I tried to find a fun, funny way to title this article, because the truth hurts. Mets first baseman Lucas Duda is out indefinitely with a fracture in his back, and though you may not be a huge fan of his 2016 offensive performance, it seems clear that having Lucas Duda is good and not having Lucas Duda is bad. The Mets called up Ty Kelly from Triple-A Las Vegas to replace Duda on the active roster; while Kelly has hit well this season and it is nice to see him make the bigs, he’s not a solid big-league regular. Between David Wright and Lucas Duda, I think we need to find a way to outlaw back injuries.
Wilmer Flores is on the comeback trail from his own injury, and Eric Campbell exists … but without squinting you can see that the Mets could use a different, better replacement for their erstwhile giant of a first baseman. (One would have to expect that Flores and Campbell will be pressed into duty at third base as well. Also, they aren’t particularly good.) There’s Marc Krauss at Triple-A, maybe Brandon Nimmo could get some reps? It just seems too easy to turn my eyes to the other parts of the MLB landscape and start looking for external options. And some of those options, like El Paso Chihuahuas first baseman James Loney, are looking back.
Loney started the previous offseason as one of the highest-paid players on the AL East favorite Tampa Bay Rays. He ended the offseason as a late cut and the Padres’ Triple-A depth, a dramatic dip from the last decade as a roughly-average first baseman. Never possessed of big power, Loney earned his spot at the cold corner through well-above-average contact ability (.285 career batting average with a .338 OBP) and a terrific defensive reputation. And while those aren’t exactly two things that scream “first-division first baseman” they were good enough to help him rack up 6.2 WARP over his career.
(This is important too: for the record, BP’s Fielding Runs Above Average that provides the defensive component of WARP cares little for Loney’s glove. Independent talent evaluators think differently, and the Rays have been advocates for solid defensive first-sackers.)
The problem with Loney is the future, not the past. Coming into 2016, BP’s PECOTA projection system marked him as worth -0.5 WARP over 600 plate appearances. And even if I did love a guy irrationally–I don’t, and I’ve been down on Loney multiple times in the past–I’m enough of an objective analyst to resist advocating for a below-replacement player in a big-league lineup. Unless there’s a really great reason, that is.
Here are my reasons; you tell me if they’re great.
The Soup Has Gone Bad
Eric Campbell has yet to prove that he’s a competent big-league hitter, and as has been noted many times in the past, Terry Collins is likely to play him in situations where another established big-league regular isn’t standing in his way. Campbell has posted a .247 True Average so far this season, and that’s no different from his career mark over 476 plate appearances. It’s possible to look at his exit velocity and hard-hit numbers and squint and see a breakout candidate, but it hasn’t happened yet. At 29 years old, it may never happen. PECOTA projects Soup for a .267 True Average this season, and if he’s doing that as an indifferently-talented first baseman, that’s bad enough to warrant an upgrade of almost any kind. Right?
Well … maybe. James Loney’s current True Average for this season is .255, but that’s entirely in Triple-A. That’s moderately inexcusable. You can make all the arguments you want about his performance improving in the more comfortable confines of a big-league stadium, but he still just projects for that .254 True Average in the big leagues, and he’s effectively under-performing that right now in the minors.
Campbell and the soon-to-return Wilmer Flores are not good hitters. But neither is James Loney, and the offensive difference between those players is not large. There would have to be another mitigating factor in order to prioritize a new acquisition, not matter how much you may be tired of Campbell’s presence in the lineup.
The Mets Need Defensive Help
Here’s an interesting argument I’d like to make: is it possible that James Loney’s defense is more valuable to the Mets than it is to other teams? Coming into the season, the combination of David Wright, Neil Walker, and Asdrubal Cabrera may have been a lower-tier defensive combination. While Cabrera has looked good in several looks, he’s still no Andrelton Simmons. But both Walker and Wright have been injured, and Wright’s throws to first base have gotten sketchier and sketchier.
The Mets are 23rd in baseball in Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency, a metric that determines how many balls in play are turned into outs compared to the league and adjusted for stadium. Hardly a perfect metric, PADE is one way of showing that the Mets are a poor defensive squad, turning hits into outs about 1.5% of the time less than average. The Mets are also a relatively high-groundball team, with approximately 47 percent of balls in play as rollers. I know, I know–when you think of the Mets, you’re supposed to think of all the whiffs, but the team is putting it on the floor, and those outs are becoming increasingly necessary as strikeout rates dip.
Adding Loney as a defense-first corner player to help with the team’s overall defensive ability could be a good thing … but perhaps Loney is no longer that elite defensive first baseman. Defense is hard to gauge and hard to predict, but Loney could also be trending in the wrong direction. FRAA says he’ll be worth five or six runs in the red this season as a defender, which may be a bit on the negative side. But two other defensive metrics–Defensive Runs Saved and Ultimate Zone Rating–show a declining skillset for Loney’s leather. Over the last couple of seasons, Loney has rated as a negative defender by these metrics, after years of being at least above-average. In a situation where Loney’s glove might be the one saving grace, it has to actually save runs, and the current data shows that perhaps those days are gone.
I’ve gotta be honest–when I started writing this article, it was fully expecting to advocate on behalf of the team bringing Loney in. That’s strange for me, as I’ve probably been the low man on the James Loney totem pole for the last several years. But as much as I’m against regular playing time for Eric Campbell, as much as I’d love the team’s run prevention to improve … I just think the team’s best overall value probably comes from rolling with someone like Campbell or Ty Kelly or Wilmer Flores rather than James Loney. He simply does not appear to add enough value to make it worth acquiring him, spending the money, using up a 40-man roster spot. If he’s going to be replacement-level–maybe worse–well, the Mets already have a couple of those options in-house. They don’t need another.
The fact that the Mets could be–should be?–considering Loney as an option at all is a little dark. Teams that are so close to the top of an entire league should not be surfing Triple-A looking for a replacement for a middle-of-the-order hitter. But it’s probably important to remember that the Mets are already a pretty impressive offensive team, perhaps even without Duda and Wright. With Cespedes and Conforto anchoring the lineup, perhaps it would behoove the team to make a move to upgrade the defense rather than looking for your traditional first base banger.
But even if they do go that route, Loney’s probably not the Mets’ best option. They’ll need to pay more to acquire an actual first base upgrade other than the former Dodgers star(?), but at least that would be an upgrade.
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