10-27-12 – Anthony Recker, Darin Gorski, Fred on Sandy

-I’m not sure what this move is all about. I guess this move is supposed to scare the hell out of Kelly Shoppach’s agent. I can’t even see that scaring Lucas May’s agent. On my charts, I have very specific catchers that need to play the lion share of games at their levels. They are: Juan Centeno (AAA), Blake Forsythe (AA), Cam Maron (A+) and Kevin Plawecki (A). These are the four sort-off Mets catcher prospects and have earned the starting gig. Past that, you might want to keep Francisco Pena (I wouldn’t) for one more year to back up Forsythe, and Tomas Nido should be considered for the #2 slot in Savannah, but the rest are just names. Regarding Mike Nickeas, I’ve said this as early as three years ago. Name him a roving coach and let him work with kids in Instructs. Getting back to Recker, I hope this isn’t an example of the kind of players being brought in this year; however, I don’t remember any Mets minor league catcher putting up a 2011 stat line in AAA of: .287/.388/.501/.889/16-HR/48-RBI… at 27-years old. That’s a higher OPS than Josh Thole ever put up in the minors.

We talk all the time about how the AA-level is the wall that must be climbed if you are to become a major league baseball player. We’ve seen so many guys come along and dominate at the lower levels only to be stopped dead when they get to Binghamton… let’s look one of our ore recent phenoms at the lower level, LHSP Darin Gorski. Gorski was simply overwhelming in 2011 at St. Lucie (11-3, 2.08) and it looked like the team had a new star on their squad. But, then came 2012 and Binghamton and what does Gorski do (living under the shadow of Zack Wheeler)… tied for 14^th in the league in wins… 21^st in the league in lowest ERA… 7^th in the league in strikeouts… 13^th in the lowest WHIP… hmm… this is why we have to look a little deeper that what seems to be at the surface. We spent most of 2012 watching what Wheeler did and comparing Gorski’s stats to the ones he produced in 2011 for St. Lucie. What if Gorski matches stat for stat with Wheeler for the first half of the 2013 season? My strategy would be to leave him in Vegas for the inevitable in-season injury to a rotation pitcher. It’s going to start getting very exciting next year when it comes to the Mets rotation.

Matt Cerrone at MetsBlog, says that Fred Wilpon is happy with having Sandy Alderson as his General Manager and Terry Collins as Manager. I mean, what else is he going to say? The guy hasn’t given either one of them any money to bring in the kind of players that are needed to turn around this mess. Might as well keep things positive in the public view.