Minors Stuff

B-Mets:


Saturday, July 17 Erie 7:05 pm RHP Brad Holt (1-3, 5.73) vs. RHP Jonah Nickerson (7-6, 4.93)

Sunday, July 18 Erie 1:05 pm RHP Eric Brown (4-10, 5.87) vs. RHP Thad Weber (2-2, 4.28)

Monday, July 19 Connecticut 7:05 pm RHP Jake Ruckle (0-1, 3.31) vs. TBA

Tuesday, July 20 Connecticut 7:05 pm RHP Dylan Owen (2-6, 5.56) vs. TBA



No. 5 BRAD HOLT, RHP - Why He's Here: 1-0, 0.00, 7 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 7 SO, 2 GIDP
The Scoop: The 6-foot-4 righthander from UNC Wilmington closed out the first half with a nifty 80-to-22 strikeout-to-walk ratio, as well as the performance you see above. One start prior, Holt recorded 10 strikeouts, one walk and three hits allowed in five innings. He surrendered three runs in that effort, but he can be forgiven, seeing as he missed three weeks in June nursing a twisted ankle. According to Mets vice president of player development Tony Bernazard, the ankle no longer is an issue for Holt, the 33rd overall pick last year. His primary developmental goal for the second half: finding consistency with his changeup and curveball.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/prospect-hot-sheet/2009/268567.html


Gnats:


So it wasn't terribly surprising to see 17-year-old Mets 3B Jefry Marte, in his first year of full-season ball, get off to a slow start. Through his first 300 at-bats, he batted just .230/.265/.330 for low Class A Savannah, with four homers and 27 errors in 76 games. Marte took a reprieve from his not-hot ways and this week batted .364/.440/.636 (8-for-22) with a home run, three doubles, three RBIs and five runs scored. He committed two more miscues in the field, though, and struck out eight times, but at this stage of his development, one has to take the bad with the good

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/prospect-hot-sheet/2009/268567.html


Clones:


Manager Pedro Lopez held a long closed-door meeting with his struggling Brooklyn Cyclones after Thursday afternoon’s loss — the seventh in the team’s last nine games. The theme of the meeting, Lopez said after was simple: “We turn it around now.” “We are trying too hard right now,” Lopez said of his players. “We started the season 16-2 for a reason [and] we have to go back to that type of mindset when we were 16-2.” The Cyclones’ early season run was the team’s best start ever — and included a 10-game winning streak and a hitting barrage by now-injured star Matt Bouchard. But since the streak ended, the team has struggled — and Lopez senses that his players are putting too much pressure on themselves.

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/29/32_29_ah_cyc_closed_door.html


FIREWORKS:

Fireworks Nights are always among the most popular Cyclones games of the summer. Two new Fireworks Nights have just been added on August 8th and 15th, meaning that every Friday and Saturday night game in July and August will be followed by fireworks!Saturday shows -- like the ones on August 8th and 15th -- are even more special, because they take place inside the ballpark, right from the centerfield warning track! Fans are directly underneath the stunning shows that light up the night sky over Coney Island!Don't miss out on any of the remaining seven fireworks shows at KeySpan park! Click on a date below to get your tickets now!

Saturday, July 18 vs. AUB at 6pm
Saturday, July 25 vs. SI at 6pm -- Gym Bag giveaway
Friday, August 7 vs. JAM at 7pm -- T-Shirt giveaway
Saturday, August 8 vs. JAM -- Garage Sale giveaway -- JUST ADDED!
Friday, August 14 vs. ONT at 7pm
Saturday, August 15 vs. ONT -- Beach Towel giveaway -- JUST ADDED!
Friday, September 4 vs. LOW at 7pm


Queens:

How do you have non-existent power (second worst in baseball), an average BABIP and still provide above average offensive value? One way is to walk 2.39 times for everytime you strikeout like Luis Castillo has done so far this year. Luis Castillo is leading the league in BB/K, a little bit higher than Albert Pujols.

Castillo does it by swinging at nothing. He has the second lowest O-swing rate to Marco Scutaro and by far the lowest Z-swing rate, the only player under 50%. Throw Luis Castillo a pitch in the zone and he is more likely to take it than swing at it. When he does swing he makes contact over 94% of the time, tops in the league.

Effectively Castillo is just waiting for the pitcher to walk him. Taking almost all pitches out of the zone, over half of them in the zone and hoping to accumulate enough balls for a free pass. When he does swing he almost always makes contact, so he rarely strikes out. I wanted to see how it does it. First I looked at how often his swings by the number of strikes

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/adventures-in-extreme-plate-discpline



And then there’s Luis Castillo.

Tom Coffey, an editor with The New York Times, reports that during a pitching change in the eighth inning of the Mets’ 9-7 defeat of Cincinnati last Sunday at Citi Field, Castillo trudged down the right-field line and motioned to the ball boy. The young man, named Victor, immediately abandoned his stool, and Castillo plopped himself down. He remained seated until Bobby Parnell was done with his warm-up pitches, then trudged back to his position.

It brings to mind Manny Ramirez disappearing into the Green Monster to make a phone call during a pitching change. The thing is, Castillo does not portray himself as a playful man-child like Ramirez. And he certainly does not hit enough for people to write off a perceived laziness as Luis being Luis.

To be fair, of course, on a sunny day, perhaps Castillo was just ensuring that he had enough energy in case he had to scamper out to shallow right field for a pop-up in the ninth.

http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/castillo-takes-a-breather