A great fourth outfielder is one of those things that a team may see as a “nice-to-have” piece, but hardly a necessity. After all, how often do you see a team make a big splash with a fourth outfielder signing or big trade? Of course, this very thing happened probably twice this offseason. The Chicago Cubs shocked baseball by signing Dexter Fowler away from the Orioles at the last minute, bringing him back to a team that already shelled out big money for Jason Heyward and had Kyle Schwarber and Jorge Soler on hand. And, as you may have heard, the Mets had a complete outfield of Curtis Granderson, Juan Lagares, and Michael Conforto before shocking baseball and re-signing Yoenis Cespedes to a three-year one-year deal.
As a result, the Mets have a new, old starting center fielder and cleanup hitter–and Juan Lagares becomes a fairly-expensive fourth outfielder. It’s almost funny. Lagares was a questionable center fielder who needed his bat to play up to handle a corner as a prospect, but in his 2013 and 2014 seasons, he was a plus defensive center fielder with just enough bat to matter. After posting 2.4 and 3.4 WARP in those two years, the Mets shelled out a four-year, $40 million contract just to watch Juan’s defense (-1.0 FRAA) and offense (.245 True Average) nosedive on the way to the World Series. He dealt with injuries, sure, but it was poor performance that has pushed him into a short-side platoon and late-game-defensive replacement role.
Despite that iffy 2015, Lagares is now something of a luxury item for the NL East’s most recent champions: a very good fourth outfielder. After all, he’d be the second- or third-best outfielder on several teams–perhaps the best overall on the Phillies or Brantley-free Indians! At the same time, we should probably consider just how much of a luxury it really is to have Lagares in the fold. To do that, we can quickly look back at the Mets’ “fourth outfielders” from the last decade.
Here’re the Mets five most-used outfielders (in terms of innings played in the outfield) from the last decade. I’ve marked with an asterisk the players who I thought were “supposed to be” starters at the outset of the season.
| Year | 1st OF | Innings | 2nd OF | Innings | 3rd OF | Innings | 4th OF | Innings | 5th OF | Innings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Curtis Granderson* | 1291.7 | Juan Lagares* | 1003.7 | Michael Cuddyer* | 606.7 | Yoenis Cespedes | 469 | Michael Conforto | 389.7 |
| 2014 | Curtis Granderson* | 1328.3 | Juan Lagares* | 945 | Eric Young Jr.* | 580.3 | Chris Young | 580 | Matt den Dekker | 360 |
| 2013 | Marlon Byrd* | 953 | Juan Lagares | 904 | Eric Young Jr. | 793.3 | Lucas Duda* | 494 | Mike Baxter | 268.7 |
| 2012 | Andres Torres* | 904.7 | Lucas Duda* | 846.3 | Scott Hairston | 772.7 | Kirk Nieuwenhuis | 613.7 | Jason Bay* | 457.3 |
| 2011 | Jason Bay* | 1053.3 | Angel Pagan* | 1045 | Carlos Beltran* | 790.3 | Jason Pridie | 464.3 | Lucas Duda | 364.3 |
| 2010 | Angel Pagan* | 1256.3 | Jeff Francoeur | 982 | Jason Bay* | 820.7 | Carlos Beltran* | 517.7 | Jesus Feliciano | 218.3 |
| 2009 | Angel Pagan | 697 | Carlos Beltran* | 676 | Jeff Francoeur | 637.3 | Ryan Church* | 518 | Gary Sheffield | 502 |
| 2008 | Carlos Beltran* | 1407.3 | Ryan Church* | 724 | Endy Chavez | 635.7 | Fernando Tatis | 576.7 | Daniel Murphy | 249 |
| 2007 | Carlos Beltran* | 1240.3 | Shawn Green* | 919.7 | Moises Alou* | 703 | Lastings Milledge | 418 | Endy Chavez | 353 |
| 2006 | Carlos Beltran* | 1184 | Endy Chavez | 814.3 | Cliff Floyd* | 768.3 | Xavier Nady* | 620.7 | Lastings Milledge | 399.3 |
Last year, the Mets opened the season with Lagares, Michael Cuddyer, and Curtis Granderson as the team’s designated starting outfield, and they got the most playing time over the course of the season. But the team’s “fourth outfielder” wound up being Yoenis Cespedes, a move that wasn’t exactly in the cards before the season began. He fits a pattern, though … each of the Mets’ fourth most-used outfielders over the past played between 464 and 621 innings per season, or roughly somewhere between a third and a half a season worth of playing time.
My biggest takeaway here is that in only four of the past 10 seasons did the Mets’ three intended starting outfielders all play the most innings in the outfield. According to this small sample, there’s about a 60 percent chance that one of the team’s three regulars this season (Cespedes, Granderson, or Conforto), won’t earn the most innings among the guys on the grass. Sometimes this can be due to ineffectiveness–though that seems unlikely with that crowd–but just as likely is either a middling or catastrophic injury that limits playing time. I mentioned Kyle Schwarber at the beginning of this piece … how smart do the Cubs look for acquiring Fowler now that Schwarber is due to miss all of 2016 with ligament tears in his knee?
It’s a great thing that the Mets have a young, talented fourth outfielder in Juan Lagares. Even if he weren’t pseudo-platooning with Conforto and the designated defensive replacement for Cespedes late in games, we should still expect him to get significant playing time. Mets fourth outfielders have a history of playing often, and this is the type of necessary depth that helps separate real contending teams (the Cubs, perhaps) from the ones who endure massive injuries and then flounder (the Diamondbacks, perhaps). Fourth outfielders matter more than I initially thought.
Photo Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports