Pitching the 2009 Mets
Omar Minaya made one of the first big offseason splashes when he signed Francisco Rodriguez to a 3-yr deal. K-Rod may be showing signs of decline, but with Billy Wagner on the shelf for most, if not all, of the season, the new single-season saves recordholder is a definite improvement over the likes of Luis Ayala and Aaron Heilman. Minaya then sent the aforementioned Heilman to the Mariners in a three team traded that netted the Mets two solid relievers: Sean Green and J.J. Putz.
His focus to date has been spent on the bullpen, which makes sense, given their struggles last season. Their starting rotation still has a spot or two to fill, though, and several players have been linked to the team.
Johan Santana, John Maine, and Mike Pelfrey will all be returning. After these three, several Mets bloggers believe that Jonathan Niese will win the final rotation spot. If not Niese, the Mets still have options in the forms of Brandon Knight and Nelson Figueroa. With 140 innings out of Niese, the current fearsome foursome may look like this next season:
Johan Santana 3.45 FIP 220 IP +4.5 WAR John Maine 4.35 FIP 180 IP +2.1 WAR Mike Pelfrey 4.08 FIP 185 IP +2.8 WAR Jonathan Niese 4.55 FIP 140 IP +1.4 WAR
Before even adding the final piece to the puzzle that is their starting rotation, these four project to +10.8 wins. The four pitchers heavily linked to the Mets are: Derek Lowe, Oliver Perez, Randy Wolf, and Tim Redding. Here are the projections for these four:
Derek Lowe 3.67 FIP 185 IP +3.7 WAR Randy Wolf 4.35 FIP 175 IP +2.0 WAR Oliver Perez 4.60 FIP 180 IP +1.7 WAR Tim Redding 4.77 FIP 159 IP +1.3 WAR
With Lowe added to the mix, which may come to fruition very soon, the Mets rotation jumps from +10.8 wins to +14.5 wins. If you recall the post yesterday on the Giants’ chances of contending, their solid starting rotation projects to +15.4 wins. Adding Lowe places the Mets right in the thick of perhaps sporting the best rotation in the senior circuit.
Adding Wolf bumps them up to a respectable +12.8 wins; Perez shifts the rotation from +10.8 to +12.5; and Redding adds +1.3 wins to put the starters at +12.1 wins. If they were to sign Lowe and then resign Perez, Niese theoretically gets bumped and the rotation would project to +14.8 wins.
Essentially, if Niese can manage 140 innings with a 4.55 FIP, his value will be incredibly similar to that of Oliver Perez. Of course, nobody knows if Niese can produce these numbers, but adding Lowe while keeping him in the mix produces +14.5 wins; spending plenty of money on Perez, while signing Lowe, adds a mere +0.3 wins. Given that Perez will likely command a salary upwards of 20 times that of Niese, it makes more sense to give the kid a shot.
Regardless, signing Lowe to an average annual value of $15-16 mil makes sense. If he declines by a 0.7 wins each year, given his age, then he goes from +3.7 to +3.0 to +2.3 wins. If we assume a conservative 7.5% inflation rate, his fair market values in these years would be $18.5 mil, $16.5 mil, and $13.8 mil, respectively. Added together, that equates to 3-yrs/$49 mil. The contract reportedly on the table is for 3-yrs/$45-$48 mil.
The next question is: How does this rotation compare to the Phillies? The defending champs will bring back Cole Hamels, Brett Myers, Jamie Moyer, and Joe Blanton. The fifth spot will be up for grabs between J.A. Happ, Kyle Kendrick, Carlos Carrasco, Chan Ho Park, and Adam Eaton. My pick is Happ to win that contest, which would peg their rotation to be worth +11.8 wins.
If these projections hold true, and Niese can manage the aforementioned workload/production, then the Mets could realistically sign Redding and still have an equal rotation to the Phillies. Bringing aboard Perez and Wolf elevates them. Signing Lowe gives the Mets approximately a +2.5 win advantage in this department.
Minaya has done a good job in strengthening the ‘pen with the additions of K-Rod, Putz, and Green. Bringing Lowe to The Big Apple will further strengthen their rotation and, in my eyes, make them the team to beat in the NL East next season. It hurts me to say that, as a Phillies fan, but it will sure feel that way if Lowe signs.
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I admit that I am also a Phillies fan and may be biased, but if you check the win values on the 25-man rosters going into next year, even with Lowe, the Mets will fall short of the Phillies. Without Lowe, the CHONE projections seemingly put the Phils about 8 wins better than the Mets, Bill James’ puts them about 4-5 wins better, Marcel about 5 wins, and Ron Shandler about 3-4 wins better. I’m guessing that even with the Mets grabbing Lowe, the Phillies would have about a 1-2 win advantage over the Mets, giving them probably a 55-60% chance of beating them over the course of 162 games. With Perez or Wolf, I’m guessing about a 65% chance of being better. And if you look at Florida, Atlanta, and Washington’s projections, none of them look to be .500 teams. It’s most likely a two horse race, with the Phillies more likely the winner.
Matt, I’ll be running the official numbers later on these two teams and will let you know what I get. I would highly suggest using a few different systems as opposed to one to get the overall results, and I’m curious to know how the bullpens are evaluated in the projections you’ve seen. I cannot imagine that the Phillies are projected to be 8 wins better than the Mets. If we assume they sign Lowe, which they are on the verge of doing, their rotation projects to be +2.5 wins better than the Phillies.
If the Mets bullpen has a +0.5 win advantage now, that means the Phillies lineup would have to be +11 wins better than the Mets for +8 wins to come to fruition. I can’t see that happening.
These teams are much closer.
Have the Fightins given up on Lowe? A groundball pitcher would look great in front of Rollins, Utley, and Feliz. FIP be darned.
The Mets should be much better next year with a bona fide bullpen, even if K-Rod is overrated.
Just wondering where you heard the value of the contract on the table? Metsblog reports that it is 3/36. Which would be pretty good value according to your calculations. If it were 12 mil a year, the Mets would be paying less than market value every year.
Does anyone really believe that Randy Wolf is better than Oliver Perez right now? Those projections seem to me to be putting a it too much emphasis on FIP type stats without enough weight to actual performance.
Over the last two seasons, Wolf has actually had ERA+ of 97 and 93, while Perez has been at 120 and 100. Yes, Perez has had the benefit of being an extreme flyball pitcher, in a reasonably neutral park with some great outfield defense behind him. Maybe he’s not as good as the raw numbers suggest. But he also has some plus stuff that probably contributes to keeping BABIP a bit on the low side.
This is one where I’d guess Marcel ends up closer than Chone. It’s not a big difference, maybe, but I’d guess Olie for the Mets next year would again supply an ERA around 4.25, while Wolf I would expect more around 4.45.
The point is that ERA is much more prone to fluctuations due to factors like you mentioned as well as defense. The Mets had one of the top defenses last year and the year prior via several defensive metrics. This is why we speculated that Javy Vazquez would’ve looked great for the Mets.
Perez’s controllable skills do not project as favorably as Wolf’s. Could Perez prove to be better than Wolf? Sure. But if you put Wolf’s controllable skills in front of the Mets defense, as opposed to the ones he played for recently, you might be surprised to see a very similar, if not better, pitcher.
Oliver Perez’s controllable skills certainly do project as well as Wolf’s. His BB, SO, and HR rates don’t. But, those aren’t really the *only* controllable skills. They’re just the easiest to quantify.
I’m not arguing against the value of FIP here, just that it isn’t always the *only* thing to look at. In this case, we also have one guy who is 32 years old next year, whose best years and stuff are likely behind him, and whose actual results haven’t been that good since 2003, and another guy who is only 27 next year, who was still averaging 91.2 mph on his fastball, and getting reasonable results.
FIP certainly is generally more reliable than relying only on ERA. But best results will usually come from considering some combination of both, as well as external factors and observation. Most often, I think you would weight FIP more heavily. But I commented on this case mainly because I think it’s one of the exceptions. This is one where I think the monkey will beat the machine.
eric, first off, big fan of your work and secondly, your analysis is usually right on the money (at least when i compare it to my own findings and conclusions)…and as a mets fan, i have no qualms saying it.
right now i have the phillies 2 wins up on the mets heading into 2009. if it comes to be, my projections are for lowe to give the mets a 3 win bounce. so on paper, that means pretty much means the mets and phillies are just about even. this should, at the very least, be a very exciting season to look forward to for mets and phillies fans.
AE, thanks, glad to see Mets and Phillies fans CAN get along! I’m posting tonight my projections for each team. They slightly differ from yours, but just ever so slightly. I’m going to include Lowe in the mix for the Mets because I just don’t see him signing elsewhere. The tough part for the Mets is that their bench doesn’t seem to be complete. Tatis and Reed will be there, so will Castro. After that, I don’t see any infielders. I just see Marlon Anderson and Angel Pagan, and Nick Evans as well, all of whom are outfielders. Benches don’t generally add a ton of wins to a team so it is a miniscule differential, but after I post tonight, I’d be very curious to see how you arrived at your numbers, too.
We have no bench yet (we’ve been linked to Alex Cora), but here are my projections for reference: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p0f4isoUgbTh93DuTmbcNIA
eric,
i explain my (very simple) method poorly here:
http://eightoclockthelightsareonatshea.blogspot.com/2008/12/im-completely-replaceableeven-though-i.html
(please note, it’s not a sports blog, although sometimes i blog about sports sometimes.)
anyway, i’ve updated my numbers quite a bit since then and will probably have a more in depth post up this weekend with numbers that i think are legit with legit playing time forecasts. i will post both my mets and phillies projections.
i have the mets winning 86 games right now (without lowe) and the phillies winning 88. i’m curious to see your numbers as well…looking forward to your post.
Sam, our projections differ in a few areas. Not sure how you arrived at your numbers for several players or what systems you used, but I like to use several different systems and weight them based on past reliability and such. I also include Derek Lowe in my projections and have Schneider as the starter, not Castro.
I also have Jeremy Reed and Fernando Tatis on the bench, as well as Castro. Benches don’t add a ton and it isn’t as if this would vastly shift the projections.
In both this and the comparison between the Mets and Phillies, there is one consideration missing. The theory that young pitchers who throw more than 30 innings over their career highs in a given season are likely to have injury/ineffectiveness problems the next season. Recent history is full of examples, but going into last season Kyle Kendrick, Tom Gorzelanny, Dustin McGowan, Fausto Carmona, Ubaldo Jimenez, Yovanny Gallardo and Brian Bannister all fit the prfile and all had the requisite struggles in one area or another. Going into 2009, Cole Hamels and Mike Pelfrey are both members of this group. I would expect both to see some trouble in 2009. We could go more deeply into this, but the evidence is there to support the theory quite well. This is one place where strict numbers are not enough to make a good projection as one needs to look at some context. In the case of both Pelfrey and Hamels the relevant context is 2008′s overuse.