Tyrone Taylor shakes off poor start, Brandon Nimmo's splits, Max Kranick's early fWAR

One thing that’s dominated my baseball thoughts here recently is that you shouldn’t always view a player’s production early on based on season-long production. A really bad stretch can have outside influence on what the player has done. We’ve seen it with Mark Vientos, whose .393 OPS start in the first 13 games is having an outsized influence on his year-to-date numbers, dwarfing his .837 OPS in his last 17 games. And an .837 OPS is exactly the production Vientos had last year in 454 PA. We see the same thing with Tyrone Taylor.

Last year, Taylor had a terrible month of May, one where he had a .374 OPS. In April, Taylor had a .720 OPS and from June 1 to the end of the season, he posted a .763 OPS. This season, Taylor has a .601 OPS, due to his lousy start. In his first 41 PA of the year, Taylor had a .400 OPS. In his last 50 PA, Taylor has a .767 OPS, nearly identical to his post-May numbers a season ago.

The early numbers for Taylor and Vientos absolutely count and this shouldn’t be construed as an attempt to throw them out and pretend that they didn’t happen. Instead, it’s a call not to let what the player did in his first 13 games overly influence what’s happening now, especially if the player has an even longer stretch where he’s performed up to recent standards.

If you want to be down on Taylor because of his 2.2 BB% - including just two walks in his last 50 PA, that’s one thing. If you’re dismayed by Vientos’ 24.7 K% in his last 17 games, including games where he took swings and struck out on non-competitive pitches in key situations – that’s perfectly reasonable. Just don’t think they’re terrible because of their season-long OPS. And the same thing works in reverse, too. A player can have a stretch of 11 games with a .957 OPS, which masks what he’s done in his other 17 games.

GETTING THINGS DONE WITH THE KRANICK – It’s hard to post an impressive WAR total as a middle reliever over an entire season, much less the first month. Yet Max Kranick has come on to put up a 0.4 fWAR in the first month of 2025. If he was able to maintain that pace over the six-month campaign, he would have a 2.4 fWAR, which would have been the third-best mark for a reliever in 2024. And as Metsense pointed out the other day in a Game Chatter, it’s the same production delivered by Luisangel Acuna, who was given the Rookie of the Month for that production. Maybe the voters didn’t realize Kranick has rookie eligibility?

METS IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE – Submitted for your approval are the batting lines for two players:

Player A – 64 PA, .167/.281/.315, .596 OPS, 72 OPS+
Player B – 58 PA, .204/.246/.352, .597 OPS, 70 OPS+

Player A has yet to appear in the field, while Player B saw time at two different infield positions. No doubt that hint lets you know that the players are Starling Marte and Brett Baty. In a way, it’s easy to understand why the Mets kept Marte and sent down Baty. Still, it’s fair to wonder how much rope Marte has left, especially given that he’s a guy signed by the previous administration. His defense has fallen off a cliff, he rarely attempts a steal anymore – to be fair, it’s hard to steal when you don’t get on base – and his hitting has cratered. There’s hope that Baty can improve and he’s another guy whose full-season numbers are brought down by a miserable start. Does anyone still have hope with Marte?

SOME SPLITS FOR A FORMER HIGH SCHOOL TRACK STAR – Brandon Nimmo has had two monster games in his last four appearances, outings that raised his OPS 145 points. Still, his year-to-date results have not been up to snuff, as he carries a .229/.279/.441 slash line. Still, when we look at his splits, we see some really interesting things. Here are ones that stand out to me:

Hitting the first pitch - .300 AVG, 1.036 OPS
Versus LHP - .296/.310/.667 - .977 OPS
Versus relievers - .250/.321/.563 - .883 OPS

Nimmo’s been more aggressive, frequently swinging at the first pitch. When you see the results when he makes contact, it makes sense. Yet he’s hit the first pitch 21 times and he’s swung 46 times. Without doing the actual research to know if that’s good – it seems less than ideal to me. Perhaps he can go back and keep his first-pitch swings to when a reliever is brought on to face him. While splits off splits off splits are not a thing – it would be fascinating to see what Nimmo’s batting line the last few years are when he swings at the first pitch off a lefty reliever brought on specifically to face him.

CHECKING IN ON THE TEAM’S STARTING PITCHERS – The Mets’ SP lead the league with a 2.32 ERA, a mark 1.74 better than league average. Here are the individual numbers thru 33 games:

Clay Holmes – 36.2 IP, 2.95 ERA
Kodai Senga – 32.2 IP, 1.38 ERA
David Peterson – 32.1 IP, 3.06 ERA
Tylor Megill – 31.0 IP, 1.74 ERA
Griffin Canning – 31.0 IP, 2.61 ERA
Huascar Brazoban – 3.0 IP, 0.00 ERA

Last year there were only 16 pitchers in the majors who threw at least 100 IP and had an ERA of 3.06 or less. You can focus on the lack of quantity here – the Mets are 22^nd with 166.2 IP from their starters, but 11 teams ahead of them have played more games – yet you have to acknowledge how excellent the quality has been. Hopefully Carlos Mendoza will continue last year’s model, as a season ago the SP went deeper into games as the season progressed. Hopefully the 4-5 IP games from the starters will be replaced by 6-7 IP games.