Sandy and Company Year Two in The Minors – Mack Ade

I talked earlier this week with a Mets “official” who told me not to look for any major moves around the all-star breaks. He said the minor league teams were going to stand pat, especially when it comes to one of my favorites, Wilmer Flores.

So much for my sources, huh?

The important thing is not whether the information I receive is correct. What is important is how the Alderson era is progressing.

Year one was pretty simple on the back fields. All minor league pitchers were given instructions to pitch 2011 with “what they have” and to concentrate on “pounding the zone”. Multiple players told me they received that order in writing.

I’m sure there was plenty of tweaking during the season; however, I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me no new pitches were introduced. 2011 was going to a year that Sandy Alderson and Paul DePodesa (did I spell that correctly?) got their first look at what was in the organization and whether they could pound the zone with the pitches they were taught in school.

This year, it’s different. The Mets know who the potential starters are and who are future AAAA players. Some relievers (i.e. Ryan Fraser) were starters last year because they simply needed to build up their arm strength. You see, relievers report with far too few innings under their belt.

More important, S and Co. have now had 1.5 years to evaluate the every day players in the system and no longer will a player dominating at a level remain behind because he’s blocked my someone going through the motions.

We saw this in the past few days when players that were under-performing were dropped a level and were replaced with other players that need to move on and face tougher competition.

This simply didn’t happen under Omar and it’s exciting to see the new direction being taken by DePo.

We’re going to specifically talk about pitching tomorrow, but, the bottom line under Sandy and Company is, you bat .330, or slug .450, or OPS .900, or ERA under 3, or WHIP under 1.19, you’re going places… now.

I love it!