The Next Captain
Michael Conforto should be a Met for a long time. That starts with a contract extension.
At his press conference Monday afternoon, as he more or less pulled a Dwight Schrute and announced that he had chosen himself as General Manager, Sandy Alderson also took a question on Michael Conforto.
While he hadn’t talked to Conforto’s representatives yet about an extension, he said, “at some point, I’m sure we will broach that topic and take their temperature, and see where those things stand.”
Well, on behalf of Mets fans, here’s hoping that temperatures have stayed hot. Or cool. Paraphrasing Mr. Krueger, “whatever the good one is!” Because Michael Conforto should be a Met for a long time, and now that Steve Cohen’s wallet is open and Sandy Alderson has access, the hope that felt feeble under the Wilpons suddenly seems like the least Cohen could do.
Cohen, in fact, has a whole bunch of extensions to get signed. Noah Syndergaard, Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil…even long-term deals for Dominic Smith and Pete Alonso could be on the horizon, if the new regime decides they don’t want to bother with pesky annual arbitration. But that a story for another time. Right now, a deal for Conforto is in the news. And thank goodness. This is the time to get him signed, on the heels of a 2020 season that looked monstrous but was so short that it can mean anything that anyone wants it to.
Conforto, last season, batted .322/.412/.515, with nine home runs in 54 games. I’d spent years looking for Conforto’s breakout, waiting for something that would approximate his first month of 2016, when he batted .365/.442/.676 before Madison Bumgarner got in the way. And Conforto’s 2020 season was either that breakout or something pretty darn close.
Will Conforto repeat his 2020 numbers in 2021? Almost certainly not. He put up a .412 BABIP last season, not remotely repeatable. But he hits the ball hard and profiles as one of the more successful hitters in the league — 82nd percentile expected batting average, 85th xwOBA — and even before 2020, he wasn’t exactly Bartolo Colón at the plate. From 2017 to 2019, Conforto batted .257/.363/.492, good for an .855 OPS, hit 88 home runs, and compiled 9.7 WAR.
If he made a real, positive change in 2020, maybe his future levels are somewhere above those averages; if not, maybe Michael Conforto has numbers like that in his future. There’s actually an argument to be made that his true numbers are better than he’s been so far, besides last season: in 2018 and 2019, Conforto put up BABIP’s of .290 and .289, respectively, against league averages of .295 and .298. Conforto profiles as at least a league-average BABIP hitter, and probably higher, so even if he’s really the hitter Mets fans saw from 2017 to 2019, and 2020 was a short-season fluke, it wouldn’t be any surprise to see him post stat lines five to ten points, or even more, higher than his previous averages.
Conforto is a model hitter. He knows how to get on base: in each of the last five seasons, he’s kept his OBP at least 90 points above his batting average. He hits for power, but via a naturally powerful, gap-to-gap swing rather than selling out for the home run. In 2020, he was better against righties, but still put up a .870 OPS against lefties.
Conforto is also a solid all-around player. On defense, he’s fine: while he was worth a ghastly -5 Outs Above Average in 2020, that number was +6 in both 2019 and 2018, and on the whole, he seems like a fine defender. While his sprint speed was exactly average, and his “outfielder jump” was only in the 30th percentile in 2020, those numbers were both much improved in 2019, respectively in the 65th and 56th percentiles. Anecdotally, Conforto’s throwing arm is also fine, with occasional flashes of awesomeness.
And, of course, there are the intangibles: Conforto is an undisputed leader in the clubhouse. He’s the Mets’ player representative to the Player’s Union, and seems on a fast track to be named captain, perhaps as soon as this offseason. All parties involved should be deeply invested in keeping him in Queens for as long as possible.
So what kind of deal would it take to keep Conforto around long-term? It’s tough to say, seeing as no one has ever seen anything quite like the 2020 season. It will likely take a contract of at least five years, and possibly more, for $20 million a year, or more. Perhaps a six-year, $140-million contract, which would only take Conforto through his age-33 season, could get the job done.
Whatever it takes, Steve Cohen should pay it. Players like Conforto don’t show up that often. Cohen’s first order of business should be turning him into a Met for life.