Lunch With The Sand Gnats

Mack's Mets writers Wally Murphy, 'Savannah Bug Spray' and spent Tuesday with the Gnats for Media day.

Sadly, I got to the lunch when it was ending. I had a doctor's appointment with the VA and you just can't miss them. They take months to reschedule.

I did find some surprises and, because I don't have the final St. Lucie roster (always the last to come in), I'm not sure where Luis Mateo and Hansel Robles is, but the Sand Gnats are starting off with seven starters... Gabriel Ynoa, Steven Matz, Rainy Lara, Luis Cessa, Matt Bowman, Logan Taylor, and Matt Koch. Logan and Koch will piggy-back.

The relievers are Brett Mitchell, Tim Peterson, Jake Kuebler, Chad Zurcher, Paul Seward, Hunter Carnevale, and converted Julian Hilario.

The infield is 1B Jayce Boyd, 2B Chad Zurcher, SS Phillip Evans, 3B Cole Frenzel, and utilities Jeff Reynolds and Yuky De La Cruz.

The outfield is Brandon Nimmo, Eudy Pena, Stefan Sabol, and Greg Pron..

I managed to spend around five minutes with Nimmo who I found to be very pleasant. I wanted to make sure he know that I was critical about the Mets picking a player like him as high as they did, not specifically him. He nodded his head at all the right moments :)

An interesting team... thrilled to see Evans and Matz here. Naturally, I can't wait to see the Nimmo swing and I'm hoping for a breakthrough year by Pena.

I was surprised to see Plawecki not go to Lucy, and extremely disappointed to not see Akeel Morris, Zack Dotson, and Juan Urbina.

I'm not sure where the strengths and weaknesses of this team will be. It will be a long time unitl the Mets can match the talent that came out of last year's Sand Gnats rotation.