It was Wednesday night. The New York Mets were playing at home against the San Diego Padres. Wilmer Flores, the Mets’ shortstop, was coming up to the plate in the bottom of the seventh inning. And something unusual happened. The crowd stood up and applauded.
If you don’t follow baseball, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: players don’t generally get applauded when they step up to bat. However, this was no usual scenario. Through the magic of Twitter, the majority of fans at the game had found out that Flores had been traded to the Milwaukee Brewers as part of a deal for the outfielder Carlos Gomez.
Flores proceeded to ground out, then got another ovation as he walked to the dugout. He took the field in the top of the eighth, his red and puffy eyes revealing his distressed emotional state as he wiped the tears out of his eyes with his glove. He was eventually taken out of the game, and that was that.
Immediately after I had learned about the trade, I started to write this very article about how the Mets were now contenders in the National League. But then, not two hours after the game ended and in a fashion that befits the ever-disappointing Mets, it was announced the trade would not go through due to injury complications of the ostensibly healthy Gomez. Angrily, I deleted everything I had written and started a new article about how the Mets had let down their fans yet again.
It was only fitting that on Friday afternoon, the Mets announced that they had finalized another trade, this time with the Detroit Tigers for outfielder Yoenis Cespedes. After waiting the now-obligatory amount of time until I was sure that this trade was official, I recommenced my article about how, dare I say it, the Mets might actually contend for a World Series title.
Mets fans under 30 years old, in case you don’t know what that means, you somehow have the chance to be the best team in baseball. I know, I can’t believe it either. But it’s true. For the first time since 1986, the Mets might actually win the World Series. Although, if we’re being honest, it was really the Red Sox who lost that series more than the Mets winning it. Just ask Bill Buckner.
But this year can be different. For one thing, the Mets already have one of the best starting rotations in baseball. Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, and Steven Matz would more than likely make up a playoff rotation for the Mets, who are 32-22 in games started by those pitchers for a .593 winning percentage. This percentage is higher than any team in the National League except for the Cardinals, and would be the third highest in all of baseball. As a whole, their starting rotation has the sixth-best ERA in baseball, as well as the sixth-best FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching, a statistic used to estimate what a pitcher’s ERA should be without luck involved). Plus, their pitchers can do this:
Then there’s the Mets’ defense, which has been another strong point for the team this year. According to Fangraphs, the Mets have the seventh-best defense in baseball and the fourth-best in the National League. And that was before they acquired Cespedes from the Tigers, who, evidently, is pretty good on defense. If you take the Mets’ previous defensive value in left field and replace it with Cespedes’, they become the third-best defensive team and the best in the National League. Going by UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating), another commonly used defensive statistic, the Mets would actually be second best in all of baseball. If you don’t believe the impact Cespedes can provide, just check out this throw:
If you haven’t been following the Mets all year, you’re probably thinking, “If the Mets have such great pitchers and defenders, why are they performing so badly?” And if you have been following the Mets all year, you would hang your head in shame and answer, “Because they can’t hit.” And then you’d put a bag over you head and show them this, which shows that the Mets are currently worst in baseball in three commonly cited hitting statistics: batting average, OPS (On-base percentage Plus Slugging percentage), and wOBA (weighted On-Base Average, an all-encompassing statistic used in sabermetrics).
The silver lining here is that there’s nowhere to go but up. And that seems to be where the Mets are heading. The new acquisition, Cespedes, has a .354 wOBA this season, better than all but one Mets player this year. That one player happens to be catcher Travis d’Arnoud, who has only played 20 games this season and just returned from the disabled list on July 31. Third on the Mets in terms of wOBA is David Wright, who has only played in eight games this year and should be returning from the disabled list sometime in the coming weeks. With these three additions, the Mets should go from being the worst offensive team in baseball to an average one. Coupled with elite pitching and defense, an average offense might be all it takes for the Mets to win that elusive World Series.
The Mets, clearly, are in a great position to succeed this year. Even if the statistics don’t persuade you, perhaps this will. Wilmer Flores, the man who was almost traded, and who cried at the thought of leaving the team that signed him, hit a walk-off home run Friday night after the trade deadline had passed to give the Mets the win in the 12th inning. If that doesn’t show it’s meant to be, I don’t know what does.
