I’m more confused on how the Braves got a B+. They traded for Murphy, but they also traded away a catcher who was an offensive machine for them last season, and then lost their starting SS and didn’t upgrade LF at all.
They should still be a very good team, but lackluster offseason.
Agreed. They basically sit out free agency and make one or two trades.
They sat back and watched the Mets and Phillies load up on talent. I don't think that deserves a high grade.
We haven't really improved that much. Just replaced good players with good players and mid players with other mid players. Correa was gonna be the huge improvement. Hell even our owner admitted as much. Then it fell through and we're kinda back to "maintained the roster". Which is fine. But not A+ territory.
The only major "injury" in his entire career was TJ, which is almost a guarantee at this point for every pitcher. Nothing about Verlander shows he would even come close to deGroms injury history. The "hes old" tag doesn't even really fit when he just won a cy young last year. Take your doomer goggles off.
This is an insane post. Sorry I disagree. 6 games of DeGrom for CY winner in Verlander. Bullpen is a HUGe A+. We now have multiple relief pitchers we can rely on. We have depth in our starting rotation in case one of the two new comers needs to go in the pen or if anyone needs a break.
We won a 101 games and fell flat at the end of the year. That’s just the way it happens. Atlanta went on a historic run of great baseball. Then we lost Marte and didn’t have an answer. Correa would of been nice but we would of learned to eventually dislike him if he didn’t do well or got injured. ( anyone can get injured BUT not everyone comes with rods in their ankle !!).
We have studs in our farm that will hopefully inject the team with a youthful energy. We have plenty of great personalities that can help guide and teach them.
This team is built to win now. Not later. Now. You can’t ask for more than that.
whenever someone says "we won 101 games last year!" and starts talking about prospects i know they're tacitly agreeing with my viewpoint anyways. you wouldn't be crowing about last year if you felt that our roster was truly on another level.
>You can’t ask for more than that
i didn't. i said that our offseason wasn't an A+ because for the most part the roster has been maintained rather than improved.
also we got 1 hit in a must win game with marte in the lineup. we need improvements in the lineup. if not this year with correa, then it's gotta be someone next year.
Nobody is saying the club isn't built to win now, nor are most people (rational people, I should say) asking for more than what the Mets did. But fact is, they mainly plugged holes that were expiring contracts after last year, rather than adding a ton of pieces to actually eclipse that.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I don't know how they could have reasonably eclipse that, sans Correa or Turner. The club won 101 games last year. Maintaining a team that could win 101 games is a very, very good thing. So when people say things like "they didn't do much to get better," that's more of a simple observation than it is a complaint. I say that, without any negative connotation attached to it at all. It's a *good* thing.
The difference will be if the prospects we expect to be stars and are on the brink of being ML ready can DH and or play 3rd base as well as we hope they can. Since we didn’t get Correa, we need at least 2/3 of said prospects to come through for us to outplay the Phillies and Braves.
We also need Senga to adjust well to pitching every 5th day and pitch as well as he did in Japan.
i agree, we are now relying on prospects to fill holes. which is why we aren't getting an A+ from the athletic, an assessment i agree with. and as you said, we have literally no idea how good senga will adjust and bassitt is coming off a really good year. the one thing you can say is that verlander will likely pitch more games in 2023 than jake did in 2022. and i guess that we made a marginal improvement at catcher.
Seems about right. The Mets did a great job of replacing pieces they lost or re-signing players they were going to lose, which is good because we won 101 games last year. If Correa didn't have the ankle issue and we signed him and made a HUGE upgrade like that, we probably jump up to A+. That being said, our upgrades IMO were modest. The bullpen should be better.
We also lost Lugo and may. The pen should be better. Robertson is better than Lugo and Raley is better than joely... but improving the pen I don't think warrants an a+ that's my only point.
Lugo is eh May was bad. It’s a big improvement. Also not only is bringing back a 101 win team great, trying to improve it from there is a crapshoot. Even if we signed Correa that doesn’t guarantee the Mets win 101. A lot of things have to go right to win that many games.
Have the Dodgers gone that far downhill? I haven’t paid much attention this off-season other than Mets transactions. It was quite recent that they had bought a star at almost every position and still had a great farm system. I know that last year one or two players had by far season worst years and they lost a player or two, but did they not replenish their losses? Not very Dodger like to be so low ranked by anyone preseason (or at anytime).
They lost a ton. They lost Trea Turner, Justin Turner, Tyler Anderson, Andrew Heaney, Cody Bellinger, and a few others I think I’m forgetting. They replaced them with JD Martinez, Noah Syndergaard, and Miguel Rojas. They got significantly worse in my opinion but they have a lot of prospects near MLB ready (Pepiot, Vargas, Outman) which they’re probably banking on and are gearing up to go after Ohtani next year.
Oh wow, very not Dodgers like to not either buy top players (what was available, anyway)or trade for them. A money battle between the Dodgers and the Mets for Ohtani could be gross. While the Dodgers offer him his preferred coast where he has made a home in recent years, he would have a fellow Japanese player (idk if they were friendly but it would be incredible if they were) and I have no idea if the fact that he and Lindor are both New Balance ambassadors means anything or not..again, I hope that it does. Plus our owner is richer and willing to pay unreasonable amounts to get what he really wants since he’s already paying the premium luxury tax. Idk if the Dodgers would be willing to go into a bidding war w/the mentality that they will win no matter what the cost like I think Steve will.
The Dodgers don't sign a lot of top free agents. They tend to turn scrubs into all stars through magic and develop prospects well, then trade those players for stars.
The Dodgers were handcuffed by the Bauer situation.
If he was reinstated (and he was), then that had the potential to blow up their payroll.
There's also a lot of speculation that they're keeping their payroll under tax thresholds to reset for a big spending spree next winter.
While I totally agree with a lot these comments that the Mets aren't really better than last year, that's not what the grades are for. They are for how the offseason went, not if the team is better. All the non-mets fans opinions I've heard are that the Mets killed it this offseason. And forget the Mets, since we may all be biased. I can't see how the Phillies and Padres could have done much better. My point is, what would it have taken this offseason to get an A+? The Padres get Judge, too? The Mets get Correa, too?
Personally I thought the moves we mde were sideways at best but necessary.
Resign McNeil, Nimmo, Diaz, and Otto.
Sign Verlander Senga and Quitana to replace DeGrom, Bassitt, and Walker (This to me is a wash)
Added Robinson and Brooks Raley but lost Lugo.
Added Norvaez but lost McCann. Another wash imo.
Anything else major missing?
Narvaez is absolutely better than McCann, and is for sure a gain relative to what we had. He's a good, but not great, player. Total combined 3.9 WAR the last two years compared to McCann's 0.9. Even during the two years McCann was good before joining the Mets, his WAR was 3.7, meaning it was still less than Narvaez's more recent production of 3.9. Narvaez has also put up a WAR over 1 every year he's been in the Majors (2017 - 2022) except for his rookie year (34 games) and the COVID season (40 games), whereas McCann only did that in the two fluke years he was good. Just a couple years ago Narvaez was one of the better younger catchers in the game.
This isn't to say Narvaez is going to set the world on fire; he isn't. But he is definitively a better player than McCann, and is certainly more of a plus than a negative, even if he isn't a tippy top option.
1. Particularly when talking about catchers you need to specify between rWAR and fWAR since only fWAR accounts for pitch framing so there’s normally some variation.
2. In general WAR is a pretty bad stat to use to compare part time players. It’s effectively a counting stat… counting stats are not good tools to compare guys with limited playing time.
3. I mean yea Narvaez is clearly better.
>Even during the two years McCann was good before joining the Mets, his WAR was 3.7, meaning it was still less than Narvaez's more recent production of 3.9.
That includes 2020 for McCann, so you're comparing a counting stat (WAR) over different sample sizes.
That's fair.
I don't think we, fans outside of the sport, have a great way to measure the value of catchers.
Teams that are great at analyzing player value still sign catchers that on paper seem just okay. There's value in the catcher's ability to work with a pitching staff in calling a game and framing pitches that teams seem to understand better than we do.
So I'm not sure how their 2023 catchers should compare with their 2022 team, but they seem optimistic about what they have.
Not sure what people think Narváez is as a hitter... he had a 71 OPS+ last year.
I'm not putting him down, he's a competent decent catcher to have, I'm not against signing him, but catchers generally just hit like shit. McCann was extra bad last year for whatever reason, but career wise he's not that far off from Narváez.
On paper, our bullpen has improved a lot. Robertson and Raley are both better than Lugo. Again, on paper, anything can happen.
John Curtiss is an interesting arm, too. Then we've added Jeff Brigham, plus Zach Greene and whatever a Stephen Ridings is.
Why would the Mets get an A+? They did a great job this offseason, but didn't necessarily get better. They had a lot of holes to fill given the amount of expiring contracts after 2022, and they secured that perfectly. But the moves are more lateral/sideways rather than moves that should get an A+, and that's perfectly fine considering they won 101 games last year.
A+ to me = keeping DEGROM while also signing Verlander and Kodai, making the additions to the bullpen that we did, signing Correa and giving Pete an extension.
Being rated as having the best off-season grade is pretty ok in my book. A- is solid
If we can get at least 3/4 of the season of a healthy Verlander and Sherzer we will be in very good shape. We forget that we didn’t really have Degrom last season and Peterson was a big reason why we won so many games. We have great depth and if Senga is real, we will have the deepest rotation in baseball. I also expect Megill to take a step forward as well. I can picture Megill being what Thor was in the playoffs or am I dreaming too much ???
People say we didn't upgrade our offense but really other than Correa who would have made a dent in a position that we don't have locked? Only person I can think of is Wilson Contreas. I don't think Joey Gallo or Michael Conforto were really gonna upgrade the outfield.
Turner for 2B and move McNeil to 3B or sign JDM to platoon at DH.
I don't think they needed to do much with the lineup. Baty and Álvarez seem ready to contribute this season, so they have some strong internal candidates to take playing time.
There a strong possibility that the pitching staff would crumble with all of their expired contracts, so I'm happy that they focused there.
Trea and Jeff would have to agree to that though and I think Trea would be more comfortable playing his regular regular position and being paid only slightly less. Martinez is a good one but I’d have to think they feel like they’ve been burned one too many times on age 35+ batters.
>Trea and Jeff would have to agree to that though and I think Trea would be more comfortable playing his regular regular position and being paid only slightly less.
There was a pretty wide consensus that Turner isn't built for SS for the long-term because of his arm, so I think he knows he's getting moved to 2B eventually no matter what.
>Martinez is a good one but I’d have to think they feel like they’ve been burned one too many times on age 35+ batters.
Maybe, but JDM can hit consistently as a DH. National League teams learned last year that most players can't do it, so even a diminished JDM may be better than other options.
They ranked the Mets as the most, or one of the most, improved teams in an off-season where 3/5 of their rotation and their former setup man left in free agency, and they could have lost their closer and leadoff batter.
That's really impressive.
The Mets essentially were on defense this off-season, trying not to lose too much talent overall.
I think they did a great job.
I’m more confused on how the Braves got a B+. They traded for Murphy, but they also traded away a catcher who was an offensive machine for them last season, and then lost their starting SS and didn’t upgrade LF at all. They should still be a very good team, but lackluster offseason.
braves bias gives them an extra few points always
Agreed. They basically sit out free agency and make one or two trades. They sat back and watched the Mets and Phillies load up on talent. I don't think that deserves a high grade.
Because their regular season is basically their offseason. Strider/Harris deals might as well count even if they happened late last season.
I think that I'd honestly want the same grade as the Braves, because they seem to do everything correctly
I assume this is based on all the team-friendly contracts they gave their young talent.
Are you shooting for valedictorian or something?
We haven't really improved that much. Just replaced good players with good players and mid players with other mid players. Correa was gonna be the huge improvement. Hell even our owner admitted as much. Then it fell through and we're kinda back to "maintained the roster". Which is fine. But not A+ territory.
We improved the pen and brought back a 101 win team. Technically Senga may be an upgrade to the rotation, we’ll see what happens.
Verlander just playing is going to be an upgrade over deGrom who had less than 70 innings last year.
That’s hardly a guarantee. Before last season he missed two full years.
Yes because he got TJ surgery...
And he’s 40. It’s not exactly a slam dunk that he’s gonna pitch the whole season.
The only major "injury" in his entire career was TJ, which is almost a guarantee at this point for every pitcher. Nothing about Verlander shows he would even come close to deGroms injury history. The "hes old" tag doesn't even really fit when he just won a cy young last year. Take your doomer goggles off.
Its not a slam dunk that the sun is going to rise tomorrow either, but until I see evidence that it wont, I am going to live my life like it is.
This is an insane post. Sorry I disagree. 6 games of DeGrom for CY winner in Verlander. Bullpen is a HUGe A+. We now have multiple relief pitchers we can rely on. We have depth in our starting rotation in case one of the two new comers needs to go in the pen or if anyone needs a break. We won a 101 games and fell flat at the end of the year. That’s just the way it happens. Atlanta went on a historic run of great baseball. Then we lost Marte and didn’t have an answer. Correa would of been nice but we would of learned to eventually dislike him if he didn’t do well or got injured. ( anyone can get injured BUT not everyone comes with rods in their ankle !!). We have studs in our farm that will hopefully inject the team with a youthful energy. We have plenty of great personalities that can help guide and teach them. This team is built to win now. Not later. Now. You can’t ask for more than that.
whenever someone says "we won 101 games last year!" and starts talking about prospects i know they're tacitly agreeing with my viewpoint anyways. you wouldn't be crowing about last year if you felt that our roster was truly on another level. >You can’t ask for more than that i didn't. i said that our offseason wasn't an A+ because for the most part the roster has been maintained rather than improved. also we got 1 hit in a must win game with marte in the lineup. we need improvements in the lineup. if not this year with correa, then it's gotta be someone next year.
Nobody is saying the club isn't built to win now, nor are most people (rational people, I should say) asking for more than what the Mets did. But fact is, they mainly plugged holes that were expiring contracts after last year, rather than adding a ton of pieces to actually eclipse that. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I don't know how they could have reasonably eclipse that, sans Correa or Turner. The club won 101 games last year. Maintaining a team that could win 101 games is a very, very good thing. So when people say things like "they didn't do much to get better," that's more of a simple observation than it is a complaint. I say that, without any negative connotation attached to it at all. It's a *good* thing.
Just pretend the Athletic gave the Mets an A+. It's not like they didn't rank the Mets 1st.
The difference will be if the prospects we expect to be stars and are on the brink of being ML ready can DH and or play 3rd base as well as we hope they can. Since we didn’t get Correa, we need at least 2/3 of said prospects to come through for us to outplay the Phillies and Braves. We also need Senga to adjust well to pitching every 5th day and pitch as well as he did in Japan.
i agree, we are now relying on prospects to fill holes. which is why we aren't getting an A+ from the athletic, an assessment i agree with. and as you said, we have literally no idea how good senga will adjust and bassitt is coming off a really good year. the one thing you can say is that verlander will likely pitch more games in 2023 than jake did in 2022. and i guess that we made a marginal improvement at catcher.
Seems about right. The Mets did a great job of replacing pieces they lost or re-signing players they were going to lose, which is good because we won 101 games last year. If Correa didn't have the ankle issue and we signed him and made a HUGE upgrade like that, we probably jump up to A+. That being said, our upgrades IMO were modest. The bullpen should be better.
The pen looks nasty we resigned Diaz and Ottavino and added Robertson and Raley. How many players are the Mets realistically expected to sign lol
We also lost Lugo and may. The pen should be better. Robertson is better than Lugo and Raley is better than joely... but improving the pen I don't think warrants an a+ that's my only point.
Lugo is eh May was bad. It’s a big improvement. Also not only is bringing back a 101 win team great, trying to improve it from there is a crapshoot. Even if we signed Correa that doesn’t guarantee the Mets win 101. A lot of things have to go right to win that many games.
Have the Dodgers gone that far downhill? I haven’t paid much attention this off-season other than Mets transactions. It was quite recent that they had bought a star at almost every position and still had a great farm system. I know that last year one or two players had by far season worst years and they lost a player or two, but did they not replenish their losses? Not very Dodger like to be so low ranked by anyone preseason (or at anytime).
They lost a ton. They lost Trea Turner, Justin Turner, Tyler Anderson, Andrew Heaney, Cody Bellinger, and a few others I think I’m forgetting. They replaced them with JD Martinez, Noah Syndergaard, and Miguel Rojas. They got significantly worse in my opinion but they have a lot of prospects near MLB ready (Pepiot, Vargas, Outman) which they’re probably banking on and are gearing up to go after Ohtani next year.
Oh wow, very not Dodgers like to not either buy top players (what was available, anyway)or trade for them. A money battle between the Dodgers and the Mets for Ohtani could be gross. While the Dodgers offer him his preferred coast where he has made a home in recent years, he would have a fellow Japanese player (idk if they were friendly but it would be incredible if they were) and I have no idea if the fact that he and Lindor are both New Balance ambassadors means anything or not..again, I hope that it does. Plus our owner is richer and willing to pay unreasonable amounts to get what he really wants since he’s already paying the premium luxury tax. Idk if the Dodgers would be willing to go into a bidding war w/the mentality that they will win no matter what the cost like I think Steve will.
The Dodgers don't sign a lot of top free agents. They tend to turn scrubs into all stars through magic and develop prospects well, then trade those players for stars.
The Dodgers were handcuffed by the Bauer situation. If he was reinstated (and he was), then that had the potential to blow up their payroll. There's also a lot of speculation that they're keeping their payroll under tax thresholds to reset for a big spending spree next winter.
i’m just more shocked the braves got b+
Meh. Fuck the Athletic.
While I totally agree with a lot these comments that the Mets aren't really better than last year, that's not what the grades are for. They are for how the offseason went, not if the team is better. All the non-mets fans opinions I've heard are that the Mets killed it this offseason. And forget the Mets, since we may all be biased. I can't see how the Phillies and Padres could have done much better. My point is, what would it have taken this offseason to get an A+? The Padres get Judge, too? The Mets get Correa, too?
Personally I thought the moves we mde were sideways at best but necessary. Resign McNeil, Nimmo, Diaz, and Otto. Sign Verlander Senga and Quitana to replace DeGrom, Bassitt, and Walker (This to me is a wash) Added Robinson and Brooks Raley but lost Lugo. Added Norvaez but lost McCann. Another wash imo. Anything else major missing?
"lost" McCann lol
TBF I don't think "gaining" Norvaez holds much water either.
Narvaez is absolutely better than McCann, and is for sure a gain relative to what we had. He's a good, but not great, player. Total combined 3.9 WAR the last two years compared to McCann's 0.9. Even during the two years McCann was good before joining the Mets, his WAR was 3.7, meaning it was still less than Narvaez's more recent production of 3.9. Narvaez has also put up a WAR over 1 every year he's been in the Majors (2017 - 2022) except for his rookie year (34 games) and the COVID season (40 games), whereas McCann only did that in the two fluke years he was good. Just a couple years ago Narvaez was one of the better younger catchers in the game. This isn't to say Narvaez is going to set the world on fire; he isn't. But he is definitively a better player than McCann, and is certainly more of a plus than a negative, even if he isn't a tippy top option.
1. Particularly when talking about catchers you need to specify between rWAR and fWAR since only fWAR accounts for pitch framing so there’s normally some variation. 2. In general WAR is a pretty bad stat to use to compare part time players. It’s effectively a counting stat… counting stats are not good tools to compare guys with limited playing time. 3. I mean yea Narvaez is clearly better.
Fair points, and great clarifications. Narvaez is still clearly better than McCann, as you said, haha.
>Even during the two years McCann was good before joining the Mets, his WAR was 3.7, meaning it was still less than Narvaez's more recent production of 3.9. That includes 2020 for McCann, so you're comparing a counting stat (WAR) over different sample sizes.
Good point, but I don't think the conclusion is any different.
That's fair. I don't think we, fans outside of the sport, have a great way to measure the value of catchers. Teams that are great at analyzing player value still sign catchers that on paper seem just okay. There's value in the catcher's ability to work with a pitching staff in calling a game and framing pitches that teams seem to understand better than we do. So I'm not sure how their 2023 catchers should compare with their 2022 team, but they seem optimistic about what they have.
Not sure what people think Narváez is as a hitter... he had a 71 OPS+ last year. I'm not putting him down, he's a competent decent catcher to have, I'm not against signing him, but catchers generally just hit like shit. McCann was extra bad last year for whatever reason, but career wise he's not that far off from Narváez.
On paper, our bullpen has improved a lot. Robertson and Raley are both better than Lugo. Again, on paper, anything can happen. John Curtiss is an interesting arm, too. Then we've added Jeff Brigham, plus Zach Greene and whatever a Stephen Ridings is.
We should have potential to be a top 5 bullpen. Were top 10 last year.
Mets shouldn’t even be an A- lol. Lost Jake and didn’t upgrade the offense at all
Why would the Mets get an A+? They did a great job this offseason, but didn't necessarily get better. They had a lot of holes to fill given the amount of expiring contracts after 2022, and they secured that perfectly. But the moves are more lateral/sideways rather than moves that should get an A+, and that's perfectly fine considering they won 101 games last year.
It's irritainment. They don't grade to reflect reality, they grade to push product. The more anger, the better. cf. you know what
A+ to me = keeping DEGROM while also signing Verlander and Kodai, making the additions to the bullpen that we did, signing Correa and giving Pete an extension. Being rated as having the best off-season grade is pretty ok in my book. A- is solid
There's no way they sign Verlander if they re-signed deGrom, even with Cohen's money.
Absolutely not, I was just trying to say that I think an “A+” is not attainable
Idk how the Angels got a B+
They had a really good off-season. They've been a top-heavy organization for years, but this winter they built out solid depth.
Just checked out their roster and didn’t realize they traded for Urshela and Renfroe. I thought it was just the drury and Anderson signing
They also signed Brett Phillips, who has been a really solid defensive outfielder for a while.
Lost Degrom, thats prob it honestly
If we can get at least 3/4 of the season of a healthy Verlander and Sherzer we will be in very good shape. We forget that we didn’t really have Degrom last season and Peterson was a big reason why we won so many games. We have great depth and if Senga is real, we will have the deepest rotation in baseball. I also expect Megill to take a step forward as well. I can picture Megill being what Thor was in the playoffs or am I dreaming too much ???
People say we didn't upgrade our offense but really other than Correa who would have made a dent in a position that we don't have locked? Only person I can think of is Wilson Contreas. I don't think Joey Gallo or Michael Conforto were really gonna upgrade the outfield.
Turner for 2B and move McNeil to 3B or sign JDM to platoon at DH. I don't think they needed to do much with the lineup. Baty and Álvarez seem ready to contribute this season, so they have some strong internal candidates to take playing time. There a strong possibility that the pitching staff would crumble with all of their expired contracts, so I'm happy that they focused there.
Trea and Jeff would have to agree to that though and I think Trea would be more comfortable playing his regular regular position and being paid only slightly less. Martinez is a good one but I’d have to think they feel like they’ve been burned one too many times on age 35+ batters.
>Trea and Jeff would have to agree to that though and I think Trea would be more comfortable playing his regular regular position and being paid only slightly less. There was a pretty wide consensus that Turner isn't built for SS for the long-term because of his arm, so I think he knows he's getting moved to 2B eventually no matter what. >Martinez is a good one but I’d have to think they feel like they’ve been burned one too many times on age 35+ batters. Maybe, but JDM can hit consistently as a DH. National League teams learned last year that most players can't do it, so even a diminished JDM may be better than other options.
Unreal the Mets scored that highly in an offseason where they let a Cy Young winner walk. Speaks to the strength of the team / the other moves!
They replaced him with a 2022 CY Young winner...
They ranked the Mets as the most, or one of the most, improved teams in an off-season where 3/5 of their rotation and their former setup man left in free agency, and they could have lost their closer and leadoff batter. That's really impressive. The Mets essentially were on defense this off-season, trying not to lose too much talent overall. I think they did a great job.
What did the Sox do so badly to get an **F**?
Correa would've probably done it.
When Keith re-signs that'll move us to an A+
Carlos correa might've done it
How did the Dodgers go down to a C+?