It’s almost time for baseball.
After an eventful offseason, the Mets have arrived in Port St. Lucie to prep for the upcoming season. There hasn’t been this much excitement around this team in years. The club made several splashy offseason additions, including adding three-time Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander, standout Japanese right-hander Kodai Senga, All-Star catcher Omar Narvaez and a handful of solid bullpen additions, like David Robertson and Brooks Raley. They also brought back closer Edwin Diaz and homegrown outfielder Brandon Nimmo.
New rules are being implemented across the league this spring and several teams — the Mets included — are preparing to lose some of their best players to the World Baseball Classic. The Mets will have to deal with those two obstacles like every other team, but in the confines of Clover Field, the club has a few more pressing issues.
The Mets might have had the best offseason of any team, but no one wins the World Series in February. The work begins Wednesday when pitchers and catchers report to camp and kicks into gear Feb. 20 when the club holds its first full-squad workout.
Here are five storylines to watch as camp opens up this week.
The Mets don’t want to rush their two best prospects and there is no need to, with Narvaez and Tomas Nido behind the plate through 2024 at least, and Eduardo Escobar at third base next season. Still, there is some curiosity as to whether or not the two are ready to produce at the Big League level right now.
The two will see a ton of playing time in spring with so many players leaving for the WBC so they’ll get a chance to show what they can do against Major League pitching. But the club wants to make sure they’re defensively sound before handing over the catching duties to Alvarez and the full-time third base job to Baty.
Alvarez has been working with catching coordinator Glenn Sherlock in Port St. Lucie and Baty worked with former shortstop Troy Tulowitzki on his defense over the winter. He’ll also get time at third base with David Wright this spring.
They will have every opportunity to make the team out of camp, but starting them in the minor leagues this season might not be a bad thing.
Darin Ruf was acquired at the trade deadline last season to hit left-handed pitching. It was not the best acquisition made by Eppler since Ruf struggled right away. He hit just .152 with a .413 OPS in 28 games with the Mets. A late-season neck injury had his status on the playoff roster in doubt, but the club opted to use him and Alvarez in the NL Wild Card series.
His spring at-bats will be heavily scrutinized. The Mets can also use Tommy Pham at DH and there are still some discussions about using Alvarez as a DH against lefties if Ruf doesn’t put up numbers this spring.
The club chose not to acquire a true power bat this winter and we’ll find out soon if they need to look for one during the season or not.
Eppler said he wanted a group of high-leverage relievers and for the most part, the entire group has experience pitching in high-leverage situations. The Mets can line up Robertson, Drew Smith and Diaz for innings seven, eight and nine. Joey Lucchesi could be the long man, but the Mets do have Tylor Megill and David Peterson capable of going long as well.
There is a group of unproven relievers behind them vying for one or two spots in the bullpen that consists of Rule 5 pickup Zach Greene, his former teammate in the Yankees system, Stephen Ridings, and right-hander Jeff Brigham. More experienced arms like right-hander Elieser Hernandez and left-hander Sam Coonrod are also vying for spots.
Most of them have options, which allows for some flexibility throughout the season.
Starting pitching injuries have been a recurring theme with the Mets in recent years. Last year, Jacob deGrom failed to make it out of spring training healthy and Max Scherzer had some problems with his hamstring in spring training, though he was able to pitch in the first series of the season.
The rotation is pretty set with Scherzer, Verlander, Senga, Jose Quintana and Carlos Carrasco, but whether or not all five will make it out of spring and out of the WBC healthy is a whole other story.
Former assistant general manager Bryn Alderson, the son of outgoing team president Sandy Alderson, left the team last week. Alderson was the club’s director of pro scouting after having worked his way up from assistant director and pro scout. Alderson’s departure came days after Carlos Beltran joined the organization as a special assistant to Eppler.
It’s unclear if the two moves are related, however, Eppler has made some personnel changes this winter in an effort to bring in some of his preferred people. The organization doesn’t have a lot of former players in the executive offices and manager Buck Showalter plans to lean heavily on Beltran’s knowledge and experience.
A search for Alderson’s replacement remains ongoing. The former GM announced his intention to leave his role in September and the club is focusing on hiring someone to focus on driving the growth of revenue for the role.
()
