have never posted a worse record in an xxx8 season (e.g. 1968, 1978, etc.) than in the xxx7 season (e.g. 1867, 1977, etc.) that preceded it.

Decade	xxx7	xxx8	Delta
1960s	61-101	73-89	+12
1970s	64-98	66-96	+2
1980s	92-70	100-60	+8
1990s	88-74	88-74	+0
2000s	88-74	??-??	??

Without any further research I would hazard to say that there is little correlation between a franchise's historical performance in a decade's eighth year relative to its seventh year and its likelihood of repeating that prior success (or failure) moving forward. There is nothing inherently magical about their past septenery-to-octonary improvements, I think.

1967-1968

Unlike their marginal record improvement in the seventies (see below), this one has a perfectly reasonable explanation: Their pitching got a whole lot better. In 1967, the Mets got sub-par starting performances from the likes of Jack Fisher (72 ERA+ in 220.1 innings), Bob Hendley (98 ERA+ in 70.2 innings) and Bob Shaw (79 ERA+ in 98.2 innings), plus a slew of also-rans like Bill Denehy, Dennis Bennett, Jack Lambe, Chuck Estrada and others. Those middling arms were largely replaced by Jerry Koosman (145 ERA+ in 263.2 innings), Dick Selma (109 ERA+ in 169.2 innings) and Jim McAndrew (132 ERA+ in 79 innings). The result was a team ERA+ increase from 91 to 111 (22%). Their team OPS+ improved slightly from 83 to 87 (5%), but it was the arms that precipitated the surge in victories and, ultimately, the stunning world championship of 1969.

1977-1978

Only a two game improvement here, and a surprising one at that. Considering that the Mets traded Tom Seaver (and to a lesser extent, Dave Kingman) in the middle of the 1977 season, one might have expected them to decline a bit, even from that year's harrowing 61-win sleepwalk. The Mets actually posted identical 72-90 pythagorean records, or expected records based on their run differentials, in 1977 and 1978. The Mets did see offensive improvements from Lee Mazilli and John Stearns, though any actual improvement in their winning percentage may have been illusory at best.

1987-1988

Much like the sixties' teams, the eighties' teams enjoyed a spike in victories on the strength of their pitching. Specifically, two would-be rotational stalwarts found personal success that ultimately led their team to its second-best record in franchise history. Ron Darling improved his ERA+ from 89 to 100 (from poor to average) and David Cone improved his ERA+ from 102 to 146 (from average to NL top-ten). The bullpen also chipped in to help the cause, as the top two relief spots saw significant upgrades in performance. Randy Myers took over the primary closing duties and posted a 189 ERA+ (compare to Roger McDowell's 91 ERA+ from 1987). Jesse Orosco and his 86 ERA+ were replaced by McDowell, whose 123 ERA+ was a welcome amelioration from his previous season. As a team, the Mets' ERA+ jumped from 99 to 112 (13% increase).

1997-1998

This was the decade that changed this article's premise from "record always increased" to "record never decreased". The Mets' ERA+ got a bump from 103 to 111 (8%), largely due to the arrival of Al Leiter. Their offense regressed somewhat from a 100 OPS+ to a 96 OPS+ despite the addition of Mike Piazza and an otherworldly season from John Olerud.

Of course, this is just a goofy little exercise, none of which portends certain success or failure for the Mets in 2008. Invariably, the players, with a little help or hindrance from their manager, will determine the fate of this year's club.

If we can assume that Ryan Church is going to be the Mets' starting right-fielder in 2008, the Mets are in the (arguably) enviable position of having their Opening Day roster completely nailed down. Barring a trade of any of their everyday players, the eight guys they have slated to take the field in April are already signed and ready to go. It isn't exactly clear how catcher is going to shape up, but we can be pretty sure that it will be some manner of platoon situation with Ramon Castro and Brian Schneider.

One of the luxuries we have as fans when a team has all of their position players set is that we can begin to project performances, compare and contrast players with their prior selves as well as with the rest of the league, etc. Save a smattering of noble soothsayers, the vast majority of us have zero ability to actually see events that are to happen in the future. That certainly doesn't stop us from trying, though, and we're fortunate enough to have some intrepid individuals out there who take the time and energy to project baseball player performance into the coming year.

Everyone has their favorite projection system, and mine seems to vary with the wind. Today I'm going to use CHONE hitter projections for 2008 to see how the Mets' starting lineup compares to the rest of the league. Unfortunately, CHONE doesn't include position, so I am going to use 2007's National League positional averages as a baseline for comparison. League-wide performance surely varies from year-to-year, but I'm really just trying to have some fun with this exercise, not achieve cold fusion.

I took the CHONE projections for each of the Mets' principals and prorated them to a full season of at-bats based on 2007 positional averages. For example, CHONE projects Moises Alou to have 381 at-bats next year, but the average National League left fielder had 623 at-bats in 2007. I applied that difference to Alou's projected counting stats to arrive at normalized counts. The biggest flaw here is that prorating the regulars' at-bats is giving the Mets too much credit (especially in Alou's case), because the gap in playing time would normally be filled in by a reserve player, not a regular.

I have also included Runs Created (RC), and I used, for simplicity, Bill James's formula from The 1984 Baseball Abstract:

RC = ((H+BB-CS)*(TB+(.55*SB)))/(AB+BB)

With that out of the way, let's have some fun.

Name	AB	Run	Hits	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	RC
Alou	623	95	185	33	2	28	304	103	3	2	61	70	.297	.362	.488	109
NL LF	623	95	173	36	4	27	298	95	12	4	72	128	.277	.357	.477	106

The projection for Alou seems pretty reasonable. He hit .341 last year, but I would expect that to dip much closer to his career .303 line next year. As great as his production was last year, based on his projection he only figures to be about as valuable as your average NL left fielder, and that's only if we give him credit for a full season's worth of at-bats. Given that he is likely to miss a couple hundred plate appearances due to injury, his usefulness becomes much more debatable. His runs created would be right around the league average for his position, but again that's assuming he plays the whole year. With his injury history, and the fact that he adds little in the way of baserunning and defensive value, the Mets will be lucky if they come out even in left field.

Name	AB	Run	Hits	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	RC
Beltran	645	118	177	38	2	35	324	110	21	4	90	121	.274	.367	.503	120
NL CF	645	94	176	36	5	18	276	75	24	7	56	125	.273	.335	.427	93

Once again, center field is a position of strength for the Mets, and Carlos Beltran figures to pace the NL center field crop in 2008. His projected runs created are almost 30% higher than the average NL centerfielder from last year, which puts the Mets at an incredible advantage relative to other teams in the league. With Aaron Rowand and his career year leaving for San Francisco and Andruw Jones likewise heading west, the Mets should have a leg-up on their NL East rivals with Beltran patrolling center.

Name	AB	Run	Hits	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	RC
Delgado	622	102	163	34	1	33	298	102	1	1	75	138	.262	.354	.479	101
NL 1B	622	89	176	38	2	27	299	98	3	2	76	121	.284	.365	.481	108

Whatever value surplus the Mets enjoy in centerfield they are likely to give right back at first base. Carlos Delgado was mostly terrible in 2007 and his CHONE projections for 2008 aren't anything special, either. His forecast is a bit sunnier than his actual performance last year, but CHONE still thinks he'll be something less than an average offensive first-baseman. With the Braves and Phillies stocking big bats at first, the Mets will lose a lot of ground at the position unless Delgado can pull a 180 (or a 540, even).

Name	AB	Run	Hits	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	RC
Reyes	652	118	191	37	10	12	286	72	69	18	62	74	.293	.355	.438	107
NL SS	652	94	182	35	5	15	272	70	20	5	54	88	.278	.336	.418	93

Even if Jose Reyes doesn't become the superstar we all hope he will be, his regular production will still be substantially better than the average shortstop. Add in very good defense and we're definitely talking about a position of strength for the Mets. He's a better on-base guy than Jimmy Rollins, though Rollins has a substantial edge in the power department right now. Reyes almost certainly won't be traded this offseason, and 2008 will be a very important year in his development. I want to see him continue to improve his walk rate, refine (and shorten) his swing a bit, and hang in there for the whole season, not the four-month embarrassment he turned in last year. (Note: His final aggregate performance wasn't embarrassing, but his attitude and demeanor down the stretch certainly was).

Name	AB	Run	Hits	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	RC
Wright	624	116	198	44	2	31	340	102	28	7	91	112	.317	.410	.544	140
NL 3B	624	89	175	38	3	22	285	94	7	2	63	116	.280	.348	.456	99

What can you say? David Wright has developed into one of the best players in baseball, and there's no indication of that changing anytime soon. Given his age (25, tomorrow), he might actually get even better. His defense improved considerably last year, and his approach at the plate and understanding of the game are exceptional. He projects to be 40% more productive than the typical NL third-sacker and continues to solidify a position which has historically been one of transience for the Mets' franchise.

Name	AB	Run	Hits	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	RC
Castillo	642	83	187	25	5	5	237	66	18	7	71	59	.292	.364	.369	87
NL 2B	642	96	175	36	5	16	269	77	13	4	62	110	.272	.341	.418	91

We know what Luis Castillo is: A good on-base guy with extra-base ability that approaches nil. If his knee is better, he should move around pretty well at second. He continues to have sure hands there even if his range has declined over the years. The Mets locked him up for four years and $25 million this offseason in absence of a better solution. He already projects to be worse than an average second baseman, and that valuation is only likely to decline over the life of his contract. The money isn't terrible, but the length of the deal is perplexing. David Eckstein for one year and $4.5 million would have been more sensible, if it were an option.

Name	AB	Run	Hits	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	RC
Church	625	81	159	39	3	21	267	77	7	3	69	147	.254	.337	.427	88
NL RF	625	87	172	36	3	21	277	87	11	4	62	123	.275	.344	.442	95

CHONE is not a fan of Ryan Church, who is projected to be worse than league average in right field next year. If anyone cares, Lastings Milledge is projected to hit .271/.352/.423 in 2008, which is actually better than Church (again, just projections). If Church can improve his work against lefties, and if the solid glovework he showed last year returns in 2008, he could be better than average in right field.

Name	AB	Run	Hits	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	RC
Schneider	593	68	146	28	1	11	211	61	1	0	68	88	.246	.328	.356	69
NL C	593	63	152	32	2	16	236	78	3	2	50	102	.256	.318	.393	74

Name	AB	Run	Hits	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	RC
Castro	593	83	150	30	0	30	268	83	0	0	56	159	.254	.321	.453	85
NL C	593	63	152	32	2	16	236	78	3	2	50	102	.256	.318	.393	74

These numbers don't take defense into account, but I'm not sure that either Schneider or Castro are appreciably better/worse than an average catcher defensively right now. Offensively, Schneider figures to be a bit worse than average, Castro a bit better. Mash them together and we have a big, slow lump of averageness. If Schneider is really the defensive force that some would have us believe, a 50/50 playing time split for these two might make sense. If Schneider's defense is just average, giving the lion's share of plate appearances to Ramon Castro is the way to go, given his superior bat.

Soup-to-nuts, the Mets are average or better at every position, and exceedingly better than average in center and at third, with shortstop having a decent shot at that group, too.

Kevin Mench was designated for assignment by the Brewers on Monday to make room for recently-acquired Salomon Torres, plucked from the Pirates for a couple of minor leaguers. As for Mench, the Brewers have ten days to trade the outfielder and his famously-large cranium else they must grant him his release.

Mench has five years of big league service team and is eligible for arbitration this offseason. The arbitration option disappears if he is released, as some team can snatch him up for something less than that. He made $3.4 million in 2007, and the collective bargaining agreement stipulates that he can't make any less than that in arbitration. That fact makes a trade extremely unlikely.

Mench is a career .271/.326/.465 hitter with iffy defensive skills. His batting line is unspectacular -- just 1% better than average over the course of his career -- and if you compare his production to other corner outfielders he doesn't come away smelling like roses. He doesn't run very well, and he has struck out almost twice as often as he has walked over the course of his six-year stint in the bigs.

The only reason we're still talking about him -- and the reason he has been a favorite of analytical baseball folks -- is that he absolutely destroys left-handed pitching.

Year	OPS vs RHP	OPS vs LHP
2002	.753	.825
2004	.792	1.036
2005	.744	.980
2006	.679	.877
2007	.564	.901
Career	.730	.924

I left 2003 out because Mench collected only 139 plate appearances for the entire season. His platoon splits are very dramatic; despite taking most of his cuts against righties he really hasn't done a very good job of figuring them out. Worse, his approach against them may actually be getting worse as he sees them more. Or, perhaps their approach is getting better as they see him more. Whatever the case, his reputation as a southpaw-masher is largely undisputed.

Mench might be a reasonable acquisition for the Mets, especially considering that they picked up lefty-hitting Ryan Church a couple of weeks ago in the trade which must not be named. Church has hit considerably better against righties than lefties (.352/.481 OBP/SLG against righties and .331/.392 against lefties).

If it were really that easy, every team would be employing platoons at positions where they can't currently pencil in a star player who hits well against both pitcher varieties. Unfortunately, strict platoons don't work very well for a number of reasons.

1. Players don't like it. Nobody enjoys being told that they aren't good at something, and professional athletes are no different. Whether or not Kevin Mench knows he sucks against righties likely doesn't change the fact that he doesn't want to be told as much.
2. It isn't really fair. Lefty/righty platoon splits are terrible unfair to right-handed batters, who would wind up with less than one-third of the aggregate plate appearances were the platoon strictly enforced. As an illustration of this point, the average MLB team had 4,563 plate appearances against righties and just 1,725 against lefties, which means that the right-handed portion of a platoon would only have accounted for approximately 27% of the platoon's plate appearances. Hardly equitable.
3. It's hard to do. The average big league starting pitcher threw just 5.79 innings per start last year. That number is even (surprisingly) lower in the National League, as elder-circuiters lasted just 5.73 innings per start. The average game lasted right around nine innings (8.97 to be precise), which means that starting pitchers accounted for less than two-thirds of each game. This fact poses logistical problems for any team looking to employ a platoon situation, as they can only guarantee the platoon advantage for six innings every game. Once the starter hands the ball off to the bullpen the platoon scheme becomes a crapshoot.
4. Platoon splits are an illusion. Okay, so I made that sound more dramatic than it really is. Most players exhibit some manner of platoon advantage, some small and others severe. The problem is that we can't look at Kevin Mench's production against lefties over the course of his career and conclude that he is a .924 OPS-er. That figure only tells us part of the story. The other part, the more depressing part, is that he is also a .730 OPS-er, in this case against righties and in far more plate appearances (1,664 versus 775).

   Mench's seeming ability to mash lefties is clouded by the fact that he has done so in slightly more than a season's worth of playing time. Jose Reyes had 765 plate appearances last season; Mench has the aforementioned 775 in his career against southpaws. Baseball history is littered with mediocre players who have excelled for one or two marvelous seasons before returning to their previous wretched forms. Mench is not a .924 OPS-er anymore than he is a .730 OPS-er. His true ability is somewhere in between, and over a large enough sample of plate appearances his platoon splits would begin to converge, resulting in a far less drastic disparity between his apparent effectiveness against lefties versus righties.

Mench wouldn't be a terrible signing, but bringing him in to platoon with Ryan Church in right field is problematic for all of the reasons listed above. The Mets already have Endy Chavez and Damion Easley in line to be backup outfielders next year, and Mench's usefulness coming off the bench is extremely limited. The Mets would probably be better served looking elsewhere.

Over at Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, Dan Fox takes a look at the baserunning metrics in the new Bill James Handbook (BJH) and juxtaposes them with Baseball Prospectus's own baserunning stats to get a feel for how well they correlate with one another.

With the help of the extensive play-by-play data that has become readily (at a cost) available in recent years, analysts are able to present baserunning information that has nothing to do with stolen bases. This isn't to say that stolen bases aren't a component of baserunning or even that they aren't a significant one, just that previous measurements of base-stealing versus base-running were too difficult and time-consuming to even consider compiling.

Thanks to companies like Baseball Info Solutions (BIS) we know how many times a player has gone from first to third on a single, scored from first on a double, taken an extra base on a passed ball or wild pitch, etc. We hear broadcasters constantly laud this player or that for being a terrific baserunner and now we have some data to help defend or refute those claims.

As it pertains to the Mets, both the BJH and BP agree that Jose Reyes is one of the best -- if not the very best -- baserunner in the game. The BJH system ranks him first overall based on two baserunning categories. The first they call BR Gain, or base running gain, which is the total number of bases gained as a baserunner relative to the league average and excluding stolen bases. This includes the aforementioned baserunning situations, and the system also deducts bases -- three to be precise -- if a player is "doubled off or runs into an out", relative to an average baserunner. James doesn't really define "doubled off" or "runs into an out", though I take them to mean "doubled off on a lineout" and "making an out on the basepaths independent of basestealing and forceouts.

The second baserunning category is called SB Gain, which is simply stolen bases minus twice caught stealing. For example, Reyes's SB Gain would be his total steals (78) minus twice his times caught (2 x 21), or 36. That mark tied with Eric Byrnes for tops in the majors, narrowly edging out Juan Pierre's SB Gain. As a team the Mets were first overall with 108 SB Gain.

In addition to his basestealing prowess, Reyes also led all of baseball in BR Gain with 34, just a shade better than Jimmy Rollins's 32. Reyes's aggregate bases gained in 2007 was 70, nine ahead of second-place Rollins.

BP's baserunning measurements work differently, though their intention is to measure the same thing. Their results are expressed in runs, which makes them easily converted to something resembling wins if we accept that roughly ten runs is equivalent to one extra victory.

BP has Reyes ranked second overall, due mostly to his baserunning and less to his basestealing. I haven't found a table of league-wide rankings for every player, but Reyes's 6.6 NonEqSBR (equivalence base runs not attributed to stolen bases) trails only Pierre (7.5) and Grady Sizemore (7.4) on the partial list provided. BP really seems to rake Reyes over the coals when calculating his EqSBR (equivalence stolen base runs), docking him considerably for the (many) times he was caught stealing as well as times he was picked off, an event which is mysteriously excluded from caught stealing marks and, interestingly, not included in the BJH anywhere at all.

Reyes's 77-for-98 basestealing record in 2007 worked out to a 78.6% success rate, strong but not outstanding by any means. By comparison, Pierre went 64-for-79, an 81.0% clip, yet his 4.2 EqSBR was almost double Reyes's 2.2. Why? I'm guessing it's the pickoffs. After much searching and frantic IM'ing I was finally able to track down pickoffs by batter thanks to Baseball Prospectus's Custom Reports. It turns out that Reyes was picked off twelve (12!) times this season.

I am going to assume that the figures on the BP report do not include instances where a pitcher throws to first and the runner takes off, only to be thrown out at second. That would count as a caught stealing and shouldn't be a pickoff. BP's glossary is no help, defining PICKOFF as "Number of times picked off". That's like when you open the dictionary for the definition of a word that's been puzzling you, only to find:

      splendiferousness, n. the act or state of being splendiferous.

In any case, let's move ahead with the assumption that pickoffs are pickoffs and not a subset of caught stealing. Pierre was picked off six times in 2007, half has often as Reyes. Pierre had a slight edge in basestealing efficiency when we considered only true steals and caught stealing, but let's juxtapose those marks with the pickoffs we just found and see how they really compare. After all, though pickoffs aren't included in caught stealing they are equally detrimental from a value-loss standpoint. Pickoffs might actually be considered worse than caught stealing in some abstract way since a caught stealing was at least an attempt at something better.

Player	SB	CS	SB%	PO	SB-PO%
Jose Reyes	77	21	78.6%	12	70.0%
Juan Pierre	64	15	81.0%	6	75.3%
Hanley Ramirez	51	14	78.5%	4	73.9%
Carl Crawford	50	10	83.3%	3	79.4%
Eric Byrnes	50	7	87.7%	5	80.1%
Brian Roberts	50	7	87.7%	8	76.9%
Chone Figgins	41	12	77.4%	1	75.9%
Jimmy Rollins	41	6	87.2%	5	78.8%
Ichiro Suzuki	37	8	82.2%	1	80.4%
Corey Patterson	37	9	80.4%	1	78.7%

Reyes may have led the big leagues in stolen bases last year but his efficiency in basestealing-related activities hovered right around the break even point, lagging well behind everyone else in the top ten among basestealers. SB-PO% represents the player's stolen base rate when pickoffs are counted as caught stealing [SB/(SB+CS+PO)], so if we allow that pickoffs are just as bad as caught stealing we find that Jose Reyes -- and the Mets, by extension -- may have been better off if he had never even thought about attempting a stolen base last year, all things considered. At all events, the value he added to the team with his basestealing endeavors was marginal at best. As we saw before, BP calculates Reyes's figure at 2.2 runs, which is slightly more than one-fifth of a win. All of that running, one-fifth of a win.

Much of Reyes's problem was that pitchers expected him to steal every time he was on first. The result was that he could rarely take a battery by surprise and that every stolen base was a hard-fought one. There were a lot of pickoff attempts, a lot of diving back into the bag, a lot of retreating to first after a foul ball. He is considerably faster than teammate David Wright, but the latter's ability to pick his spots and catch the opposing team off-guard allowed him to swipe 34 bases in 39 attempts (87.2%). Even considering his six pickoffs Wright's SB-PO% was a solid 79.1%.

The bottom line, it seems, is that Reyes should probably consider dialing it back a notch or two. He was involved in 110 basestealing-related events last year, or approximately two every three games. I'm not qualified to say whether all of that running may have contributed to his lackluster second half at the plate, but I'm willing to bet that it didn't help matters. Most players tend to wear down physically as the season grinds into August and September, so any extra miles on Reyes's tires could reasonably be expected to further deplete his energy in the waning months of the season.

Scaling his basestealing events back to something in the 50-60 range will allow him to better leverage his speed by staggering the times he steals with the times he does not and keeping opposing pitchers guessing far more than they do now. Doing so will increase Reyes's overall value to the team directly by making himself more efficient on the basepaths, and indirectly by keeping him fresh through the summer.

Over at Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski has posted his ZiPS Projections for the 2008 Mets. Before he gets rolling into the forecast, Dan has this to say about The Collapse:

While the Ny Mets are not my favorite squadron, reports of the Mets' demise are grossly premature. When a team collapses as badly as the Mets did the last few months of the season, people always look for some narrative to explain that loss. That the Mets are just a very good team that just played badly for awhile is generally not sexy enough for the headlines, but that's what most likely happened. How often did one hear OMG 4.67 SEC0ND HALF ERA!!!!!! the last few weeks of the season? While that's extremely disappointing, April, May, June, and the first third of July aren't exhibition games and the Mets did a very good job at getting those same big leaguers out over that span. Even with the bad second half, the Mets for the season got above-average performance out of both their rotation and their bullpen. Maine and Perez are young and back and while Pedro's health is likely going to always be a question-mark, 5 starts is certainly below Pedro's mean health projection.

Excellent Simpsons reference to get things started, and then he basically says what everyone knows but many have forgotten: The Mets are a very good baseball team that didn't play very well for a couple of months and played especially poorly for the last two weeks of the season. Fans, media, and subsequently the front office is likely to overract to those facts, particularly the last two weeks part, and are likely to dive head-first into the offseason in search of ways to dramatically improve this team.

The Good

Offensively, ZiPS is high on David Wright, projecting a .313/.405/.540 line. His 85% optimistic forecast is an absurd .334/.436/.608. He is going to be 25 next year, and he is going to get better. This is scary. In a good way.

Moises Alou is projected to hit .302/.365/.489 in 311 at-bats, both of which seem to be reasonable guesses at his production and health, respectively.

Lastings Milledge is pegged at .270/.355/.449, both minor upticks from his impressive (albeit truncated) 2007 season.

ZiPS expects a bit of a bounce back season for Carlos Delgado, projecting him to hit .257/.349/.476, overall higher than his 2007 marks and a higher OPS than the average projected 2008 first baseman. Forecasting systems are only an indication of what may be likely to happen, but the talk of trading Delgado to an AL team may be a bit premature. He isn't going to be the Delgado of old, but he should still have enough oomph in his bat to be an above-average offensive first-sacker.

On the pitching side, Billy Wagner, Pedro Feliciano and Aaron Heilman are all expected to turn in good-to-great seasons in the bullpen.

Pedro Martinez is expected to be relatively healthy, hurling 150 innings of 3.25 ERA, almost a strikeout per inning and a robust 4-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Oliver Perez, John Maine and Orlando Hernandez are all projected to turn in above-average ERAs and anywhere from 140 to 180 innings.

ZiPS is especially optimistic about Kevin Mulvey, who had a 3.24 ERA with Double-A Binghamton last season. ZiPS offers up a Major League projection of 4.02 ERA, just 38 walks and only 10 homeruns allowed in 141 innings.

The Bad

ZiPS doesn't think a whole lot of Ruben Gotay, forecasting a .245/.304/.361 line. Luis Castillo has a .294/.361/.359 projection, continuing his career trend of out-OBP-ing his slugging percentage.

Scott Schoeneweis, Jorge Sosa and Guillermo Mota are all expected to perform worse than an average reliever, though few of us (Willie Randolph and/or Omar Minaya, I'm *not* looking at you) would have predicted otherwise. These guys were the bullpen equivalent of water to a grease fire and are likely to remain as such for the foreseeable future. We don't need a fancy projection system to know that.

UPDATE: Check out Baseball Think Factory for more comments on this post and on the Mets' projections.

Back on April 30, Jose Reyes was hitting .356/.442/.596. He was ninth in all of baseball in OBP and tenth in SLG, and everyone was touting this as the year he became a superstar. Four-and-a-half months later that appears not to be the case. Though his season batting line -- .292/.363/.434 -- is far from horrible, most of us probably expected more out of him. Those expectations were unfairly inflated by his absurd April, but even coming off of a .300/.354/.487 line in 2006 I don't think it was unreasonable to think he would at least improve upon his output from a year ago. It hasn't happened.

I think Reyes *could* be the player we saw for the first month of the season, but counting on it will probably just lead to more frustration all around. He really seemed to have figured things out: He was drawing lots of walks, hitting for average, hitting for power. His biggest problem this season has been consistency, though.

Split	H/PA	UBB/PA	2B+3B/PA	HR/PA	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	BABIP
April/Mar.	30.8%	10.8%	11.7%	1.7%	0.356	0.442	0.596	1.038	0.385
May	23.8%	10.3%	5.6%	0.0%	0.268	0.349	0.348	0.697	0.323
June	28.5%	6.5%	2.4%	1.6%	0.330	0.405	0.425	0.829	0.363
July	24.6%	6.3%	8.7%	2.4%	0.265	0.317	0.453	0.770	0.267
August	24.5%	7.9%	3.6%	2.2%	0.272	0.341	0.392	0.733	0.277
Sept./Oct.	22.2%	2.2%	8.9%	0.0%	0.238	0.273	0.357	0.630	0.278

These are all percentages of total plate appearances. H is hits, UBB is unintentional walks (total walks minus intentional walks), 2B+3B and HR are self-explanatory. I don't like to give batters credit in the plate discipline department for intentional walks so I have removed them from the equation here. I lump doubles and triples together because triples are generally a byproduct of speed (or placement of hits), and though triples count more than doubles towards a player's slugging percentage they are really equivalent hits in terms of required power.

It's easy to see why Reyes's April was so impressive: His walk rate was very strong and his 2B+3B rate was outstanding. He *did* benefit from an extraordinarily high batting average on balls in play, a marker that has not-so-surprisingly correlated well with his overall success from month-to-month.

When May rolled around Reyes stopped hitting. His BABIP was still pretty high but his hit rate fell off a cliff and along with it went his extra-base hit rates. Interestingly, his walk rate declined only marginally, perhaps indicating that Reyes's approach at the plate had evolved to the point where he could maintain a respectable on-base percentage even when his bat went cold. Unfortunately, that seems to have been wishful thinking as Reyes's walk rate took a nose dive in June and has remained well below his April-May rate ever since.

His BABIP has been below average the past three months, so I would be inclined to chalk some of that up to bad luck if I hadn't actually been watching him everyday. I'm going a bit on memory here because I don't have access to batted ball splits, but Reyes has been hitting a lot of pop-ups over the past couple of months and I wouldn't be surprised if that has some natural effect on his BABIP. Pop flies are converted into outs something like 99% of the time, putting them right on par with strikeouts in the race for "Least Productive Out". I'm not about to sign up for the Buster Olney Productive Out Topiary Society, but groundballs and flyballs do often score runs; strikeouts and pop-ups almost never do.

So what conclusions can we draw from this? I think clearly Reyes isn't the player we saw in April. But is he the player we've seen since? A .279/.346/.400 hitter? I hope not. If not, I don't really know how to explain why he has been so inconsistent this year. It's easy to forget that he's still just 24 and still has three years or so before reaching the onset of his baseball "prime". He has shown some signs of life the last few games, and we can only hope that he picks things up over the final two-plus weeks of the season and into the post-season.

A recent e-mail exchange among friends about the crushing 5-4 loss to the Padres the other night got me researching what Joe Smith has done for the Mets this year.  Here's what I've found, broken down by month:

• Smith had a stellar month of April: 12.1 innings, no earned runs, 14 strikeouts and a WHIP of just under 1.  The kid looked like a phenom.  Outstanding.
• In May, he pitched 11.1 innings and gave up four runs, but maintained a sub-1 WHIP and struck out 13.  In fact, it was in one bad game against Milwaukee that he gave up three of those runs.  A very good month all around.
• June was a horrible month for Joe Smith (and the rest of the team).  In just 7.1 innings, Smith gave up 14 hits and walked 7, for a WHIP of 2.86.  His 6 strikeouts were not bad for the number of innings, but he gave up 6 runs, all earned.  Very bad when your job is to come in and get one to three outs. (Admittedly, these numbers are slightly inflated by the game against Detroit in which Smith got rocked while on mop-up duty, but they count all the same).
• July has not been great.  Through Wednesday, Smith gave up 7 hits and 4 walks in 6.2 innings (1.65 WHIP).  He surrendered 3 runs (2 earned) and one home run.  He struck out just 3.

For a right-hander, Smith manages to strike out a fair amount of lefties (12 in 9.2 innings).

Still, lefties really have been hurting him (numbers are WHIP/AVG/OBP/SLG against):

• vs left-handed batter  1.97/.308/.438/.385
  
• vs right-handed batter  1.25/.225/.331/.324

He has given up 12 hits and 7 walks to lefties in those 9.2 innings.

After a great start to the year, Smith has regressed to the mean, and he is beginning to look like a "righty specialist."  The thing is, the cumulative numbers against righties that appear above aren't necessarily amazing (WHIP and OBP especially) if he's going to be a specialist.  It would be nice to see him get those down a little.

Finally, he has a great K/9 of 8.60 and a weak K/BB of 1.89.

Now I shall opine on these matters:

We should not forget that Smith is a rookie.  He's just 23 years old, and he likely has a lot of unrecognized potential.  Willie Randolph really did not baby him at all, which was good to see.  From the start of the season, Randolph was bringing him into the game in high-pressure situations.  And early on, at least, Smith was succeeding.

Having said that, though, I think Randolph quickly fell in love with Smith, and rightfully so--Smith was awesome in his first 17 appearances.  But Randolph did the same sort of thing at the end of last year with Guillermo Mota, and it can be a real trap.  It seems that Willie can't seem to cut back on playing certain guys (or take them out of the game early enough) even when they obviously have started to come back to Earth.

So where does Smith go from here?  Does he become a guy who pitches to righties only?  Does he figure out how to become more effective against lefties?  (I have no numbers in front of me, but I seem to remember that Chad Bradford was surprisingly decent against lefties last year.)

Finally--and this is somewhat off-topic, but it is what sparked my interest in looking at some of these numbers--the Mets middle reliever I trust most in any truly high-leverage situation (against a righty or lefty) is Pedro "Pedro 2" Feliciano, with his 1.06 WHIP and .279 OBP against.