Now we start the difficult part of the our preview journey. In the first two parts, all four players played a good deal of time last year with the Mets and project to start again this season. In this part, all three catchers we had last year are no longer with the team, so we need to go through the stats differently. First we will set up the “2012 Mets Catcher” to compare stats by taking the stats of Thole, Nickeas and Shoppach. Then we will look at MLB. and PECOTA for projections for d’Arnaud, Buck.
The 2012 Mets Catcher.
In 2012 the Mets had one catcher with pop, one catcher who would sometimes hit, and one catcher who was the butt of all jokes.
Thole: .234 BA, 1 HR, 15 2B, 24 R, 0 SB
Nickeas: .174 BA, 1 HR, 3 2B, 8 R, 0 SB
Shoppach: .203 BA, 3 HR, 2 2B, 7 R, 0 SB
2012 Total: 5 HR, 20 2B, 39 R, 0 SB
It wasn’t until I calculated those numbers above that I realized our catching situation last year was so bad.
Our first catcher this year will be John Buck who hit .192 last season with 12 homers, 15 doubles, 29 runs and 0 SB’s.
Last year PECOTA thought that Buck would hit .233 with 18 homers, 24 doubles, 62 runs and 1 stolen base.
This year PECOTA thinks that Buck will hit .225 with 9 homers, 11 doubles, with 27 runs and no stolen bases. MLB.com thinks Buck will hit .223 with 14 homers and 38 runs, also no stolen bases.
Our second catcher will hopefully see a lot of playing time this year, Travis d’Arnaud. PECOTA thinks d’Arnaud will hit .243 in his rookie season with 13 homers and 16 doubles while scoring 38 runs and not stealing any bases. MLB.com thinks d’Arnaud will hit .282 with 6 homers while stealing two bases and 33 runs. Interestingly huge difference between homers and batting average between the two projections.
Running Score Card:
Now we can look at the offense of the entire infield:
2012: 65 HR, 311 R, 153 2B, 29 SB
2013 PECOTA: 86 HR, 341 R, 150 2B, with 33 SB
2013 MLB.com: 80 HR, 353 R, 33 SB
Right now the numbers look like they are going up, this will probably change drastically after the OF.
