Here are some of the numbers that got deGrom where he is. We’ll get warmed up with some counting stats:

835: the number of batters deGrom faced
203: the number of batters to reach base
269: the number of batters to strike out
48: the number of runs that crossed the plate (41 earned)
10: the number of batters to hit a home run

Well, that sounds pretty good. But okay, let’s crank it up a notch with some advanced stats and see if it holds up:

2.09: the smallest Deserved Run Average for a starter since 2015
8.04: his WARP, the best mark in baseball by almost a half-win margin
1.99: runs allowed per 9 innings, fewest in baseball and over a half-run better than his runner-up, Max Scherzer
2.36: deGrom’s ERA for June, his worst month

That seems kind of incredible. But, okay, how did he handle pressure?

.170/.221/.256: cleanup hitters’ slashline against deGrom
.135/.195/.209: batters’ slashline against deGrom with men in scoring position
.110/.170/.139: batters’ slashline against deGrom in high-leverage situations
.120/.120/.160: batters’ slashline against deGrom after his hundredth pitch
.000/.000/.000: batters’ slashline against deGrom with the bases loaded

What more can you say? deGrom crushed batters with a quiet fierceness not seen since Clayton Kershaw’s peak. His historically poor luck battled with his historically good run prevention and deGrom emerged victorious. Watch out, National League East, there’s a new king in town.

The Veteran: Doug Melvin

The only remaining candidate with prior experience as a GM, Melvin spent long stretches with the Yankees, Orioles and Rangers before landing with the Brewers. The 66-year-old was endorsed by Bud Selig as “a baseball man,” answering the question of whether one could be any vaguer with praise than Terry Collins.

The team likely views the longtime exec as the safe choice, viewing his GM experience, which saw mixed results, as a potential weapon in rebuilding the struggling franchise. While he’s not known for an analytical approach, a feature that likely appeals to the elder Wilpon, Melvin has a reputation for bridging divides and encouraging collaboration, something essential given how many different voices the Mets have in the front office right now.

The Rookie: Chaim Bloom

Just 35 years old, Bloom made his way through the Rays organization from intern to Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations. His work in transactions and scouting is likely appealing to the Mets, who were less than happy with Alderson’s results in that regard in recent years.

Bloom also took a hand in developing the franchise’s organizational philosophies and player development, two areas the Mets currently struggle with. He’s got a reputation for being very sharp and open to analytics, and is a strong bet to shake things up and try new and creative approaches wherever he eventually ends up. That’s a pretty exciting proposition for a team in a serious rut, but it’s hard to imagine the team taking a real chance.

The Wild Card: Brodie Van Wagenen

Van Wagenen’s presence on this list is fairly surprising given that his primary qualification seems to be that the Mets really want his client, Jacob deGrom, to stick around for cheap. The longtime sports agent has seen a lot of success, representing stars like Robinson Cano and Tim Tebow, as well as a number of Mets including Yoenis Cespedes, Brandon Nimmo and Justin Dunn.

With the amount of wheeling and dealing Van Wagenen has done with the team, it’s safe to assume they have a pretty good sense of his skill set and general philosophy about baseball, but it’s hard to imagine a candidate with less available information about how he would operate in this radically different role. Does he value analytics? Maybe. What about the international market? Perhaps. Organizational philosophy? He’s got one somewhere. Probably.

The Verdict

All of the smart money should be on Melvin, no question. Fred Wilpon loves his “old school” mentality and he’s an open book when it comes to how he would run a team. The Mets are risk-averse to a fault and Melvin is the perfect candidate to give them the cover of experience without having to take on any new ideas.

This utter lack of imagination is all the more frustrating given that Bloom is a rising start in baseball operations and a team as dysfunctional as the Mets should be champing at the bit to bring him on board before he realizes what he’s gotten himself into. The Rays haven’t seen bountiful success in the time he’s been with them, but what they’ve done with such limited resources is remarkable and any team laser-focused on the bottom line would be lucky to have him. Is there a chance he blows up? Sure, but it’s nothing compared to the strong likelihood that Melvin will fizzle.

As for Van Wagenen, he’s such a closed book, it’s hard to say what his odds are of scoring the job, or why it is that he has outlasted more predictable candidates like Kim Ng. Could the Mets be sweetening him up for friendlier contract negotiations with deGrom? Is it wildly cynical to even be considering that possibility? Yes and yes.

So, congratulations to Doug Melvin in advance for winning the 2022 “Getting Slammed on His Way Out the Door” award.

Photo credit: Charles LeClaire – USA Today Sports

It’s only in retrospect, as we witness the end of a career that at the time appeared to be just at the beginning of a decline, that the figure of David Wright looms larger than ever, and his role in that run truly stands out.

Just two weeks into the 2015 season, Wright went on the disabled list for, of all things, a pulled hamstring. Whether that minor injury report was a cover or just the canary in the coal mine, what was expected to be a short stint exploded a month later as the team announced a much more dire diagnosis: spinal stenosis, a degenerative condition characterized by a narrowing of the spinal canal, which eventually led to a cascade of pain and immobility in his back and neck.

With that announcement, the premature end of Wright’s career was a near certainty, but just how premature was still unknown. He rested and rehabbed and occasional, optimistic notes appeared in the team’s injury updates, but would he ever step foot on a field again? And if he did, would it really be him?

Wright answered that question resoundingly when he stepped up to bat on Aug. 24 at Citizens Bank Park, a stadium he’d always thrived in. If there was any doubt that Mets fans were witnessing a magical season, it was silenced as he rocketed a home run deep into the left field corner.

It was simply perfect. A perfectly Wright-like moment done in a perfectly Wright-like way, to his favorite spot in his favorite park. He was back, there was no mistaking it.

2015, the oasis of joy in a dreary decade-plus of Mets mediocrity, would never have been the same without Wright. He put up a solid line that season and while his play in the postseason wasn’t especially good, it wasn’t really a factor given (a) how good everyone else was before the World Series and (b) how bad everyone else was during the World Series. But his smiling face, hardly seeming to have aged a day from the cigar-chomping 23-year-old who celebrated the playoffs nine years earlier, was an indelible image of those heady days.

Wright more than anyone deserved to be there. He earned it with the months of painful recovery, the miserable years of playing hard while surrounded by borderline major leaguers, the constant energy and love poured into his teammates and fans. He gave everything he had so that we could watch him take the Phillies deep his first at bat back, so we could cheer with him through three glorious champagne-soaked clinchers. If it was a just world, there would have been a fourth that year. And if it was a really just world, I wouldn’t be writing this post for another five years.

Thank you, David, for making us all believe in 2015. Thank you for being our captain, in every sense.

Photo credit: Bill Streicher – USA Today Sports

That’s right, Zack Wheeler is a top candidate for Comeback Player of the Year. Who did you think I meant?

To say Wheeler’s breakout in 2018 was unexpected would be an understatement. After missing two full years due to a long Tommy John recovery, he struggled significantly in 2017, putting up an ERA over 5 before being shut down in July with a stress fracture.

Wheeler’s performance was so concerning to the Mets that he didn’t even earn a spot on the big league roster out of spring training; only a lingering injury to Jason Vargas opened a spot for him, but once it did, Wheeler was determined to make it stick. Early struggles raised eyebrows, but on the back of improved velocity and a brand new splitter, he busted out in June and hasn’t looked back.

Wheeler finished his season, a little early due to innings restrictions, with a 3.31 ERA, a 1.12 WHIP, and 4.7 WARP, all career-bests. Not only did he return from a series of arm injuries that could have easily ended his career, he’s done it while launching himself into an elite tier of starting pitchers. He has the second lowest ERA of any pitcher in the second half, lower even than Cy Young favorite Jacob deGrom.

If there’s anything the Comeback Player of the Year voters love, it’s triumphant Tommy John returns. Former Met Matt Harvey picked it up back in 2015 with an ace-level season after his own UCL replacement and Greg Holland got the nod in 2017 with the league lead in saves.

Competition for Wheeler on the pitching side of this award (one award is given per league, with pitchers accounting for 64% of National League recipients) is thin this year, as Anibal Sanchez and Patrick Corbin have emerged as the most prominent names taking big steps forward in performance between 2017 and 2018.

Notably, both of these pitchers have been fairly healthy in recent years, not missing the kind of time that tends to garner attention. If the voters want to really lean into that, Johnny Venters would be quite a pick, putting up a 3.06 ERA this year after having not thrown a major league pitch since 2012 and undergoing his second and third career Tommy John surgeries in the interim. His limited time on the mound is probably the biggest knock against him, but it would be hard to argue against recognition of his truly unique achievement in coming back at all.

On the hitting side, there aren’t any standout competitors. The Matt Kemp rejuvenation narrative is somewhat undermined by statistical similarities between his two seasons and breakout years from Christian Yelich and Javier Baez are more about young players coming into their own than a return from injury or underperformance.

Regardless of whether Wheeler walks away with the Comeback Player of the Year trophy, his achievements this season should not be overlooked. He went from an injury-ridden former top prospect riding a bus through the Pacific Coast League to a dominant five-pitch starter who has never looked better. It’s a good time to be Zack Wheeler.

Photo credit: Brett Davis – USA TODAY Sports

The record books are not exactly stacked with success stories of first basemen who put up a sub-.700 OPS across their first 282 plate appearances and the smart money is not on Smith exploding into a star, or even an average regular. But recently, Smith has made a strong argument that he’s worth a shot in an otherwise lost season for the Mets.

After being demoted in July with a .183/.216/.324 slash line, there were serious doubts that Smith would be back this season at all, let alone see any meaningful playing time. Sure enough, he received only scattered opportunities upon returning in August, but he quietly produced with the limited plate appearances he received and has suddenly found himself starting nearly every game for the past two weeks. And he has taken that chance and run with it.

Since his promotion at the end of August, Smith has put up a .333/.360/.833 line with six extra-base hits across 10 games heading into Thursday’s doubleheader. He’s also demonstrating, for the first time as a major leaguer, the smooth, natural fielding capability he showed in the minors. Simply put, he looks comfortable and confident and the numbers bear it out. He’s making extremely hard contact and while his strikeout rate is up, his profile would benefit from that trade off if it brings the kind of power he’s showing right now.

That’s not to say he is a 1.193 OPS player for the long term, or even that he’s out of the woods — or anywhere close. They may be 25 impressive plate appearances, but it’s still just 25 plate appearances and Smith has a long way to go before overcoming the poor projections warranted by the brutal start to his career.

For better or worse, though, the Mets have nothing to lose by putting Smith out there every day until the end of the season, but everything to gain. He’s not blocking anyone or hurting the team’s playoff odds. Jay Bruce will have ample playing time in the outfield, both this year and next (presuming the Mets can end their mystifying love affair with Austin Jackson), and doesn’t need to prove himself with extra reps at first base. Alonso would have been a perfectly justified choice to fill that spot down the stretch, but that ship has sailed and he will (editor’s note: hopefully) have his chance next season.

Smith may not ultimately be A Guy, but right now, he’s looking an awful lot like one and the Mets have to do whatever they can to keep him in there to find out what he has. Whether his future is as trade bait or a shot at a job with the Mets next year, this kind of consistent playing time is his only chance, however slim, at regaining the value he had just one year ago.

Photo credit: Andy Marlin – USA Today Sports

Giancarlo Stanton – 2017 National League MVP

The towering slugger had come tantalizingly close to an MVP award previously, finishing in second behind Clayton Kershaw in 2014 on the back of a NL-leading 37 homers. But he struggled to stay on the field over the following seasons and his reputation as one of the best bats in baseball took a hit.

But another home run title, this time with an incredible best-in-baseball 59 shots, brought him the hardware in 2017. And amazingly, he picked up that MVP, often tied even more tightly to team results than the Cy Young, while playing for the ho-hum Marlins, who went 77-85 and finished 20 games back in the division.

Essentially the anti-Mets, the 2017 Marlins brought the offense big time, with Stanton leading the way, but completely flopped when it came to pitching. The MVP voters of that year recognized that one monster bat couldn’t counter an endless supply of Tom Koehlers and Vance Worleys and gave him the nod. Will the inverse hold true for Jacob and his uninspiring supporting cast?

Felix Hernandez – 2010 American League Cy Young

If there is any indication that the Era of the Pitcher Win is on its way out, look no further than the 13-12 record of Felix Hernandez, the lowest winning percentage of any Cy Young season by a starting pitcher. Still, King Felix had plenty of impressive qualifications, including a 2.27 ERA that was the best of his career to that point and the best in baseball.

Herndandez’s achievement of even just 13 wins is remarkable given what he had to work with – a 61-101 Mariners team that makes both the 2017 Marlins and the 2018 Mets look like World Series contenders. He and his fellow pitchers, including a still-peaking Cliff Lee, were an intimidating bunch, but the bats were beyond brutal, quite literally one of the worst DH-backed offenses of all time.

Hernandez still brought some totals to the table that appeal to the old school types, most notably a whopping 249.2 innings pitched. Max Scherzer’s lead over deGrom in that regard is seen as a potential deal-breaker, but the margin between them is narrower than you’d think, with deGrom having thrown one fewer start thus far. The voters do love volume, and one more gem could give deGrom that edge.

Bryce Harper – 2015 National League MVP

Bryce Harper is the kind of player who is just an MVP season waiting to happen, young and well-rounded and gifted with a bevy of talented teammates. Putting up a 4-digit OPS is a strong case for the award, but it’s hardly a given if your 83-win team falls embarrassingly, frustratingly short of what was supposed to be an easy postseason shot, capped with public fisticuffs between you and your closer.

The 2015 Nationals’ on-field failures and off-field drama weren’t the only team-based handicap to Harper’s MVP pickup, though. If there’s an analogous stat to pitcher’s wins for batters, an old-school, gritty, knows-how-to-win gold standard for Stepping Up When It Counts, it’s definitely runs batted in.

Unfortunately for Bryce Harper, he found himself on a team where the second best hitter was Yunel Escobar and there was no third best at all, so even with a positively-nutty .460 on base percentage, he couldn’t quite get over that 100-RBI hump, unlike fellow finalist Paul Goldschmidt, who notched 110 that season.

But in the end, the voters saw a remarkable individual achievement, not unlike a 1.68 ERA, and deemed it worthy. deGrom is hoping they’re feeling equally open-minded this year.

Photo credit: Patrick Gorski – USA Today Sports

It wasn’t all doom and gloom for Conforto early. He buttressed an anemic .216 batting average with a career-high 15.3% walk rate to keep his on base percentage at .344 through the All-Star break. His plate discipline overall was remarkably similar to that of prior years, including his superlative 2017, and his keen eye meant he wasn’t exactly a black hole in a lineup that had plenty to compare to. But still, he was decidedly not the Michael Conforto of olde.

If the pedestrian home run pace wasn’t enough of a giveaway, the batted balls told an ugly story. His 33.5% hard hit rate in the first half was the lowest of his career by a significant margin and his 43.3% ground ball rate was the highest. A classic pull-power hitter like Conforto has no business hitting the ball on the ground and fielding shifts ate it up for months, at the expense of his batting average and probably his sanity.

Unsurprisingly, this was a recipe for some ugly power numbers, the kind that raise questions about the long-term impact of an arm literally tearing out of the socket. Eleven home runs in the first half isn’t terrible, but well off Conforto’s career pace and he wasn’t exactly lacing doubles to make up for it. His .150 isolated slugging represented both a career low and a legitimate concern that his reconstructed shoulder might never be strong enough to hit for above-average power.

Whether he was gradually healing over time (a theory supported by upticks in his hard-hit rate going back to the end of June and also by the organization’s history with handling injuries) or he just needed some time off, Conforto has been busting out big time since returning from the All-Star break. His slash line in that time is a sizzling .316/.409/.570 – remarkably similar to his 2017 performance. And while a .931 OPS over four weeks may seem ripe for regression, there are plenty of peripherals that point to legitimate improvements in his strength and timing.

Even if the .380 BABIP might not hold up, the Mets don’t need him to be a .300 hitter; they need him to be a potent slugger and therein lie the most positive developments yet. His hard hit rate in the second half is an astonishing 51.9%, an elite mark even assuming some regression. He’s pulling the ball almost half the time and instead of poking weak grounders straight at the second baseman, he’s rocketing them to – or beyond – the outfield.

Conforto’s rediscovered success isn’t changing his patient approach at the plate either. Sure, you’d like to see that 25% strike out rate drop, but that’s been a part of his game since his debut and it’s not going anywhere. He’s seen his walk rate climb every year and while his second half 12.5% represents a slight drop off from the 15.3% that helped keep his head above water in the first half, it’s a figure to be proud of, one that demonstrates his capacity to be an all-around elite hitter.

As the 2018 season heads into the home stretch, Conforto and the Mets can rest a little easier with the knowledge that reports of the star outfielder’s demise were greatly exaggerated.

Photo credit: Brad Penner – USA Today Sports

You may be thinking “Gosh, this must be the worst season ever!” But if you’re a Mets fan, you probably have a sneaking suspicion that you’ve seen ineptitude like this before. In fact, there have amazingly been 55 different Mets player seasons worth less WARP than Reyes’s 2018 (and Doug Flynn has four of them!). But when we dig down to just the very worst, the “elite” true incompetence on both sides of the ball, some familiar faces rise to the top, much like inedible gristle in a delicious, simmering stew.

Bobby Bonilla – 1999

Did you know the Mets are still paying Bobby Bonilla? True story!

While the memories of Bobby Bo’s second stint with the Mets are long outlived by his deferred contract payments, it’s hard to fault anyone for repressing the details of his presence in an otherwise enjoyable season. Indeed, if it weren’t for a deep playoff run featuring many franchise favorites, we might still be talking about how unbelievably bad Bonilla was, because it’s worse even than the legend really communicates.

Well past his prime, Bonilla returned to the Mets sporting a career .295 TAv, quite solid for his era. He was a pretty poor defender overall, but he could hit! But that year, he scraped out just four home runs en route to a .204 TAv and paired it with poor-even-for-him defense that landed him a -0.75 WARP in just 141 plate appearances. He had pushed for more playing time (sound familiar?) and can you imagine what those numbers would look like if he had gotten it? The sky’s the limit.

Rey Ordonez – 2000

The slick-fielding Ordonez holds a special place in Mets fans’ hearts. The Bringer of Web Gems carried errorless streaks that elevated him to mythical status and made the late 90’s teams that much more fun to watch. But like all mythological figures, the reality is a little less fun.

Ordonez has been a frequent comp for Juan Lagares, whose dominant play in the outfield has never been matched by his anemic bat. But even in Lagares’ worst offensive season, his TAv topped Ordonez’s career mark by 20 points. Ordonez’s best comp? Probably a pitcher. Or 2018 Jose Reyes.

But 2000 was the year that he rapidly became a zero tool player. Even before a season-ending injury, he had lost a step or five in the field and really had nothing else to bring to the table. His sub-Mendoza batting average and an almost unimaginable .038 isolated slugging gave him a .184 TAv, leading to a nice and tidy -1.00 WARP in just a third of a season.

Jeremy Reed – 2009

The 2009 Mets offer a bounty of mediocrities, underperformers and downright failures, but the unappreciated leader of the pack was Jeremy Reed. A minor piece of the brutal blockbuster trade that landed the Mets an injured J.J. Putz and one of their many spelling variants of Sean Green, it’s hard to imagine a mere fifth outfielder topping that pair in disappointment, but Reed was up to the challenge.

Thrust by injuries into an agonizing 177 plate appearances, Reed’s .209 TAv was bad even by his own mediocre standards and his middling outfield play turned out to be a treat in comparison to his short and brutal stint at first base. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t hit and he couldn’t field. A perfect recipe for a -0.80 WARP and the perfect representative for the 2009 Mets.

Honorable Mention: Doug Flynn

In the interest of full disclosure, I had never made note of the name Doug Flynn before I set out on this journey to boost Jose Reyes’s ego. It sounded familiar, of course, but I never fully appreciated his importance in Mets history. He holds the distinction of having put up a negative WARP in four of his five seasons with the Mets, including both the worst and second-worst in team history. Those -2.95 and -2.3 WARP seasons (1979 and 1977, respectively) really make you wonder if that whole “nine players in a lineup” thing is a rule or more of a guideline. Where could the Mets possibly have found such an all-around atrocious player? In the Tom Seaver trade, of course.

Photo credit: Adam Hunger – USA Today Sports

The team surprised most fans and commentators by cutting Ruben Tejada in the middle of Spring Training. This is likely a financial decision–they now pay Tejada just $500,000 instead of his full salary of $3 million–but it has a significant impact on the shape of the infield depth and how the Mets can weather a medium- to long-term injury. Tejada has never been a great player–he’s barely ever been a good one–but his 1.9 WARP in 2015 puts him damn near close to league-average, with just 407 at bats.  He’s obviously no long-term third baseman, but if Wright goes down, that leaves an average-sized hole in an otherwise deep roster.

The most likely candidate to take over the hot corner is Wilmer Flores. There has been buzz about Neil Walker being moved over and Flores slotting in at second base, but Walker logged barely 100 innings in that spot–with the most recent stint coming back in 2010–so Flores has an edge in both experience and in general defensive ability.

With Flores locked in at either position and Ruben Tejada now wearing Cardinals red, the Mets are suddenly in need of a backup shortstop. Assuming (and hoping) the team doesn’t consider Eric Campbell’s 22 professional innings at shortstop to be sufficient qualifications for the role, they will turn to the last shortstop standing on the 40-man roster, Matt Reynolds, to round out the Wrightless 25-man roster.

So what does this infielder merry-go-round mean when it comes down to wins and losses? PECOTA has the team pegged at a 90-win season with Wright logging 2.5 WARP over 531 plate appearances. In this model, Flores gets 420 plate appearances (172 at third base) with 1.6 WARP and Reynolds gets 114 and barely cracks replacement level at 0.1 WARP.

Let’s try another perspective. Assume Wright misses half the season instead–for comparison’s sake, he missed 124 games in 2015–and around 250 of those plate appearances have to be covered elsewhere. His projected WARP then drops to 1.3. If Flores adds roughly 110 plate appearances to his total, with another 110 being diverted from the “super sub” role he’s currently filling, this adds 0.4 WARP to his season. The last 30 PA would likely be covered by Eric Campbell, who is close enough to replacement level that the change to his WARP is basically negligible. As Matt Reynolds is also essentially replacement level, his filling in those 110 plate appearances Flores is not getting as a backup doesn’t add a meaningful amount to his WARP either.

When we crunch the numbers, starting from a 90-win season and subtracting 1.2 wins with Wright’s extended absence and adding 0.4 from Flores, it costs the Mets around one win and leaves them with a projected 89-win season. Not a terrible impact on paper, but as any Mets fan knows, one game can be the difference between bliss and agony. Moreover, PECOTA pegs Washington at 87 wins, so as it is, the Mets hold the narrowest projected lead in the National League. This is where the loss of Tejada really shows up, as he could easily add 0.5 WARP over Reynolds which is significant in a race this tight.

There are major implications for the team across the entire range of outcomes for Wright. Missing nearly the whole season could easily cost them two full wins. If Asdrubal Cabrera also misses time, forcing Reynolds or Campbell into a starting role, then we start to get into wacky “What about Amed Rosario” territory and there ain’t no math for that one. On the other hand, if he stays on the field for his projected 531 plate appearances and performs at the same level he did last year, he could add a win or even two over current projections.

Allowing for a range of 89 to 92 wins is a big difference for one player–especially for one who isn’t projected to put up especially high numbers–and there’s no doubt that swing could completely redefine the Mets season. 92 wins is champagne time; 89 wins is nail-biting time. And with Wright traveling in uncharted territory in regards to spinal stenosis treatment following a unique exercise and rest regimen designed for him by his neurosurgeon Dr. Robert Watkins, neither the best minds nor the fastest processors can say where he’ll be come September. Or, for that matter, October.

Photo Credit: Peter Aiken-USA TODAY SPORTS