NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Friday, February 20, 2015, 1:15 AM
Updated: Friday, February 20, 2015, 1:28 AM
PORT ST. LUCIE — The passage from the Mets’ “catcher-in-waiting” to “catcher-in-residence” took longer than he had ever imagined, filled as it was by freak injury, bad luck, stress and, finally, self-doubt. But after a season of mental reckoning and an offseason of physical confidence-building, there is a general consensus that Travis d’Arnaud’s star is finally ready to rise.
If you subscribe to these progressive, new-age baseball analytics — and I confess to not being a devout worshiper at that altar — the advanced statistical website FanGraphs is projecting d’Arnaud to hit .252 with a .311 on-base percentage, .432 slugging percentage and 18 home runs this season while also playing good defense and appearing in 121 games. Those numbers would make him the All-Star catcher the Mets had thought he could be as the key prospect they got back from the Toronto Blue Jays in the 2012 R.A. Dickey trade that also netted top pitching prospect Noah Syndergaard. While such a projection comes as more exciting news for Mets fans in this, their spring of great anticipation, it is, of course, based purely on statistics and devoid of the human element — which, of course, would be d’Arnaud himself.
So it should therefore come as even more heartening news to the Met faithful that the human element is fully on board with FanGraphs. In contrast to a year ago, when he came to camp anointed with the No. 1 catcher’s job but not fully sure if he was ready to fulfill the Mets’ lofty expectations, d’Arnaud is here, among the early arrivals, brimming with confidence and eager to get started on a season he envisions as being a breakthrough for both him and the Mets. Actually, he’s been here for a while, as part of the group of players working out with Mike Barwis, the acclaimed fitness guru from West Virginia University whom the Mets appointed as their senior adviser of strength and conditioning back in October.
“I feel so much more relaxed and physically stronger,” d’Arnaud was saying Thursday after the Mets’ wind-chilled mini-workout, “and confident in that I can swing harder. That’s what (Barwis’ workouts) do for you.”
Lucas Duda, for one, can vouch for that. After working with Barwis last winter, Duda went on to have his strongest, most complete season, majors or minors, in 2014, missing not a single game to injury while hitting 30 homers with 92 RBI, both of which far exceeded his previous season highs.
Like with Duda, Barwis has lifted d’Arnaud’s confidence about his physical abilities — remember this is a guy who missed most of the 2013 season with a broken foot and more than half of the 2012 season with a knee injury. The confidence came last year after a horrendous start and a shocking and demoralizing demotion on June 6, his batting average hovering around the Mendoza Line all through April and May, having bottomed out at .180. Upon being informed he was being sent back to Triple-A, he cried in manager Terry Collins’ office and Mets brass privately worried he was going to suffer a breakdown.
Howard Simmons/New York Daily News New York Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud (15) catching pitchers.
“It was a wake-up call,” d’Arnaud said. “It definitely humbled me. It taught me that nothing is given to you and you have to work for what you want.”
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“I wasn’t myself,” he said of those first three months last season. “I was timid at the plate and I let that affect my defense. But when I got down to Triple-A, George Greer, the hitting coach, noticed right away I was standing too far off the plate and as a result I couldn’t reach any of the pitches on the outside half. He moved me closer, and everything seemed to come together again. I was myself again.”
In 15 games at Las Vegas, he hit .436 with six homers and 16 RBI, and on June 24 he was back behind the plate for the Mets. The rest of 2014 was nothing but progress — progress with hitting major league pitchers (by season’s end he’d raised his average to .242 with 13 HR and 42 RBI) and progress with handling the Mets’ pitching staff.
“The only pitcher I’d really worked with before last year was Zack (Wheeler),” d’Arnaud said. “So it was really important that I was able to get back there, working with them, learning about each of them and getting them to know what I’m thinking behind the plate. From the mental aspect of this, I’m going into this season having caught all of them for 20 or more games. I know my staff really well now.”
Howard Simmons/New York Daily News After an up-and-down 2014 season, Travis d’Arnaud is confident he can become the All-Star-caliber catcher the Mets thought he would be. Howard Simmons/Daily News
And vice versa. To a man, Mets pitchers love throwing to d’Arnaud. Much of that has to do with his ability to frame pitches — the newest analytic determinant of a catcher’s defensive proficiency. According to various statistical websites, d’Arnaud was one of the best catchers in baseball at framing pitches last season, earning by one account some 75 extra strikes for his pitchers.
This, Mets officials and rival scouts agree, would in particular account a lot for the success enjoyed by Wheeler and Jacob deGrom, both of whom rely heavily on their sliders that break down in the strike zone. On the other hand, d’Arnaud had an elevated number of missed pitches (a combined 22 passed balls and wild pitches) which, though widely offset by the number of extra strikes he got for his pitchers, is something he has also vowed to cut down.
Listening to him and watching him going about his business even in these preliminary days of camp before the whole contingent of pitchers arrives, d’Arnaud is clearly comfortable in his own skin as the man entrusted with the bread-and-butter pitching the Mets high command expects to carry them to the postseason for the first time since 2006 — although, for good measure, he changed his uniform number from 15 to the lucky seven he wore all through the minors and high school.
There are still those in the Mets hierarchy who view Kevin Plawecki, who hit .309 with 11 homers and 64 RBI in 101 games at Triple A and Double A last year, as having a higher upside. D’Arnaud’s demeanor this spring seems to say they’ll think differently next October.
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