Yo definitely knows baseball. Through that and his larger-than-life personality, Yo has also come to know what it’s like to be a superstar athlete in New York.
But there’s a dark side to that, you know. It’s how quickly New York fame can turn into New York infamy, and the New York Mets must hope Yoenis Cespedes doesn’t come to know that too.
Yeah, I know. Sorry for being such a Nervous Nellie. But we’re at that point where the possibility can no longer be ignored. Legend says New York has little patience for big-ticket superstars who fall short of their billing, after all, and Cespedes has never been billed as highly as he is going into 2016. Once only a cult hero, the 30-year-old outfielder is now a mainstream cultural phenomenon.
Cespedes took off like a rocket after the Detroit Tigers traded him to the Mets last July, going from OPS’ing .829 with 18 homers to OPS’ing .942 with 17 homers. That helped transform the Mets offense from laughable to formidable, putting the team on its path to the World Series and the man himself in the National League MVP discussion.
Cespedes didn’t win the MVP, of course. Nor did he help the Mets win the World Series. But it was obvious the Mets couldn’t afford to lose him to free agency, and they got their wish when they re-signed him to a three-year deal worth $75 million in late January. Like that, Cespedes, a New York star, was recast in the part of filthy rich New York star.
You might have noticed how well he’s played it this spring. If you haven’t, just Google his name and enjoy. There are stories about cars, tricycles, horses and, because there’s more to the good life than fine modes of transportation, even waffles and swine. You’d swear his motto was “Go big or go home.”
Don’t worry. We’re not going to wag our finger and tell Cespedes to keep his head down and stick to baseball. That’s for the Mets to say, and for now, they’re cool with Cespedes being, well, cool.
“[He] is just having a good time, and he maybe likes the attention, the little bit that he’s getting, and all the hoopla,” Mets skipper Terry Collins said of his star outfielder, via Mike Puma of the New York Post. “But I know one thing: When he’s out there, he’s pretty serious, because he works hard.”
But we will say that attracting the hoopla is the easy part. Particularly in a place like New York, the hard part is continuing to deserve it. Cespedes won’t hear the end of it if he stumbles in 2016, which is a danger to happen even if he doesn’t change a thing from his 2015 season.
There’s a reason Cespedes was only a cult hero while playing for the Oakland A’s, Boston Red Sox and Tigers through the first three-and-a-half years of his career. Despite his seemingly impossible blend of power, speed, arm strength and swagger, he was only occasionally a great ballplayer.
In 2013, and 2014 especially, the term “consistent” fit Cespedes about as well as “low-key” fits him now. He broke through with an .861 OPS, 23 homers and 16 steals as a rookie in 2012, but he devolved into a power-only hitter across the next two seasons. His 48 homers were nice, but they were only worth so much next to a .298 on-base percentage and 14 steals in 23 attempts.
And though his career-best .870 OPS seems to suggest otherwise, not much actually changed in 2015.
Cespedes’ ability to draw walks continued its descent, with the root cause of that being an escalating tendency to swing at pitches outside the strike zone. With his strikeout rate continuing to hover just above league average, his only redeeming quality was his superior power. His .542 slugging percentage was by far a career best and ranked 10th among qualified hitters.
That part is obviously the good news, but the fear now is that Cespedes’ power could be overruled by his weaknesses in 2016. If that happens, the Mets know from experience just how bad things could get.
If you’ll direct your attention to this table full of numbers, you’ll see that Cespedes’ time with the Mets (postseason included) was almost evenly split between his being totally on fire and his flaming out:
This wasn’t an accident. Cespedes developed some physical issues in October that held him back, and pitchers also did their part to throw ice water on his fiery bat.
According to BaseballSavant.com, Cespedes went from seeing pitches outside the zone at a 61.1 percent clip to a 63.3 percent clip. Pitchers were trying harder to exploit the big hole in his approach, and part of this attack also involved exploiting a major hole in his swing. Cespedes was pounded up and in more frequently with fastballs, against which he recorded zero hits.
If that treatment seemed especially prevalent in the postseason, that’s because it was. August Fagerstrom of FanGraphs noted as much, and he also offered what almost sounds like a word of warning:
This year, Cespedes’ weakness against the high fastball was more drastic than ever before, and it coincided with him having his best season at the plate. In other words, Cespedes was beating pitchers more everywhere else, making it all the more important for them to pitch to Cespedes carefully, focusing more on his cold zones. With that said, it feels somewhat surprising that this hole in his swing wasn’t more exploited.
This is an open invitation for pitchers to take note of how Cespedes was silenced at the end of 2015. If the diet of high heat that did the trick becomes the norm for him in 2016, it could send his offensive production back to its 2013-2014 level of meh-ness. Or worse.
And that’s not the only way Cespedes’ superstar status could deflate in 2016. He’s an elite defender when he plays in left field, but the Mets’ plan is to play him in center field. That’s where the defensive metrics rated him as poorly as ever in 2015, and the eye test lends truth to that.
To wit, the Mets saw Cespedes misplay a ground ball into an inside-the-park homer last September. More notably (and embarrassingly), he did the same thing with this fly ball in Game 1 of the World Series:
The Mets could find themselves in a difficult spot if Cespedes continues to struggle as a center fielder in 2016. Moving him back to left and playing Juan Lagares, a Gold Glover in 2014, in center would make sense in theory, but Michael Conforto’s status as New York’s primary left fielder would make that difficult. The Mets likely aren’t going to bench his bat just so they could improve on defense.
If the question now is what could go wrong with Cespedes in 2016, the answer is “plenty.” He could fall apart on both offense and defense, in which case it would take less than a New York minute for his superstar status to unravel. The only question then would be, “Is this it?”
The best way for Cespedes to avoid that is to take his game to new heights, and that’s where the nature of his hard work this spring provides a spark for optimism.
The Mets are aware that Cespedes’ power comes with too many weak points at the plate. Kevin Kernan of the New York Post has reported that the Mets are trying to prepare Cespedes to walk more, make more contact and use the whole field. To his credit, he’s been cooperative.
“He’s all in,” hitting coach Kevin Long said. “Cespedes is very receptive to advice, to working on stuff, he’s great to work with. He’s a baseball player.”
If there’s a reason for optimism with Cespedes’ defense in center field, it’s that this is really the first time a team has committed to him as a center fielder. And if the more consistent reps don’t make him better, the Mets are prepared to downplay the impact of his defense. Collins told Maria Guardado of NJ Advance Media that he’s ready to insert Lagares for his defense when it’s needed late in games.
All this constitutes a rare case of a team’s not being content to take a set-it-and-forget-it approach with a big-ticket superstar. And if the efforts pay off, Cespedes’ incredible talent could translate into incredible results more easily than it ever has.
If that’s how things pan out, all the hype Cespedes has been generating will feel less like a tease and more like what the Mets hope it is: a promise.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com