Mets catcher Tomas Nido is the team’s most underappreciated player

Backup catcher Tomas Nido may be the most underappreciated member of the New York Mets.

Remember when Travis d’Arnaud and Kevin Plawecki were the top two catchers for the New York Mets? It seems like years ago. Actually, the only season in which d’Arnaud and Plawecki were the top two catchers based on innings caught was 2015.

Trivia question: Name the top two catchers for the Mets in 2013 (d’Arnaud’s first year on the Mets), 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Coming into the 2019 season one of the biggest questions for the Mets was at the catcher position. There were lots of options, most of them tried and mediocre. The plan of staying with d’Arnaud and Plawecki one more time seemed unappealing at best.

More from Rising Apple

• NY Mets: 8 Ex-Amazins who killed it with other teams in 2021
• NY Mets: Marcus Stroman wrote the player’s playbook on free agency
• NY Mets: Re-signing Jonathan Villar only works under this 1 condition
• NY Mets: 1 player I absolutely can’t give up on quite yet
• NY Mets: 3 offseason predictions from 3 different fans

There were several free agent catchers available at various price points. The top option was Yasmani Grandal and the Mets offered him a reasonable contract which he rejected for a higher one year deal with the Milwaukee Brewers.

The next best option was Wilson Ramos, an injury prone offense-first catcher coming off a career year with the Tampa Bay Rays and Philadelphia Phillies. The Mets offered Ramos a two-year contract for $19 million assuming the Mets buy out his option for 2021.

As we know Ramos has had a below average (for him) offensive year measured by OPS+ (95) compared to his career OPS+ of 103. Still good for a catcher but with his defensive shortcomings not great especially for a team that relies on a sometimes dominant starting rotation to play its best.

The Mets traded Plawecki for Walker Lockett and tendered d’Arnaud a contract. Many people (including me) expected him to be jettisoned due to his slow recovery from Tommy John surgery and his general offensive unreliability. That money could have been better used in any number of ways.

In Spring Training the Mets had Ramos penciled in as the starting catcher with a competition for the backup spot between Travis d’Arnaud and Devin Mesoraco.

Through a series of semi-predictable happenings and Metsian decision-making d’Arnaud “won” the job, Mesoraco decided to go on strike (framing at its finest), and somehow Tomas Nido ended up as the backup catcher to open the season until d’Arnaud was d’ArYes.

d’Arnaud was sent on a rehab assignment on April 4 and activated on April 7 with Nido being sent down to Syracuse. On April 28 the Mets DFA’d d’Arnaud and recalled Nido.

Nido has been the backup since that day starting 25 games at catcher.

Tomas Nido is a better defensive catcher than Wilson Ramos. We all know this. How much better though?

Check out this list from Baseball Prospectus ranking catchers by FRAA_ADJ.  Please see this explanation for those of you who are not familiar with this overall catching statistic.

And this for Blocking Runs.

And this one for Framing Runs.

And this one for Throwing Runs.

Switching to Baseball-Reference, Ramos costs the Mets -11 Rdrs/yr while Nido saves 10 Rdrs/yr. Using a statistic like that eliminates the effect of Ramos catching more innings. That difference of 21 runs is worth 2-3 extra wins according to various theories of the relationship between runs and wins.

This nifty chart from Fangraphs gives a clear (i.e. non-technical) idea of the defensive quality of Ramos and Nido.

Not to mention that both Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard prefer throwing to Nido even though his offense is below average (OPS+ 70).

Offense

Nido splits:

• Vs. LHP .280/.333/.560/.893
• Vs. RHP .224/.246/.299/.545

Ramos splits

• Vs. LHP .319/.410/.514/.924
• Vs. RHP .242/.312/.341/.653

Nido has shown significant improvement on the offensive side and his splits are surprisingly close to Ramos’ given their different profiles.

According to Baseball-Reference Ramos has a WAR of 0.9 and Nido has a WAR of 0.0. WAR includes all offensive and defensive metrics combined but does not take into account playing time. Considering that Ramos makes over $9 million per year and Nido is at the league minimum clearly their value per dollar is in Nido’s favor.

Conclusion

If you have not guessed my choice for the most underappreciated player on the 2019 New York Mets is Tomas Nido. Many fans and writers (including me) are ready to see Ramos traded because of his well-below average defense.

What has not been said often is that Nido makes this possible. There is no other catcher in the Mets system that would be suitable as a first-string catcher now and there is no way they will trade for one.

Trivia Answer

• 2013 John Buck and Anthony Recker
• 2014 Travis d’Arnaud and Anthony Recker
• 2016 Travis d’Arnaud and Rene Rivera
• 2017 Travis d’Arnaud and Rene Rivera
• 2018 Kevin Plawecki and Devin Mesoraco

Want your voice heard? Join the Rising Apple team!

Write for us!

Nido gives more confidence to their top two starters, his offense has improved greatly, and his defensive metrics are well better than average. The best part is he’s only 25 and under team control until 2025.