Mets Past, Present & Future

By H. P. Rosenberg
Posted Wednesday, August 8, 2007

With the baseball sun starting to set on this season's trade deadline, the Mets decided to shore up second base, pushing aside a second baseman who was hitting .350, Ruben Gotay, and replacing him with ex-Marlin Luis Castillo, who'd won three Gold Gloves during his previous stay in the National League. The Mets made the trade despite some critics' assertions that Castillo has lost some gold in his glove.

He won his last Gold Glove in 2005.

A day after the trade was done, Baseball America reaffirmed Castillo's defensive skill, ranking him as the American League's best defensive second baseman. The rankings resulted from a poll of American League managers.

Why did the Twins trade a skilled defender hitting more than .300? According to startribune.com, the Web site of a Minneapolis-St. Paul newspaper, Twins' General Manager Terry Ryan "admitted he wasn't going to re-sign Castillo." The Twins also believe that Castillo's replacement, Alexi Casilla, has more speed and range. Casilla, like Castillo a native of the Dominican Republic, was hitting .269 for the Twins' Triple-A club. Casilla will share second base responsibilities with Nick Punto.

Castillo stayed with the Twins long enough to witness ex-Met Jason Tyner hit his first home run on July 21 in his 1,221st at-bat, a 352-foot drive that inched over the right field wall. Tyner last played for the Mets in 2000.

Castillo joined the Mets on an auspicious Tuesday night. Tom Glavine was on the mound, seeking his 300th win.

Castillo started slowly. In his first 16 at-bats he managed just two hits. However, in the two weekend games in the windy city, he went 6 for 9, including a 4 for 5 day on Sunday when Tom Glavine became the first pitcher to win 300 while wearing a Mets uniform.

Hopefully, Castillo will stay awhile. It's been six years since the Mets have had a second baseman who's played two full seasons in a row. Valentin was in the midst of his second season, which ended on July 20, when he fouled a pitch off his right leg, breaking his shin.

The last second baseman to play at least two seasons in a row was Edgardo Alfonso, who played the position from 1999-2001. In between Valentin and Alfonso, the Mets used Roberto Alomar (2002-2003), who was traded to the White Sox about midway through his second season for Royce Ring and two other players, Jose Reyes (2004), and Miguel Cairo (2005).

Whether Castillo mans the position for at least two seasons depends upon whether the Mets re-sign him after this one when he becomes a free agent.

Castillo wasn't the only member of the Mets whom Baseball America recognized this past week for his skill.

NL managers recognize six Mets

In Baseball America's annual ranking of the National League's best players, as chosen by National League managers, six Mets made the list:

• Paul Lo Duca was rated as the Best Hit-And-Run Artist.
• Billy Wagner won the honor of having the Best Fastball.
• Tom Glavine placed second in the Best Changeup category.
• David Wright finished third in the Best Defensive Third Baseman category.
• Carlos Beltran ranked second twice. In the Best Defensive Outfielder he lost out to Andruw Jones, and in the Best Outfield Arm category he came in second to another Brave, Jeff Francoeur.
• Jose Reyes was ranked #1 in five categories: Best Baserunner, Fastest Baserunner, Most Exciting Player, Best Defensive Shortstop, and Best Infield Arm.

The Mets' infield now includes three of the best fielding players in baseball. Too bad they couldn't trade for Mark Teixeira, who was rated as the American League's Best Defensive First Baseman.

Delgado doing it again

Carlos Delgado, at age 35, will never win a fielding award. However, during the first half of this season he hasn't hit well either. Fortunately, Delgado has a history of hitting better in the second half of the season.

The table below shows Delgado's batting averages over a five-year period both before and after the All-Star break.

Year Before After Difference (Source: espn.com)
2002 .244 .... .330 +86
2003 .313 .... .284 -29
2004 .223 .... .305 +82
2005 .288 .... .322 +34
2006 .252 .... .284 +32
2007 .242

In every year but 2003, Delgado hit better in the second half. (If anyone knows what happened in 2003, I'd appreciate it if you could let me know in Flushing U's Mets forum.)

On average, from 2002-2006 Delgado's batting average improved in the second half by 41 points. So he can be expected to hit about .283 (.242 + .041) in 2007's second half. As of August 6, he's exceeding that, batting .298 since the All-Star break, which is only seven points below his post-break average of .305 for the previous five seasons.

Even more encouraging is how his on-base percentage (OBP) has improved from the first to the second half.

Year Before After Difference (Source: espn.com)
2002 .377 .... .450 +73
2003 .424 .... .428 +4
2004 .325 .... .408 +83
2005 .385 .... .421 +36
2006 .344 .... .384 +50
2007 .305

OBP differs from batting average (BA) in that batting average is just hits divided by at-bats; whereas OBP divides a batter's hits, walks, and number of times he was hit by a pitch by the total number of times a batter came to the plate (the sum of his at-bats, walks, hit by pitches, and sacrifice flies), his "plate appearances."

Another member of the Mets organization, this one recently sent down to Triple-A, also is performing better.

New Zephyr reliever providing relief

In a game in which Jason Vargas unexpectedly rediscovered how to pitch, Joe Smith made his debut for the Zephyrs. It was Smith's first appearance since the Mets sent him down to Triple-A on July 26.

In a third of an inning Smith faced three batters, allowing a walk and a single. The single scored a run, but it was charged to Vargas. Besides the sole run, Vargas allowed only four hits in six innings after giving up 24 runs and 38 hits in his previous five starts.

In Smith's second outing on August 5, he had more success. He pitched the final inning of the Zephyrs 6-4 loss to Fresno. Smith faced three batters, walking one. The other two grounded out, one into a double play. It appears that his sinker's working again.

Though Smith's season-to-date stats with the Mets were decent (2-1, 3.03 ERA), in both June and July he was letting too many batters get on base. In June, he gave up 14 hits and seven walks in 7.1 innings and, in July, he yielded 16 hits and walks in 7.2 innings. In comparison, in April and May he gave up fewer hits/walks than innings pitched.

One cause in July might have been that Smith's sinker wasn't sinking as much. In April, May, and June his ground ball to fly ball ratio was 57 to 14, so more than 80% of those outs came on grounders; however, in July, only 64% of those outs came on grounders.

Several ex-Mets traded

Before the waiver-free trading deadline ended on July 31, several ex-Mets switched teams.

Royce Ring wasn't good enough for the Mets' bullpen, but he's good enough for the Braves, who on July 31 traded two pitchers to get Ring. The same day, the Braves also acquired ex-Met Octavio Dotel from Kansas City for right-handed pitcher Kyle Davies. Three days earlier, the Devil Rays and Astros swapped ex-Mets, Ty Wigginton going to the Astros for Dan Wheeler.

A Bit about Me

I started Sheepshead Bay H.S. in Brooklyn when Rico Petrocelli was finishing his high school career. If I remember correctly, he received a $60,000 bonus, an enormous number in that day but a trivial one in this era of overpaid ballplayers.

I went on to the Baruch School of Business when it was still City College's business school, majoring in statistics. Then, after teaching for awhile in Brooklyn, I left the borough, living in upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, writing for magazines and newspapers, but never straying far from the Mets.

Though I now live in the heart of the Phillies homeland, I'm still true to the team that returned National League baseball to the Big Apple after Walter O'Malley pulled the Bums out of Brooklyn and allowed Ebbets Field (a park I've been to) to be bulldozed into history without even leaving a marker to commemorate it.
 

H.P. Rosenberg, aka writerhoward, also writes about the Mets and their farm teams on his metbaseball blog.