MLB Trade Deadline Retrospective: Tyler Clippard to Mets
A year ago today the New York Mets began adding pieces ahead of the 2015 MLB trade deadline, landing reliever Tyler Clippard from the Oakland Athletics.
Before the 2015 season began, Oakland had landed Ben Zobrist and Yunel Escobar from the Tampa Bay Rays for John Jaso and minor leaguers Boog Powell and Daniel Robertson. The A’s then flipped Escobar four days later in order to land Clippard in an effort to bolster their bullpen.
Clippard had closing experience with the Nats, saving 32 games for the club in 2012 and was coming off of an All-Star campaign in 2014. The A’s quickly promoted the 30-year-old right-hander to the ninth after Sean Doolittle was placed on the disabled list.
With Clippard in the closer’s role, his value on the market grew, as he saved 17 games for Oakland in his time with the team, posting a 2.79 ERA and a 142 ERA+. As he has throughout his career, Clippard outperformed his 3.96 FIP by over a run.
The market last year was not as ludicrous as this year’s appears to be, as Oakland agreed to ship the righty to former A’s GM Sandy Alderson and the Mets for low-minors prospect Casey Meisner, then just 20 years old.
Next: Clippard's Time in the Big Apple
With the Mets, Clippard’s ERA went up just a touch from 2.79 to 3.06 in the regular season, but he was now outperforming his FIP (4.65) by a much wider margin.
During the playoffs, Clippard earned a 7.26 ERA over just 6.2 innings, but his most infamous appearance was likely in Game 4 of the World Series, when he walked Zobrist and Lorenzo Cain in the top of the 8th inning. Closer Jeurys Familia came in with one away and runners on first and second, and after an error brought the Royals to within a run, Familia gave up both the game-tying and go-ahead singles to Mike Moustakas and Salvador Perez before getting Alex Gordon to hit into an inning-ending double play.
This managerial decision was talked about quite a bit following the game. Why not just have Familia start the inning? In his one-third of an inning, Clippard threw 17 pitches, and only eight of them were strikes. He had outperformed his FIP all season, but in that one inning it caught up with him.
In the offseason he signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and hasn’t been as bad as his 4.17 would have you believe. In the first half, he held a 2.97 ERA, but has had a couple of bad outings after the midsummer break, giving up six earned in 3.1 innings. On the road, he is outperforming his career ERA at 2.70 (2.96 career), but at Chase Field where the ball tends to fly, he has a 5.94. Oddly enough, four of the six homers he’s allowed in 2016 have come on the road.
Next: Checking in on Meisner
Casey Meisner is a righty that was selected in the third round of the 2013 draft at the age of 18 by the Mets and had only made six starts in the Hi-A Florida League before being traded to the A’s, who slotted him with their own Hi-A club out in Stockton.
Meisner made seven starts with the Ports after the trade and put up a 2.78 ERA over 32.1 innings pitched. His strikeout rate was good, but not great at 6.7 per nine, but his walk rate was a solid 1.9. This year he stuck in the California League, and has seen those rates both go up. His strikeout rate is closer to one an inning at 7.4, but his walk rate has more than doubled, all the way up to 4.6. This has lead to his ERA now sitting at 4.27.
Numbers aren’t everything in the California League however, as many of the parks are extremely hitter friendly, and Meisner just turned 21 towards the end of May, sticking him two years below the average Cal League player.
Oakland has also had him making appearances out of the bullpen of late, as eight of his last nine games have come in relief. In 20.2 relief innings, Meisner has allowed eleven runs, four of which came on June 25 against San Jose. That was his shortest outing out of the bullpen (1.1 innings) and the most runs he’s allowed. Only two of these outings have been scoreless, but he’s also working between two and four innings each time out. At 6’7″, Meisner will be an interesting prospect to keep an eye on.
Next: Yankees Underrated Star, Tommy Henrich
Before the season, Baseball America had this to say of the lanky righty: “Meisner has an electric arm. He touched 96 mph earlier in the season when he was fresher and still sat 90-94 late in the year with Stockton…His advanced changeup is his bread-and-butter secondary pitch.”
BA also mentions that he came to Oakland with a curve and a slider. The A’s had him focus on the curveball for now, and had planned to reintroduce the slider down the road in his development.