When you get to the end of the season and 89 wins and a deep playoff run, it seems that while their pen was disappointing, they were just six wins behind the Phillies, four behind the Brewers, and nine behind the Dodgers for the best record in the NL. So despite a great shuffling of relief pitchers, they ended up pretty strong. Of course it was helpful that some of their starters managed to go deeper into the games, and maybe that was a Stearns' decision to help out the number of innings the relievers would have to pitch in. If they had simply gone .500 in the month of May instead of .321 they would have challenged the Phillies for the division. They lost three of four to the Phillies in May and two of three to the Braves. Still think that for the right amount of money, Tanner Scott will pitch wherever they would need him to pitch. After all, it should be about getting the ring for all these multi-millionaires.
Fair analysis Brian. The fact is, there are a number of angles one could choose to shoot at. We saw a lot of pen meltdowns, and left handed hitting disasters, Pete single handedly looked like a right-handed Ike Davis chasing further and further into the LH batters box. In the end, the team's secret elixir worked and propelled the team further than it rightfully should have gone based on how the team played for a long time. I do caution those fans thinking that bringing back Winker, Iglesias, Pete etc as an OMG v2 plan will be fraught with disappointment. Sometimes all the circles align and there's a path through the matrix - just bringing the band back together hardly guarantees the same, or even similar, outcome.
The very first thing I checked was RH power but that was middle of the pack.
I agree that putting the band back together was not the way to go. But it's not the way that Stearns went. And as for the ones who are still out there waiting to return, it's far from a sure thing how many would be welcome back.
It'll be curious to see the additions still to be made.
This is an interesting topic. As we progressed through 2024, my biggest beef with the team was the offense and how it just seemed to go AWOL for extended periods of time. I did not have a lot of complaints about the pitching - either the starters or the relievers. Anyone recall the three games they played in Seattle and scored 1 run? Or the back to back to back games in September they scored 10 runs in each, but 2 or less in 4 of the next 6 when they needed the 'W's in their playoff race. Even game 161 where they scored 8 runs, none of them came before the 8th inning.
The Mets scored two or less runs in 49 of 162 games, a little over 30%. Without doing further research on other teams, that seems a bit high to me.
They scored 7 or more in 45 games, which shows they did have the offense to score, but there were too many times it just didn't show up or showed up late.
On a related note, as I was doing research a couple months ago on the pros and cons of signing Juan Soto, I found a stat that I thought was telling. Soto, by himself, in 2024, scored just about exactly half as many runs in the first inning as the entire Mets team did in the same inning all year. The Mets scored a measly 67 first inning runs while Soto accounted for 33. My feeling is that getting more early leads in ballgames will automatically make the pitching better. It is much easier to pitch with an early lead than to struggle wondering when the team is going to score. I expect the Mets to do much better in that stat in 2025.
One other thing that struck me as I looked through their batting splits for the year was that they scored almost as many runs off relief pitchers as they did starters. While it is true that starters don't throw as many innings as in the past, but they only scored 22 more runs at the front end of the games. The Braves on the other hand were +100.
On to the pitching. There is an interesting question posed with this piece. It seemed like many games where the starter got through just 4 or 5 innings and then they had 4 or 5 other pitchers in there just to get through 9 innings. With this change to the starting pitching (throw as hard as you can for as long as you can and hope to get 5, maybe 6 innings), it seems to me that the successful bullpens will be the ones that are staffed with guys that throw 3 or 4 innings at a time. I will take a look sometime and see if I can glean any correlation between bullpen success and average number of pitchers per game. I don't have anything hard and fast to go on at this point, but that was my frustration with the relief corps this year - they threw too many of them in most games. I am not a huge proponent of adding another closer like Scott - get a proven long-man that can throw multiple innings 2 or 3 times a week.
There just aren't a ton of "proven long-man" hanging around. And you can argue that the Mets are trying to do that very thing, with the likes of Paul Blackburn and Griffin Canning likely to be on the Opening Day roster and not in the rotation for at least the very beginning of the season.
I think the Mets should be going after at least one high end reliever. Diaz has been nothing if not inconsistent in his time with the team and while I have confidence in him, I’d love to see some insurance. Even better than that would be to go away from the traditional 9th inning only closer and use Diaz and any other top reliever in high leverage situations, regardless of whether it is a save situation. Mendoza seemed to do that at times last year and I think that could be a selling point to someone like Scott. Hopefully players (and their agents) see things from a more modern standpoint and realize that piling up saves is not the main focus as it once seemed to be.
True, but what I’m referring to is looking more at advanced stats and the situations a pitcher is used in rather than how many saves a guy has when determining contract value so that a pitcher doesn’t necessarily feel that they have to pile up saves to get their next big contract.
That's how the Brewers used Josh Hader for awhile and everything was great. At least it was until they went to arbitration and used Hader's lack of saves against him. After losing his arb case, Hader announced that he was only going to pitch one inning at a time. He went from a guy that pitched 81.1 IP in 55 Games to a guy who's posted fewer than 1 IP per game every year since 2020.
The idea of using your best reliever in non-save opportunities, or multiple innings that may or may not have him pitching the ninth, is much more aspirational than reality here in the 21st Century.
I saw this in an article in The Athletic but their search engine is terrible. But I found this article from a Milwaukee paper, entitled, "Josh Hader and agent admit to ESPN they crafted usage guidelines after losing arbitration case to Brewers"
Thanks Brian. That link is a good article. I didn't remember that issue with Hader, but while I'm not surprised that the team would use that (or anything they could) to win an arbitration hearing, I would think that somehow the analytics would prove out that having your best pitchers pitch in the highest leverage situations would increase the chances of winning, and turn the tide on the thought of holding the closer for the 9th. Maybe using WPA somehow.
When you get to the end of the season and 89 wins and a deep playoff run, it seems that while their pen was disappointing, they were just six wins behind the Phillies, four behind the Brewers, and nine behind the Dodgers for the best record in the NL. So despite a great shuffling of relief pitchers, they ended up pretty strong. Of course it was helpful that some of their starters managed to go deeper into the games, and maybe that was a Stearns' decision to help out the number of innings the relievers would have to pitch in. If they had simply gone .500 in the month of May instead of .321 they would have challenged the Phillies for the division. They lost three of four to the Phillies in May and two of three to the Braves. Still think that for the right amount of money, Tanner Scott will pitch wherever they would need him to pitch. After all, it should be about getting the ring for all these multi-millionaires.
Fair analysis Brian. The fact is, there are a number of angles one could choose to shoot at. We saw a lot of pen meltdowns, and left handed hitting disasters, Pete single handedly looked like a right-handed Ike Davis chasing further and further into the LH batters box. In the end, the team's secret elixir worked and propelled the team further than it rightfully should have gone based on how the team played for a long time. I do caution those fans thinking that bringing back Winker, Iglesias, Pete etc as an OMG v2 plan will be fraught with disappointment. Sometimes all the circles align and there's a path through the matrix - just bringing the band back together hardly guarantees the same, or even similar, outcome.
The very first thing I checked was RH power but that was middle of the pack.
I agree that putting the band back together was not the way to go. But it's not the way that Stearns went. And as for the ones who are still out there waiting to return, it's far from a sure thing how many would be welcome back.
It'll be curious to see the additions still to be made.
This is an interesting topic. As we progressed through 2024, my biggest beef with the team was the offense and how it just seemed to go AWOL for extended periods of time. I did not have a lot of complaints about the pitching - either the starters or the relievers. Anyone recall the three games they played in Seattle and scored 1 run? Or the back to back to back games in September they scored 10 runs in each, but 2 or less in 4 of the next 6 when they needed the 'W's in their playoff race. Even game 161 where they scored 8 runs, none of them came before the 8th inning.
The Mets scored two or less runs in 49 of 162 games, a little over 30%. Without doing further research on other teams, that seems a bit high to me.
They scored 7 or more in 45 games, which shows they did have the offense to score, but there were too many times it just didn't show up or showed up late.
On a related note, as I was doing research a couple months ago on the pros and cons of signing Juan Soto, I found a stat that I thought was telling. Soto, by himself, in 2024, scored just about exactly half as many runs in the first inning as the entire Mets team did in the same inning all year. The Mets scored a measly 67 first inning runs while Soto accounted for 33. My feeling is that getting more early leads in ballgames will automatically make the pitching better. It is much easier to pitch with an early lead than to struggle wondering when the team is going to score. I expect the Mets to do much better in that stat in 2025.
One other thing that struck me as I looked through their batting splits for the year was that they scored almost as many runs off relief pitchers as they did starters. While it is true that starters don't throw as many innings as in the past, but they only scored 22 more runs at the front end of the games. The Braves on the other hand were +100.
On to the pitching. There is an interesting question posed with this piece. It seemed like many games where the starter got through just 4 or 5 innings and then they had 4 or 5 other pitchers in there just to get through 9 innings. With this change to the starting pitching (throw as hard as you can for as long as you can and hope to get 5, maybe 6 innings), it seems to me that the successful bullpens will be the ones that are staffed with guys that throw 3 or 4 innings at a time. I will take a look sometime and see if I can glean any correlation between bullpen success and average number of pitchers per game. I don't have anything hard and fast to go on at this point, but that was my frustration with the relief corps this year - they threw too many of them in most games. I am not a huge proponent of adding another closer like Scott - get a proven long-man that can throw multiple innings 2 or 3 times a week.
There just aren't a ton of "proven long-man" hanging around. And you can argue that the Mets are trying to do that very thing, with the likes of Paul Blackburn and Griffin Canning likely to be on the Opening Day roster and not in the rotation for at least the very beginning of the season.
I have been thinking the same thing. Tylor Megill is another candidate for that role.
I think the Mets should be going after at least one high end reliever. Diaz has been nothing if not inconsistent in his time with the team and while I have confidence in him, I’d love to see some insurance. Even better than that would be to go away from the traditional 9th inning only closer and use Diaz and any other top reliever in high leverage situations, regardless of whether it is a save situation. Mendoza seemed to do that at times last year and I think that could be a selling point to someone like Scott. Hopefully players (and their agents) see things from a more modern standpoint and realize that piling up saves is not the main focus as it once seemed to be.
I don't view what you're describing as a "modern standpoint" at all. I think it's much more accurate to describe that as a throwback bullpen.
True, but what I’m referring to is looking more at advanced stats and the situations a pitcher is used in rather than how many saves a guy has when determining contract value so that a pitcher doesn’t necessarily feel that they have to pile up saves to get their next big contract.
That's how the Brewers used Josh Hader for awhile and everything was great. At least it was until they went to arbitration and used Hader's lack of saves against him. After losing his arb case, Hader announced that he was only going to pitch one inning at a time. He went from a guy that pitched 81.1 IP in 55 Games to a guy who's posted fewer than 1 IP per game every year since 2020.
The idea of using your best reliever in non-save opportunities, or multiple innings that may or may not have him pitching the ninth, is much more aspirational than reality here in the 21st Century.
I saw this in an article in The Athletic but their search engine is terrible. But I found this article from a Milwaukee paper, entitled, "Josh Hader and agent admit to ESPN they crafted usage guidelines after losing arbitration case to Brewers"
https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2024/05/21/josh-hader-and-agent-admit-to-espn-they-crafted-usage-guidelines-after-losing-arbitration-case-to-br/73784504007/
Thanks Brian. That link is a good article. I didn't remember that issue with Hader, but while I'm not surprised that the team would use that (or anything they could) to win an arbitration hearing, I would think that somehow the analytics would prove out that having your best pitchers pitch in the highest leverage situations would increase the chances of winning, and turn the tide on the thought of holding the closer for the 9th. Maybe using WPA somehow.