The Mets Are Ignoring Their Huge Fifth Starter Problem

By ignoring the starting rotation, the Mets are exposing their greatest weakness.

Fresh off the heels of a 77-win season, the Mets have retooled their roster and look like they’re in-it-to-win-it in 2019. They’ve added a legitimate bat in Robinson Cano, added two elite bullpen arms with Edwin Diaz and Jeurys Familia, addressed one of their greatest weaknesses with Wilson Ramos (C), and added Jed Lowrie (2B/3B), Keon Broxton (CF) and J.D. Davis (UTIL).

The Mets might even have a trick remaining up their sleeve. The rumor mill has connected them to AJ Pollock as an option in center field to replace Juan Lagares, and most believe that they’ll bring in another reliever, perhaps someone to compete for the lefty specialist role with Luis Avilan.

However, when it comes to starting pitching, the rumor mill has been silent as a crypt. Not a peep. Not a rumor. Not even speculation in the media as to why the Mets should be involved there. This is a huge mistake for the 2019 team.

I like Jason Vargas. By all accounts he is a nice, articulate guy, and he’s had a great career. 99.999% of humanity would sign up for 92 major league wins, a World Series appearance, and over $60 million in career earnings. None of this is personal. But the Mets counting on him as their fifth starter is a huge mistake, one which could cost them their season.

(1) Vargas Was Below Replacement in 2018

Let’s start with the facts. The only reason Mets fans are not more upset about how bad Jason Vargas was last year is because Jason Vargas was missing most of the year.

Vargas pitched to a 5.77 ERA (5.02 FIP) last season in just 92 innings. And his season line is much friendlier than it could have been — he was the owner of an 8.75 ERA as late as August 7th before a late-season recovery.

But even in that late season recovery — which was, to his credit, against some contending teams — he averaged just five innings per start. Even in the best and hottest streak that Jason Vargas had last year, he was a five-and-dive pitcher.

(2) The Odds of Vargas Returning Value in 2019 Are Low

There’s no getting around the facts. Vargy is a 36 year old pitcher with an 86-ish mile per hour fastball. Among the 152 pitchers with at least 90 innings pitched in 2018, his fastball is the second slowest in the league (interestingly enough, another lefty with the Mariners, Wade LeBlanc, who was quite good last year, was last).

He also has a very poor track record of health over the last few years. Vargas had Tommy John surgery in 2015, and recovered to throw 12 innings at the end of 2016. He managed to toss 179 innings in 2017 (only the second time he eclipsed 150 innings since 2013) but flagged badly down the stretch, posting a 6.49 ERA from August 2nd to the end of the season.

If a pitcher was done — isn’t this exactly what it would look like?

I decided to take a look as Jason Vargas’s comparable pitchers, according to Baseball-Reference, to see how they did at age 36. The comps are: Joe Saunders, Steve Avery, Bobby Jones, Dennis Rasmussen, Wandy Rodriguez, Erik Hanson, Mike Leake, Derek Holland, Jim Deshaies, and Steve Trout.

Of those ten Baseball-Reference comps, two have not yet reached their age 36 season (Leake, Holland). Of the other eight, a whopping six of them retired before reaching their age 36 season. Only two of them pitched: Dennis Rasmussen, who pitched ten innings, and Wandy Rodriguez, who pitched 86.1 decent innings (4.90 ERA, 86 ERA+) and retired the next year.

I decided, in fairness, to make a more favorable cohort in an attempt to get an optimistic projection for Vargas. I searched for lefties with a total of 270 innings with a 4.70 ERA from age 34–35. Centered on Vargas, this list — which is friendly to Vargas, since he performed so well in 2017 — adds Bruce Hurst, Larry McWilliams, Mark Hendrickson and Chris Capuano.

In their age 36 season, these players averaged just 40.2 innings pitched, 7.52 ERA, 60 ERA+. The best one of the four, Mark Hendrickson, posted a 5.26 ERA (79 ERA+) in 75.1 innings.

For those of you who like graphics, here is Vargas compared to the five best players from the sample of the fifteen players above, Hurst, Capuano, McWilliams, Hendrickson, and Wandy:

Baseball is impossibly hard, and time remains undefeated.

(3) Good Teams Have Good, Or At Least Decent, Fifth Starters

People will often argue against concern about Vargas that “he’s a fifth starter, what do you expect?” This is a terrible argument, just on it’s face — the fifth starter is originally in line for 30 starts in a season, and those games count as much as any other — but it’s also not true that it doesn’t matter.

Here are the putative fifth starters for each of last year’s playoff teams: Red Sox, Nathan Eovaldi (3.33 ERA); Dodgers, Kenta Maeda (3.81 ERA) or Ross Stripling (3.02 ERA); Astros, Lance McCullers Jr. (3.86 ERA), Brewers, Freddy Peralta, Wade Miley, or Zach Davies; Yankees, Lance Lynn, JA Happ; Indians, Shane Bieber (4.55 ERA)… need I go on?

How about the fifth starters on good Mets teams? The 2015 Mets had a rotation of Colon, deGrom, Harvey, Niese, and a fifth starter named Noah Syndergaard. The 2016 team replaced Niese with Steven Matz. The 2006 team was not known for it’s pitching, but called John Maine their fifth starter. The 2000 team had four good starters in Hampton, Leiter, Rusch and Reed, while Bobby Jones was decent in the fifth slot (154.2 IP, 88 ERA+). I am belaboring the point.

(4) The Mets Have No Starting Pitching Depth Whatsoever

To make matters worse, the Mets have no depth beyond Jason Vargas, unless Seth Lugo is an option to step into the rotation (and if he is, he should be starting now).

I have been writing for years and years and years that you can’t have too much starting pitching. In fact, I wrote those exact words for MetsBlog back on September 19, 2014. Over the last fifteen years prior to 2015, the Mets used an average of 10.9 starting pitchers per year. Of those, 8.9 of those pitchers made 3 or more starts — showing that these were extended stays in the rotation rather than spot starts. As I wrote back then:

Take the 2007 Mets, who missed the playoffs by a single game. That year, the Mets scattered 10 starts between Brian Lawrence (6), Jason Vargas (2), David Williams (1) and Chan Ho Park (1). These four starting pitchers combined to give up 54 earned runs over 47.2 innings for 10.19 ERA and 4.2 innings per start.

The inclusion of Jason Vargas there is, I promise you, coincidental. The point is that even last year, where the Mets got a whopping 116 starts from their top four starters (deGrom, Thor, Wheeler, Matz), they still called upon Corey Oswalt to start 12 games, along with Lugo, Conlon, Blevins, Gagnon and Flexen. They won’t likely have similar health luck in 2019 with their starters.

Behind Vargas this year, the Mets have the same cast as last year, plus Hector Santiago and Walker Lockett.

Despite the above, the Mets decided to acquire player after player to shore up positions where they don’t have urgent needs (looking at you, Jeff McNeil) and their only remaining rumored interest is in AJ Pollock who would be replacing not one, but two, above replacement players in Juan Lagares and Keon Broxton. You may not love Lagares or Broxton — and I do love me some Lagares — but even in their pessimistic projections, they are worthy of being on major league rosters. Not to mention that the logjam in the infield means Michael Conforto or Brandon Nimmo might need to shift to center field.

Meanwhile, the Mets have a glaring, four-alarm weakness staring them in the face, ready to pitch every fifth day. Jason Vargas is in line to get exactly the same number of starts as Noah Syndergaard or Zack Wheeler, and that’s if everything goes right. More likely, Vargas and whoever is in line in the sixth and seventh starter spots will combine for north of 40 starts.

There is a chance that Vargas defies all of the trends and is effective and healthy in 2019. But are those odds higher than the odds that Lagares or Broxton puts together a decent, healthy campaign? Are those odds higher than the odds that Jeff McNeil, who hit .329 last year, is a bona-fide major leaguer who has no business being sixth on our infield depth chart?

I think we all know the answer to that.