Carl Pavano, Wilmer Flores, Scott Hairston, Noah Syndergaard

MetsBlog - The Mets have had “very preliminary” discussions with the agents for RHP Carl Pavano, but there is mutual interest, reports Andy McCullough of the Star Ledger.

                Fine.

                At this point, just sign someone and get it over with.

                I’m quite pissed they aren’t giving the SP5 rock to Jenrry Mejia, so Pavano is as good as any of the other scrubs out there the Mets can pitch until Zack Wheeler is ready.

                

                What about Mejia? Does he start in Vegas or pen in Flushing? Is he ‘unstretched’ for the fourth time?

AA - takes a look at the Mets playing winter ball with a special look-see at the number one bat: - ●Let's start with Wilmer Flores, who began the winter hot as a pistol but didn't necessarily finish that way. In fact, on November 3rd, he was batting .313 with an .849 OPS. Unfortunately, he cooled off down the stretch, batting .176 in his last ten games as his Bravos did not make the cut for the Venezuelan Winter League playoffs. Regardless, he continued to showcase solid plate discipline and a burgeoning power game and looks primed to make his case as an offense-first third baseman in Double-A come spring.

                This is the guy we all kept an eye on in the off-season. He’s the organization’s top bat and the Mets seem to have decided to let him develop as a third baseman rather than move him to other positions that could get him to Queens earlier. Does this make him trade bait? You betcha.

                I don’t know why AA has him projected to go back to Binghamton. He did have 251-at bats there (.311) and Aderlin Rodriguez is pushing him at that level. Only Zach Lutz is in his way at Las Vegas and his days as a Met may be numbered.

                No, I’d love to see an Eric Campbell-Reese Havens, Wilfredo Tovar-Flores infield at AAA come April 1^st.

According to MetsBlog “it appears that the bidding for free-agent outfielder Scott Hairston mainly involves two teams: The Yankees and the Mets.”

It seems to me that the Hairston drama will end sometime this week. The Mets can offer him so many more games to play than the Yankees, but he's never going to get a ring playing in Flushing during the next two seasons. I expect he's lost to the Yankees. We'll have to just wait and see, but, if he is, let's just 'shut it down' and go to camp with what we have. Give the CF job to Nieuwenhuis, tell Duda he's got LF locked down, and let Baxter, Cowgill and Valdespin platoon in right. Concentrate your development efforts on Matt den Dekker, Cory Vaughn, and Darrell Ceciliani and just leave it alone until after the all-star break. We'll re-visit this then with a pocket full of money.

Metropolitan Tales wrote:

The Lansing Lugnuts played 12 games last year broadcast by MiLB.tv. I’ll give you one guess at how many Syndergaard started. Yup, so we’re going off the reports. Fortunately, the reports are pretty damn good. Syndergaard’s fastball will immediately be among the best in the system, featuring mid-nineties velocity and ‘heavy sink’ according to Jason Parks. The secondary stuff is in need of refinement of course, but Parks at least sees two potential plus offerings there in the curve and change. (Baseball America is less enthusiastic, especially about the curve.) If Aaron Sanchez is the Zack Wheeler of the Blue Jays system, Syndergaard was the Matt Harvey. Like Tapia and Fulmer, I could see Syndergaard breaking out this year in St. Lucie, but unlike those two, he’s already a Top 100 prospect in the game.

I'm going out on a limb here and say we're pretty safe with this one. At the least, he will pitch the entire 2013 season in St. Lucie where all the Mets organizational pitchers can work with him daily. He's not going to have the pressure of someday having to be either the SP1 or SP2 of the Mets staff. That will already be assigned to Wheeler and Harvey. No, Syndergaard will join Jon Niese in 2015 as part of the National League's most talented rotation.