Wink wink

[Fman99]

SNY via Andy Martino reporting Jesse Winker signing to be a Met for 2025.

Love it

[Benjamin Grimm]

Good news!

[Edgy MD]

Totally not expecting that.

They were seeming a little short on lefthanded power, and now they are not.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Jon Heyman says it's one year, $8 million.

[The Hot Corner]

I like this pick up. He seemed to bring a fire to the team. Gives a lefty bat for bench/DH spot.

[metirish]

Happy to see this, some players just seem made for the Mets

[Marshmallowmilkshake]

Hair Force One touching down at LaGuardia!

[Edgy MD]

And if HAIR FORCE ONE is the winner, we won't have a guy who is no longer a Met gracing the cover when it's installed at The Louvre.

[metsmarathon]

the WINKER SOLDIER comes in from the cold

[Benjamin Grimm]

And if HAIR FORCE ONE is the winner, we won't have a guy who is no longer a Met gracing the cover when it's installed at The Louvre.

That happened in 2021 with THAT'S ALMORA! And it could still happen this year with Alonso or Severino.

[Gwreck]

A Winker/Marte DH platoon makes a lot of sense. And they could put either in left with Nimmo on center on occasion as well.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Love it

[smg58]

Not surprised given his October, and not disappointed for the same reason.

[Lefty Specialist]

Gives them a good L/R DH combo in Winker and Marte. Precludes signing a full-time DH at this point, I guess.

[ashie62]

Welcome back wink!

[MFS62]

Winkle back, Welk.
I mean welcome back, Wink.

Later

[Centerfield]

I like the move for the price. I think he has some good upside.

Important to note though, that this move comes with a significant amount of risk.

He was great for us in October, but was pretty crappy for the Mets in the regular season (.683 OPS). His good first half of 2024 with Washington is the only time he's been good since 2021. He was terrible in 2023 for the Brewers (.567 OPS), and terrible in 2022 for Seattle (.688 OPS).

Also battled a bad back last fall.

[Channel9]

I like the guy, I like the signing.

[Cowtipper]

Excellent. He was part of the spark that turned 2024 around. Great to have him back. Guys like Winker and Taylor are proof that statlines don't tell the whole story. He was worth a lot more than the .243/.318/.365 line he posted suggests.

[Frayed Knot]

The Mets actually saw the second worst* mini-stretch of Winker's career in 2024 which, particularly at only age 31, indicates that maybe it was more the exception than the rule.
His career OPS/OPS+ is 804/118 as opposed to the 683/95 he put up over 129 PAs in Queens. In particular his usual high walk rate [105 career) was down at 75. Still good, but well under his norm which can probably be attributed to assuming more of a PH role. Maybe more ABs translates into more of a usual season for him even if he doesn't get everyday playing time.



* he had an injury filled disaster of a partial season (197 PA) in 2023 w/the Brewers

[batmagadanleadoff]

How did you calculate Winker's walk rates?

[Frayed Knot]

Simply the gap between a player's BA & OBA. The difference, unless significantly affected by HBPs which is barely relevant for most hitters, measures how often a hitter draws a walk. 65 to 70 points has been the traditional average and it's not a rate that varies much over time. It was 69 in 2024 for MLB as a whole.

From his ML debut through his CIN & SEA seasons (2017 - 2022) when Winker was more or less a full time player, his BA/OBA gap was 104, significantly above league averages and even his 'down' rate as a Met (75) was still higher than league norms. For comparison, Keith Hernandez was 88 over the length of his career.
You can usually find ultra high rates in power hitters where both careful pitching and high numbers of IWs start to play a major role such as Giambi (122) or Thome (126), or freaks like Bonds (146) and Williams (138)

[batmagadanleadoff]

That's an unusual way to express a batter's walk rate. When I saw your numbers,, I had no idea what they meant or how you got them. Walk rate is a standardized stat, calculated as BB/PA. A walk rate of 15% is considered excellent.

I guess your way works for you. You've probably been doing it that way for a long time and are used to it.. But most other people won't know what your numbers mean or what the context is for those numbers.

[Frayed Knot]

It's quick, easy, and, except in cases of high IWs and HBPs, achieves the same goal of putting a measurement on a batter's plate discipline.

That's why the first thing I look at for a player's is his slash line BA/OBA/SLG, because not only do each of those numbers tell you something about
the hitter but so does the relationship between each of them. Walk 'Rate' is probably the wrong term for it but you find out about a hitter's walking
ability just by looking at BA v OBA. Then Isolated Power (IsoP) is the gap between BA & SLG which effectively becomes a player's Slugging Average
if you factor all his singles out of the equation. Any single, after all, including infield singles and bunt singles, increases one's 'Slugging' percentage
which is certainly misleading at best.

From 2004 to 2008, for instance, Mike Cameron (802) and Ichiro Suzuki (803) had near identical OPS, but of course were completely different hitters.
Ichiro hit .332, 82 points higher than Cameron, but walked infrequently (46) and hit for little power (IsoP = 93 where 150 is around league norm)
Cameron hit just .250 but walked at just about double the rate (85) and his slugging was 217 points above his BA.

So a quick look at the slash lines of the two tells you a lot about what kind of hitter each is even if you never saw or heard of either of them.
And there's no math involved beyond simple subtraction.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I do the same as soon as I see the slash line -- comparing BA to OBP. I've been doing that since I was a teenager though, granted, when I was a teenager you didn't get OBP's as readily and as pretty much automatically as you do today.

I think that the standard way of measuring walk rate - BB/PA is the easiest way to do it because a 10% walk rate is pretty good and a 15% walk rate is excellent. It's child's play to calculate 10% of any number. And 15% is just about as easy -- 10% plus half of that 10%.