Mack Ade – AM Report – 8-1-13 – Trade Deadline, Jenrry Mejia, Frank Francisco

So, wasn’t ‘Trade Deadline Day’ fun? Did you notice the title included the word ‘dead’?

I want to reiterate something I have brought up a number of times over the past couple of years.

I had the pleasure of working as a local sports reporter here in South Carolina and covered the high schools in both Beaufort and Jasper County. In addition, as most of you know, I have written about potential high school seniors and college juniors eligible each year for the baseball draft.

I’ve watched this game change over the past ten years in so many ways, but, there are two areas that stand out as major changes in a sport that basically went down the same path for decades.

First, the African-American athletes have begun to return to a sport that they seemed to have abandoned after the 1960s. I first saw it here in rural high schools that, ten years ago, had a hard time finding nine players to even show up for tryouts. The dreams of stardom and big money were always through either basketball or football and the limited coaching staffs that doubled and tripled up coaching different sports at these schools, pointed their best athletes in the direction of the sports that were more attractive to the administration, the family of the players, and the community in general.

Remember… I live in the south. This is ‘Friday Night Lights’ territory.

Baseball has made a comeback for a number of reasons. One, is the potential of bigger money than either football or basketball. Another is, two baseball players never run into each other on purpose, and smash each other head to head.

The injuries for high school football alone have changed the direction of how families plan their more talented son’s extra-curricular activities will be and the winner of this new direction is now sports like soccer, track and field, and baseball.

I’ve also watched baseball itself change regardless of race. Coaches are defining talent as early as grade school on teams usually coached by one of the fathers of the more gifted players. The one constant you see is the most talented (and tallest) of these ballplayers are sent to the pitcher’s mound rather than become positional players.

How does this translate into what happened… or in the case of yesterday, what didn’t happen, on Draft Day?

Well, the talent base for this sport has simply become more as a pitcher. The 40-home run, 120-RBI stud has frankly always been the exception rather than the norm, but he’s now almost an endangered species.

Ballplayers aren’t coming out of high school as talents pitchers… they’re going into their schools already with trophies on their bedroom dressers. Every neighborhood team only has so many great athletes and, if coaches direct that talent in the direction of pitching, that’s where the team’s talent will lie.

The domino effect is better pitching, less hitting in, first, high school, and then, college and now it seems that everybody over the height of 6-2 is a pitcher (actually, at last count, there were only three right-handed starters in baseball under 6-1).

Every professional baseball team is now building their future around, first, young pitching, and secondly, draft picks and international free agents that they have financial control of for a number of years. Teams simply are not giving up their young prospects as easily as they have in the past and the result is less deals on days like yesterday.

There always will be trades and there will always be an off-season you can sign a free agent, but the success of your team will primarily be based on how well you stock your team in the beginning, rather than on days like yesterday.

 

From Andy Martino –

“When I came here in September last year, Dan Warthen showed me how to throw a slider,” said a beaming  Jenrry Mejia, back in a major league clubhouse. “Then I threw it in winter ball. And now I throw it perfect.” That might read like a boast, but he said it with glee, not swagger.  After posting a 5.62 ERA last September, then missing most of the first half this year with discomfort in his forearm and elbow (he needs offseason surgery, but does not consider it major), Mejia seemed cooked for good.  And, according to organizational sources, he had Frank Francisco advising him to stay in Port St. Lucie and collect his big league D.L. money, rather than work to return and be optioned to the minors. It impressed the Mets when Mejia opted to tune out Francisco.  At one point, staff down in Port St. Lucie began mentioning Wheeler and Harvey as motivation; “three years ago, you were the guy, not Harvey and Wheeler” coaches told him.  “Show us you’re still in that league.”

Is this true? Can someone check this out and get another source on Francisco? I know I have been told that he just dogged it through the extended camp all season, plus another ‘source’ told me he has been a very bad influence on prospect pitcher Hansel Robles. Why do you release a team player like Shaun Marcum and keep this piece of roak kill in your camp? Just write him a check and take him out to I95 and send him on his way.

 

One more thing about Mejia, especially if you are unhappy with the results of the MLB trading deadline day. The addition of Jenrry Mejia on the 25-man has come out of nowhere and, frankly, it would have cost this team at least one quality player to get someone with this kind of talent. Everything gets easier once this rotation is completed. Mejia would be the 3^rd starter that sits 95+ (Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler) and would leave only two slot left for the (Jon Niese, Dillon Gee, Jeremy Hefney, Carlos Torres, Jake deGrom) five guys that will come to camp next April. Then, around July, both Rafael Montero and Noah Syndergaard could be ready and able. It seems to me that Niese and Syndergaard are the favorites to finish out the ‘dream rotation’ (can you find a better SP5 in the league than Niese?) we have all dream about. Yes, there is still plenty of work to do regarding the other 20 players, but seven of them will be relieve pitchers that will also be dominated from this talent pool. Now, all you have to do is start spending some of that $40-50mil you’ll have laying around in the off season on every day players.