Mack’s Morning Report – 11/25 – Rafael Montero, Chris Young, Draft 15, 2017

 

 

Rafael Montero –

Right-handed starting pitcher -- Rafael Montero,Binghamton (11 games), Las Vegas (16 games): Montero's 2013 season was simply more of the same from the 23-year-old. He went 12-7 with a 2.78 ERA and led the organization with 150 strikeouts while pitching at the highest two levels of the Minors. Montero held opponents to a .232 average and allowed six home runs in 155 1/3 innings while issuing 35 walks.

"He's always been an extreme strike thrower, which I think has been one of the reasons behind his quick rise," DePodesta said. "We were most impressed with two things: The first was that, after his first four or five starts in Triple-A, he walked more guys than he's ever walked before. He made that adjustment and started attacking guys more and more, and by the end, he was the same guy he had always been in A-ball and Double-A.

"The second thing, which I think ties into that, he's a fly-ball guy and he gave up just four homers pitching in Vegas. I think that's pretty remarkable, I think it shows the weak contact he gets, even though it's primarily fly balls." http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20131121&content_id=63739820&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_milb&sid=milb&tcid=tw_share

Mack – Was it Charlie who I used to argue with about Montero projecting as a reliever (it looks like we lost Charlie in the site conversion)? Mets officials hinted last week that we will not only see him sometime in 2014, but probably earlier than Noah Syndergaard. All indications is the 2014 team will remain a ‘pitcher first’ approach to the game, with emphasis on defense and speed rather than power. Things may get bumpy very early so I expect Montero to be in Queens in June at the latest.

 

Chris Young –

Steamer projects Young for +1.7 WAR over just 434 plate appearances, so the forecasting system actually believes Young is a slightly above average big league player. Because of his platoon splits, you can’t extrapolate his entire value over 434 PA out to 600 PA, but there’s nothing wrong with giving Chris Young a regular job and letting him play most days. And for $7 million, getting a roughly average regular OF is a nifty little bargain indeed.

Young isn’t a sexy addition, but this is the kind of solid low cost move that smart teams are making these days. If you just focus on what Young can’t do, you’ll ignore the fact that what he can do has value, and $7 million for what he brings to the table is one of the off-season’s better bargains. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mets-land-bargain-in-chris-young/

            Mack – I love it… they call this a ‘low cost move’.

Joel Sherman –

The Mets hate talking about their budget nearly as much as they loathe, say, discussing the Vince Coleman years.

You can understand. They have all the accouterments of a big-market team — rabid Northeast fan base, relatively new stadium, own TV network — yet they behave as, at best, a middle-market club.

Blame Bernie Madoff. Or organizational whiplash from big deals gone bad, such as Jason Bay and Johan Santana. Or the parsimonious tendencies of ownership.

But it is what it is. In other words, it’s silly to keep discussing which big fish they should sign. There is a tight budget. These are the rules of engagement. So now their front office has to do a better job of embracing that philosophy. And the best way to do that is stop pretending to want to construct a top-down roster and, instead, vigorously pursue a bottom-up strategy. http://nypost.com/2013/11/23/if-mets-arent-spending-big-they-must-be-better-bargain-hunters/

Mack – We have no idea what goes on at this level. I worked for crazies like this in the broadcasting industry and, trust me, there is always budget backlash after shelling out the kind of bucks you did to clunkers like Santana and Bay. Alderson is a loyal guy and the last thing you are going to read is him dissing his own boss about the pissy budget he’s been given in this wild-west like free agent market. This article is spot on. Spend wisely when you only have a limited amount in your pocket. 

Chris Young –

Chris Young is terrible against right handed pitching, he benefited from playing in Arizona, and he’s had 2 good years and five below average years. As Bill Parcells once famously said, “you are what your record says you are.” We can use whatever advanced stats we want to make ourselves feel better about the fact that Chris Young, as of now is one of our starting outfielders – but sometimes the eye test is valid too. Young has been a below average hitter for the majority of his career – and right now he is a starting outfielder for the 2014 Mets. That’s all you need to know. http://metsmerizedonline.com/2013/11/young-is-exactly-who-we-think-he-is.html

Mack – This is a very good article on Young and is worth reading. I love the reference to SABR being the same as ‘polishing a turd’. I don’t mean to keep beating this horse but, as of today, Young is second on the payroll and one of three starting outfielders. As I have said on other posts, if the going rate for a .200 hitter with 20-HRs is $7mil, than you can not a lot only $35-40 mil this year to turn this ship in the right direction. If the players value has gone up, so must the payroll. Adjust the projected 2014 payroll to $100mil and I’m fine with the money here.

 

My work on the Draft will end with the 2014 season. The compiling of the two daily ‘Draft 14’ are so time consuming and only decently generate traffic on the site for the one week the draft takes place. I wind up cutting and pasting an average of 300,000 words on all the key articles on these guys and I’m spending an average of 3-4 hours a night and all day Sunday preparing this information. I hope you have enjoyed it but, I turn 67 in February, have had a recent cancer scare, and have lost two close friends my age in the past 30 days. It’s time to cut back a little and save my strength for reporting on the Mets
.

It’s hard not to overreact at what is going on in the free agent market right now. We all like to play amateur General Manager and try and speculate what we would do if we were Sandy Alderson. How is this possible when Brian McCann worth $50mil two weeks ago and now has signed for a deal that could end up at twice that. We balked at Chris Young getting $7.25mil and thought the snag in any Jhonny Peralta deal was a third year, not more than 12 or 13 million dollars for those two years. There’s no sense in all this and it’s only going to get worse. The Mets can’t compete in this kind of money war with a ‘$35mil’ spending budget. That’s now two players.

Please understand something. This is NOT a player or agent driven market. All this craziness is coming from the other baseball teams. Very few seem to trying to operate in 2014 knowing that the $25mil from the new television deal is going to kick in at the end of the season. Any debt you run up will be easily be able to be financed from a progressive bank that can see that this extra spending can be wiped out before the 2015 season starts.

The Mets; however, continue to live in the dark ages, and chose to build a 2014 team based on current revenue receipts. Should we continue to criticize them? I just don’t know right now. I do know I want nothing to do with paying players like Stephen Drew in the $200mil range. I’d much rather increase both the domestic and international scouting system and keep searching the waiver wires for expiring contracted and DFA’d players. It’s not chopped liver but,things are going to begin to turn around bat wise on two levels:

-We’ve got four guys… Cesar Puello, Dustin Lawley, Travis Taijerson, and Cory Vaughn… that have proven the ability to hit home runs and drive in runs at the AA and AAA level. A couple have even led their leagues doing this. Odds say that one of these four will pan out to be a productive starting power based major league outfielder.Maybe two, but definitely one.    

-The second level of top prospects (Alderson’s boys of summer)will begin to mature in 2017… Gavin Cecchini, Dominic Smith, Jayce Boyd, Brandon Nimmo, Dilson Herrera, LJ Mazzilli, Amed Rosario, Kevin Plawecki, Jared King, Patrick Biondi… there’s a good chance that three of these guys will turn out to be a viable starter in major league baseball.

One from the first group… three from the second… and three more on your current team (Wright, d’Arnaud, Young)… and all of a sudden you have 7 starters mostly with players under team control.

You keep draft this way, and signing top international kids and you’ll have plenty of players to build a dynasty. Probably not in my lifetime, but this can work.