How Mets can make playoffs
With the mega-contracts to
Johan Santana and
Jason Bay finally off of the books, and
David Wright and
Jonathon Niese now the
New York Mets' only players signed to long-term contracts, the club can spend close to $50 million toward 2014's payroll without exceeding last year's relatively frugal $93 million payroll.
Remember, this is a team that had a payroll of $142 million as recently as 2011. In other words, the Mets have room to spend even if you factor in the owner's financial woes, and, perhaps more surprisingly, a realistic chance of making the playoffs if they do.
The myth of certainty
According to 2014
Steamer projections, the Mets can expect to win 75 games if they stand pat. Depending on how you perform the calculations, baseball teams appear to be spending anywhere from $6 million to $7 million
per win on the open market.
Therefore, if the Mets spend $50 to $60 million on free agents they might reasonably expect to improve by eight wins. The problem, of course, is that if a 75-win team improves by eight games, it's still only an 83-win team and 83 wins won't get the Mets into the playoffs.
While this argument seems quite reasonable, it wildly overestimates how much we actually know about the future quality of any team and underestimates the fickle nature of the game.
Each year, Vegas forecasters, along with a number of prognosticators and baseball writers, project the win totals for each team. Vegas and the best of the forecasters are typically off, either high or low,
by about seven games. To be clear, I'm not just stating that an occasional surprise team ends up seven wins better or worse than expected, rather that expert predictions of win totals are off by seven wins,
on average -- sometimes they do much worse.
While an 83-win team won't make the playoffs, a team expected to win 83 games just well might. The question then becomes: How much can the Mets improve their chances by spending $50 million and adding eight wins and, would they benefit considerably less than a team projected to be stronger?
To answer this question let's compare the Mets with two ostensibly superior teams, first the
San Francisco Giants, who are projected to improve and win 87 games next year and, second, the
Boston Red Sox, who are expected to maintain their excellence and win 94 games.
Based on 5,000 simulations of the season, and taking into account the inherent uncertainty in projections of team outcomes, the Mets, as currently constituted, are projected to win their division 10.5 percent of the time and to win a wild card 3.5 percent of the time. This gives them roughly a 12 percent chance to play in the division series. Meanwhile, the Giants and Red Sox are projected to have a 39 percent chance and a 68 percent chance of playing in the division series, respectively.
But what happens when we give each team an additional eight wins? The Mets now play in the division series 34 percent of the time. The souped-up Giants and Red Sox play in the division series 67 percent and 88 percent of the time, respectively. According to the simulations, the Giants, a quality but not an elite team, gained the most from their imagined spending binge, improving their chances of making the division series by 26 percent.
The Mets, however, weren't that far behind, improving their division series chances by 22 percent and edging out the Sox, who improved by 20 percent. In other words, while the Mets' chances aren't as good as those of the Giants or Red Sox, signing free agents improves their playoff chances by a comparable amount. While risk and uncertainty are generally seen as negatives, to a team that projects to be not quite good enough, risk and uncertainty are dear friends.
Bats to target: Getting more from less
While it seems to be almost a truism that you ought to put your best players on the field as often and for as long as possible, there are in fact situations where you can get more value from players by playing them less. For instance, Mitchel Lichtman recently
made a compelling case that teams would increase their chances of winning by pulling starting pitchers -- even aces in the middle of dominating performances – earlier in games.
This year's free agents present two opportunities for the Mets to get more for less.
Shin-Soo Choo was a valuable player in 2013, to the tune of 5.2 WAR, despite being asked to do two things he simply can't do very well: play center field and hit left-handed pitching.
The Mets could counterintuitively extract more value from Choo by asking him to do less both offensively and defensively, playing him in an outfield corner and pairing him with a lesser right-handed bat who can start against tough left-handed pitching.
Andrew Brown or, if his improved 2013 minor league performance proves real,
Cesar Puello could provide a suitable right-handed bat.
While at first blush, using Choo, who looks to command
upwards of $15 million annually, in a more limited role appears wasteful, it plays to Choo's strength, his ability to pound right-handed pitching, while minimizing his weaknesses (Choo has a career .932 OPS against right-handed pitchers and a career .680 OPS against left-handed pitchers). Similarly,
Stephen Drew (career .876 OPS vs. RHP and .585 OPS vs. LHP) could be better utilized with the help of a caddie who hits from the right side of the plate and the Mets have such a player on hand in
Ruben Tejada.
In the other outfield corner, the Mets should take a chance on
David Murphy who, coming off an abysmal 2013 season, should be available for a modest price. The good news is that Murphy's strikeout rate and power numbers still resemble those of his finer seasons, making him a good candidate to rebound. Like Choo, he could benefit from sitting against left-handed pitching but, unlike Choo, he is a plus defensively and projects as a defensive upgrade over the speedier
Eric Young Jr.
