Mack’s Morning Report – 12-29 – 2013 Draft, Stan Brooks, Dillon Gee, Ike Davis

 

2013 Year in Review: MLB Draft –

The 2013 MLB Draft marked the second year under the new rules of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement put in place to limit what teams can spend on players with the implementation of a signing bonus pool assigned to each team based on the number of picks they own and at what slots. And for the second year in a row, the new rules have done what they were intended to do: Keep bonuses down while also giving all teams an equal and fair opportunity to select the best players at their respective slots.

 Here are the top 10 Perfect Game storylines from the 2013 MLB Draft:

http://www.perfectgame.org/Articles/View.aspx?article=9230

            Mack – The Mets 2013 draft is growing on me.

I never had anything against the picking of 1B Dom Smith with the first pick. I just wanted a college outfielder who could move faster through the system. In the end, I’m thrilled with Smith who looks now to have an ETA on opening day 2017.

Many of my friends over at Perfect Game told me that the Mets may have had the best draft in baseball last year. They said the high school kids picked are dripping with tools. Will they develop? We’re just going to have to wait and see.

Three guys that have already impressed me are 10^th round pick, SS Luis Guillorme (GCL: .258), 12^th round SS Jeff McNeil (K-Port: .329), and 17^th round RP Johnny Magliozzi (Cyclones: 14-G, 1.17, 0.72). It really surprised me that ‘Mags’, who I followed all year at the University of Florida, had fallen this far in the draft.

I’m particularly interested in the progress of three high school picks… 2^nd round RHP Andrew Church (GCL: 3-3, 5.91), 3^rd round pick CF Ivan Wilson (GCL: .219), and fellow 3^rd round pick RHP Casey Meisner (GCL: 1-3, 3.06). Look for the three of them to join the Kingsport roster on opening day.

Ask any scout and they will tell you that you just can’t qualify the time spent in the minors during the same year you played school ball as your first year of organized ball. It’s the introduction to what they call ‘the grind’ and stats, good or bad, go out the door.

Consider this time spring training for minor leaguers and wait until the following year’s opening day before you start keeping track of what these players do.

 

Stan Brooks -

CBS Radio all-news WINS, New York (1010) news reporter Stan Brooks died December 23 from lung cancer.  He was 86.  Brooks remained on the air until just a month before his death.  He spent decades covering city hall and the press room had been named after him.  Brooks joined WINS in 1962 as news director, three years before it switched to an all-news format.  He jumped to Westinghouse Broadcasting for a management position but then returned to WINS in 1970 as a reported.   Before working in radio, Brooks worked at several newspapers. http://www.insideradio.com//Article.asp?id=2737832#.Ur345sqA2M-



Brad Johnson -
 
We statheads like when we can put things into tidy boxes. Pitcher X posts Y peripherals for expected result of Z. Buy or don’t buy accordingly. But not every pitcher is polite enough to reveal his true nature to us. That doesn’t mean we can’t leverage him for fantasy purposes; it just means that it’s hard to know how to leverage him.

That’s the case with Dillon Gee. He looked easy enough to understand after 2012, when he posted a decent strikeout rate (7.96 K/9), strong walk rate (2.38 BB/9), generated ground balls over half the time, and posted a tolerable 4.10 ERA that was worse than his 3.54 xFIP. But he took a step back in 2013. His ERA improved to 3.62, this time with a 4.07 xFIP, but his strikeout rate plummeted to 6.42 K/9. It’s hard to roster a pitcher with that low of a strikeout rate in 5×5 leagues. http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/dillon-gee-has-a-confusing-season/  

Jason Mast –

Zach Wheeler for two months of a 34 year old Carlos Beltran, Noah Syndergaard and Travis D’Arnaud for a 38 year old R.A. Dickey, Mets GM Sandy Alderson drives a hard bargain prospect wise. All told, he netted three eventual top 20 prospects for a pair of free agency bound players well on the wrong side of thirty, and this has given him the boldness – and the leverage – to ask for a lofty price as he struggling first baseman, Ike Davis.

Although the 26 year old first baseman has hit less than .230 with an OBP under .330 in each of the last two seasons, the Mets are requesting prospects Tylor Thornburg from the Brewers, Eduardo Rodriguez from the Orioles, or Nick Kingham from the Pirates, in any potential trade, according to Mike Puma of the Daily News and John Perrotto of baseball prospectus. Contrast that with Carter Capps, the power reliever with a 5.91 ERA the Marlins got for Logan Morrison, and you have a pretty high asking price. Granted, Ike offers greater potential, but Morrison actually has better numbers and a greater prospect pedigree, and it’s a fairly steep climb from a struggling reliever – however good his stuff is – to a prospect of Thornburg’s or Rodriguez’s caliber. http://gradingonthecurve.com/2013/12/28/prospect-price-high-ike-davis/

Mack – I’m starting to realize that this just might be early in the Alderson negotiation process. At some point, baseball is going to be left with one viable first baseman to move before the season starts and, hopefully, that will be Davis. At the same time, hopefully one of these three teams can counter offer something to Alderson’s liking.

The Mets are not going to find their 2014 shortstop here, though a decent addition to the pen is possible. Lover level starters are just more future trade bait for a team with plenty in the system.

God, I wish this went different. Davis would have been a perfect transitional first baseman into Dominic Smith.