Borderline Strike

Non-tender day (‘Tough’ Thursday?) is here, and there were a few interesting players cut loose into the FA pool.
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Middle relief appears to be all the rage this off season (see: O’Day, Darren, and Teams, Fawning), and there are two more possible candidates on the non tender list.  The less risky of the two is Yusmiero Petit, from the Giants, who I guess just have so much quality relief that they couldn’t make room for Petit after a downish year.  Not a BAD year, mind – Petit was still pretty decent. He pitched a robust 72 innings (with only a single start inflating that number), with a 1.18 WHIP, a 3.67 ERA, a 4.09 FIP (yes, a tad high) and a just above-average 103 ERA+ .  His strikeouts did drop markedly – from 10+ per game to around 7, which is a little worrying, and he was bitten by the long ball a little more, which jacked both his ERA and FIP.  But, if you throw out his disastrous 4HR allowed game vs. LA on June 21 (3.2IP, 8H, 5R/ER, 1BB, 1K, 4HR), his stat line improves to a 1.13 WHIP, 3.24 ERA, 3.55 FIP, and his ERA+ would naturally increase correspondingly, and that line, I believe, looks pretty appealing for a low price releiver with a positive performance history.
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I can kind of understand SF not wanting to offer the minimum required 1.7M (cheap in today’s market, I guess), and risk up to mid 2M in the arbitration process, given that they have a million relief pitchers and arms they want to protect from the Rule 5 draft, but now that he is floating free in the wild, Petit can probably be a solid setup/middle reliever on the cheap for a team with bullpen requirements and budget restrictions.

A more interesting roll of the dice would be for Craig Stammen, coming off of an arm (flexor tendon) injury last year.  With his health status still up in the air (he pitched only 4 MLB innings in 2015), the Nats (again, understandably) did not want to extend the minimum tender of around $1.8M to him (though rumors seem to indicate they intend to bring Stammen to spring training, which seems a little presumptuous).  Historically Stammen was a sturdy pitcher throwing 240+ innings in 160+ appearances from 2012-14, keeping his HR rate at under 1/10 innings.  Importantly, Stammen has historically been a ground ball pitcher, which I love more and more as time goes by.  Having a need to re-establish value, Stammen could probably be had on a relatively low guaranteed 1 year contract, or a somewhat higher non guaranteed contract, with some performance incentives, should he prove healthy.
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Also a little surprising was the inclusion of Pedro Alvarez, who many projected could be awarded as much as 8.5M in arbitration, but is now likely to make considerably less on the open market, unless he finds a cozy fit with an AL team willing to swallow the Rob Deer approach to baseball (Orioles, perhaps?).  Here is kind of a strange thought – how about the Brewers?
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I was speaking with my friend, baseball literati, Paul Rude this morning about the Brewers startling and total absence of a third baseman. They literally have no 3b on their 40 man roster or in their top 20 prospects, and their current depth chart lists the starter as Yadiel Rivera – a shortstop with 14 MLB AB, and the backup as Jason Rogers, a 1b convert (still listed as a 1b on the 40 man roster) who played about 120 games in the minors at 3b over two seasons and filled in for the last two dozen games after the Brewers shipped Aramis to the Pirates last year.  I suppose there is nothing wrong with trying Rogers – he put up pretty decent numbers last year in a small sample size (296/367/441), and that line isn’t far off his career minor league numbers – but when I raised the matter with Paul, he suggested Pedro.
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I was skeptical at first, but when we talked about it, it made a lot of sense. First, the Brewers are rebuilding and basically don’t (or shouldn’t) care about how many games they win or lose, so Pedro’s lead-foot, er, and lead-hand, I suppose, defense at 3b is not an issue.  Second, he can likely be had fairly inexpensively – not Jason Rogers inexpensively – but on a one or two year deal which the Brewers with their sub-100M payroll can easily handle.  If he happens to bash, Pedro is all of a sudden a very appealing trade chip to an AL team after the break and, if he doesn’t, well, what is the old saw?  There are no bad one year contracts?
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The point was raised that his crappy defense gets in his head and affects his offense, but I am not sure that this would be a problem this time around.  The Brewers can honestly say to him “Pedro, we don’t care how many errors you make at 3b.  Literally do not care at all.  Make fifty errors, it’s fine.  This job is yours – as long as you hit.  We have no 3b on the roster to take your job.  We have no 3b prospect in the minors to take your job.  And if you DO hit, we will get you on a playoff contender come fall.  So, relax about the fielding, and start hacking away.”  Whether Pedro can let the defense go or not, I have no idea, but on a non-contending team, with no other reasonable 3b options, he would be in about as comfortable and pressure free a position as he could hope.
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Finally, there is some speculation that Pedro is not, shall we say, a maximum effort person, and that while not clubhouse cancer in the nature of Jonathan Papelbon(oma), is on the more difficult side of the harmony spectrum.  Fortunately for the Brewers, unlike the Royals, or Oakland, or Houston, or any number of other historically scrappy overachievers, clubhouse chemistry is neither key to the Brewers continuing success, nor near the top of the 2015-16 concerns list for the front office.
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Between his likely modest short term price, and the possibility he could magically turn into reasonable prospects come August to help Milwaukee in its rebuilding effort if his bat cooperates, Pedro seems like a worthwhile and palatable risk for Milwaukee to undertake.

I have a lot of friends that are Mets fans, and who were obviously thrilled by their (ultimate) performance last year.  Really, what’s not to like about the Mets’ pitching staff?  There are only really two things that baffle me about the current Mets:
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First, why is everyone so concerned with what free agent the Mets are going to sign (or trade for) to play second base?  Who should they sign? The answers, I think, should be ‘don’t be’ and ‘no one,’ respectively,  because they have Dilson Herrera back from a brief 2015 injury at AAA, who seems like a terrific option.  Yes, his 90 AB in 2015 with the Mets could have gone better, but his walk percentage was encouraging, and 90 AB is clearly a small sample size.  Herrera has a plus glove, a minor league career slash of .304/.369/.470, and put up .327/.382/.511 in 327 AB in AAA last season, sandwiched around his injury and his cup of coffee with the Mets.  He is also 21 years old, and basically costs nothing.  The speculation about trading for Brandon Phillips, who draws less walks than the average San Pedro De Marcoris  prospect (27 in 588 AB last year), and costs a mint ($14M, plus however else you would have to indulge him to waive his 10-5 rights), or Howie Kendrick, who would give them Murphy-like predictability, with a slight bump in defense, but who wants four years, also at a non-bargain price (he made $9.5M in 2015), and at age 32, seems panicky.  This is not to say that the Mets might not be willing to pay for a proven MLB second baseman, given their window of opportunity with their stud pitching staff, and there is an argument to be made that installing a gold glove shortstop at 2b (and as much as it pains me to admit it, Phillips’ glove has been stellar for many years (.991 2b fielding percentage or higher in all but 1 year since 2010)) would make their staff ever more fearsome, but given Herrera’s performance in the minors to date, I wouldn’t think that the Mets would want to block him for any significant period of time.
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Second: Wheeler, Zack.  Everyone loves the Wheeler.  We heard incessantly on sports radio last year what a huge blow to the Mets’ staff it was to lose Wheeler to TJ last year, and how they will get a significant boost to the rotation with his return this year (IMO, at the time of his injury, Wheeler was at best the Mets’ 5th best starter or starter prospect behind DeGrom, Harvey, Syndergaard, Colon and was probably considered behind Matz talent wise, but almost assuredly would have gotten the nod on experience if it came down to those two, though it looked like the Mets were (very reasonably) inclined to let Matz spend a little more time in Las Vegas.  Having Niese as your 5th starter instead of Wheeler is not a particularly devastating blow to a major league pitching staff, though Wheeler is generally considered to have upside, where Niese is considered to have capped out on his potential.  Remember how when it looked like he had been traded, he called the Mets and asked them to not trade him, because he really wanted to be a Met, and then all of a sudden, he still was!  Everyone liked that – it seemed so loyal (not at all like a 25 year old  would rather live in New York City instead of Slinger County, Wisconsin (which is actually supposed to have a really good school system))!  Did I miss the part of Wheeler’s career when he was really good?  I must have, since he seems robustly ‘meh’ to me.
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Really, don’t look it up yet – just see what your brain tells you.  What was Wheeler’s WHIP in 2014?  His career?  Actually, it’s higher than that.  His WHIP in 2014 was 1.327, and career is 1.339.  That’s not very good.  But surely, his minor league  WHIP was a lot better?  Well, no.  His WHIP in the minors IS better, but not by all that much, sitting at a serviceable, but not enticing, 1.275.   He issues walks like Nuke LaLoosh, with a minor league career average of 4BB/9IP, AND he is coming off TJ, which will sideline him essentially until the middle of his age 26 season, when, assuming his rehab goes swimmingly, we can reasonably look forward to him pitching at a 4th to 5th starter level, as he did prior to his injury.  And yet, everyone loves Zack Wheeler.
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My good friend Bran David Marshall loves to point out that he had a ’10 game stretch where he was very good’ in 2014; it was actually 13 games, from July 30 – September 7, where he gave up no more than 3 earned runs in a game, and that only once, which IS a pretty solid run.  Now, this stretch was against fairly dismal teams – including Atlanta twice (79 wins), Miami twice (73 wins), Philadelphia twice (73 wins), Cincinnati (76 wins), San Diego (77 wins), Chicago Cubs (73 wins) and Texas (67 wins) once each, and one each against Milwaukee (82), Oakland (88) and Washington (96) – though I suppose you can only beat the teams you play, and with the exception of the Nats, everyone in the division was awful.  Even during that successful string of games, however, his underlying numbers were pretty pedestrian:  in 81 innings, Wheeler gave up 72 hits and 35 walks, for a WHIP of 1.32, which would seem to indicate that Zack probably got a little lucky with his results, runs allowed wise, and that barring something clicking in his pitching brain (or in the brain of a tuned in pitching coach), it is not really reasonable to expect that sort of result on a consistent basis.
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I am not saying there isn’t potential with Wheeler.  He throws fire, over a strikeout per inning, career, and he has a clearly improvable area – cutting his walks in half makes him a very appealing property.  But saying cutting your walks in half would be a good thing, and actually cutting walks in half, which he has been unable to do at any minor league level, are two completely different matters.  It’s not like his walks spiked all of a sudden just before the arm injury – his walk rate has been steady and high all the way from A ball through the majors.  Obviously, the league seems to like his upside, though.  He was almost traded for Carlos Gomez last September (which seemed like a steal for the Mets to me, assuming Carlos’ hip doesn’t fall off), and he is generally seen as the key player in any Mets trade (I would suppose in part because he is the only Mets’ starter that they seem willing to part with that any other team is interested in).  Jim Bowden, in his trade article this morning, describing what the Rockies would get out of a CarGo-Wheeler/Nimmo trade, calls Wheeler “a top-of-the-rotation starter who profiles as the type of pitcher who could succeed at Coors Field.”  I mean, I guess that could be true, if the rotation you are speaking about is the Rockies’ awful array of starters, since Wheeler does historically limit HR effectively and had a 54% ground ball rate in 2014.  This gives me a little pause, since Bowden is generally considered to know what he is talking about, but sounds a lot more like the seller’s pitch Bowden would make if he were trying to peddle Wheeler to me.
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Is it possible that Wheeler fully recovers, takes the Tom Seaver method to heart and throws first pitch strikes, and becomes a #2 guy?  Sure.  Matt Harvey got a million times better when he cut his walk rate in half in 2013.  But given his history of shaky control, the uncertainty of TJ recovery and the fact that the Mets don’t really NEED even a good Zack Wheeler, I think the Mets are better off trading him away for a reasonable offensive bat, if they can find a cooperative partner, which to my surprise and puzzlement, there seem to be a number of.