1/23/14

Mack’s Morning Report – 1-23-14 – Jacob deGrom, Future Direction, Sully-Chat, Shortstops, #10 Pick



Coming Up Later Today - 

    11am  -  The LTJ Editorial: “Could Ike Davis just have had a bad 2013?”

    2pm  -  D Whit  -  2014 A Break-Out Year For Jenrry Mejia


Adam Rubin

New Seattle Mariners hitting coach Howard Johnson watched Zack Wheeler and Rafael Montero from the opposing dugout while coaching in Triple-A last season. But the Mets prospect who impressed him most at Triple-A Las Vegas last season? Jacob deGrom, a 6-foot-4 right-hander and ninth-round pick in 2010 out of Stetson University, who went 4-2 with a 4.52 ERA in 14 starts for the 51s. DeGrom had started the season at Class A St. Lucie, then made 10 starts with Double-A Binghamton before the rapid ascent to Las Vegas.

Mack – These are the kind of press that is worth it’s weight in trade-gold. There’s no room in the Mets rotation for deGrom and, frankly, he probably would bring a bigger return to the team in a future trade than to be converted to a reliever in Queens.

Even more important… no one has more ‘cred’ than Rubin, so it’s a perfect promotional piece.

I still see him starting 2014 as part of the Las Vegas rotation and we’ll see how things progress from there.


John Zozo

            You have to make the turn here and begin from the bottom.

Follow me on this… concentrate your minor league efforts in following the likes of:

DGL/GSL - Jose Medina, Luis Silva, Jose Celas, Darwin Ramos, Scarlyn Reyes, Alfredo Reyes, Yeffry de Aza, Luuis Carpio,     Ali Sancez, Luis Arizurieta, Ricardo Cespedes, Oswald Caraballo

K-Port – Andrew Church, Corey Oswalt, Carlos Gomez, Andrew Masse, Casey Meisner, Luis Guillorme, Adrian Abrue, Jose Garcia, Ivan Wilson, and Michael Bernal could easily produce five legitimate future major league stars some day.             

You need to put your aggression on the shelf and give this team a second (or third) chance.

Do it for me.


Sully Chat –

            Comment From Not Sandy Alderson  - Thanks for doing this Jeff. What would you do regarding the Mets first base logjam (or clogged toilet, in this case)

Jeff Sullivan: Play Davis. Might as well see. He obviously has next to no market value, but he’s more interesting to me than Duda and it’s not like 2014 is going to be a championship season

Comment From Grack Zeinke - Ike Davis hit 26 HRs in the last 4 mos of the 2012 season FTR.

Jeff Sullivan: And had a 1.1 WAR!



Jeff asked –

            Which SS in the Mets system offers the best chance to be an upside play, on at least one side of the ball?

Mack – I assume what you’re asking here is who has the highest ceiling.

For now, you want to follow two players… Gavin Cecchini and Amed Rosario. One will play St. Lucie while the other plays Savannah. The actual decision who goes where is still up in the air.

Cecchini doesn’t bring too many tools to the game but does seem to get it done (when he’s healthy). He needs a breakout year in 2014, both with the bat and on the field. He also needs to keep off the DL.

Rosario comes off with a little more talent on the field and t’s far too early to judge how well he will do with the bat. Like most youngsters, he needs to learn pitch recognition and stop dipping his shoulder.

I can’t honestly put my money on either of these guys yet, but let’s keep track of them through 2014 and watch their progress (decline).


On another note, in the other news that has been beat to death, do you have a prediction on where Tanaka ends up signing? I would love to see the Angels get him and then turn around and trade Aybar to the Mets to clear some payroll.

Mack – Yeah, my guess he goes to the Yankees at around, oh, I don’t know… 7/yrs, $155mil.

Seriously, once again the Yankees throw stupid money at someone and make the Wilpons look like distant cousins. I’ve said a number of times over the years that I really don’t care about all this money shit because it’s not mine. If you want to spend it on someone, fine, knock yourself out.

What bothers me now is that my team doesn’t seem to be part of this process anymore. I really enjoy the challenge of putting together a winner without throwing these kind of contracts around, but it is frustrating that the Mets couldn’t even afford the $20mil that needed to be sent to the Japanese team, no less the contract amount to Tanaka.


Greg b asked -

Mack, when the Mets turn to pick in the draft if your were in charge would you pick a hitter or if there is a pitcher who scouts say can be a top of the rotation pitcher, who would u pick?

            Mack – Greg, it’s always ‘best player available’.

Every organization grades out their top picks and puts them on the board in ranking position. There will be plenty of decent hitters and pitchers available when the 10th pick comes up. They will make that decision based on their talent evaluators.


That being said, if it was me, I would go power top of the rotation college pitcher (a la Mike Harvey) every time (but that’s just me). A perfect pick this year (and he will be available) would be Vanderbilt’s RHP Tyler Beede. You could start him the day after you sign him in St. Lucie and he could finish the 2014 season in Binghamton.

18 comments:

Unknown said...

What was my question that you answered? Was it me chirping on the owners again?

Brian Joura said...

I thought it was real interesting where you think Cecchini and Rosario will play next year.

The Alderson-era Mets have not been aggressive with their lower-level assignments. In fact, they've been the exact opposite.

When was the last position player who played the majority of the year in the APPY to open in a full season league the following year?

Off the top of my head, I'd say Wilmer Flores. And he played in the Tony Bernazard, promote them until they fail era. And even he only played in the SAL.

My guess is Cecchini is in the SAL and Rosario is in Brooklyn.

Mack Ade said...

Zozo -

Yeah -

I can't change what has happened (I have more on this, the Minaya years, the Manoff mess, etc.) in tomorrow's report.

All I'm saying is redirect those 'negative waves' to the positive things going on in the system under Sandy Alderson, even with this budget mess,

IBfromWhitePlains said...

Well put Mack. Met fans should “put [their] aggression on the shelf and give this team a second (or third) chance.” The Met blogosphere seems to thrive on negativity, gripes and Wilpon insults. Man, it’s baseball, and if misery is all you can get out of it, try something else. If it’s hopeless, why be a fan?

tommyb said...

The disparity between Yank and Met spending is as vast as can be imagined, but it may have something to do with us playing in the "burro" of Queens.

But let's say the Mets see a lot of the upcoming talent (and guys who are recently with the club, like Lagares, who have yet to have hit their baseline), and guys like Duda and Davis who will either crater or somehow emerge as real everyday players. My thoughts are they feel too much is uncertain for 2014 to splurge, that a lot will clarify in 2014, that they will go into 2015 with Harvey, Wheeler, and Noah as their big 3 with a great supporting pitching cast, and so may then splurge on a few really big ticket FA hitters to plug those clarified weaknesses and look to compete for the World Series in 2015. Doing so would still leave them $80MM - $100MM below Yanks' salary.

Mack Ade said...

IB:

I HATE the fact that the Mets can't financially compete with other teams, but they simply can't right now.

We can't keep focusing on this past shit...

It has only happened since the Manaoff mess. Before that, the Mets attendance was in the 4mil range, the team either made or just missed the playoffs, and the overall salaries were competitive.

It's just the results of a bad investment

Mack Ade said...

Tommy -

The Mets will never match the Yankees salary. They simply don't operate that way.

One of the main reasons why is because the Mets farm system is so far past what the Yankees is and has produced.

The Mets 25-man is becoming dominated with team controlled players (and will so more over ht enext few years)

That being said, Sandy is bringing this along using baby financial steps...

I'm writing more about this tomorrow, but I will say this...

He has already fulfilled his promise to spend more this year...

and Curtis Granderson, Bartolo Colon, and Chris Young will bring a much bigger return than Johan Santana, Jason Bay, and Frank Francisco did last year.

Anonymous said...

^A truer statement could not have said than that last line.

Unknown said...

I for one will not let ownership slide, you guys can do what u want. If I rant on ownership and u don't want to hear it then skip to next comment. I have been a fan way before they got here and if they don't run the business properly I am going to say something about it. If I feel they are scamming us fans then u guys sit on your hands cause I am not.
Yes I don't support them financially by going to games like I used to, but I would have no problem doing so if they invested as much into club as they ask us to pay. Meaning if they charged Tampa ticket prices I wouldn't mind a $85 mil payroll, but u can't charge almost Yankee prices and tell me you don't have money to sustain at least a $120 mil payroll.
You guys can sweep the dust underneath the carpet and forget about it, that's what they want u to do. But if u see something wrong and want change you must persist to do something about it, and not let them off the hook.
The numbers just don't add up and I for one am not an accountant but they don't. So until ownership either changes or they stop scamming us fans I am not letting my guard down on them. The players have nothing to do with it and I root for them from the top down. I am so optimistic in our young corps, that we will be good shortly. It's not their fault at all we aren't at least a .500 team yet.

Mack Ade said...

John -

Don't get me wrong...

We love your rants, and rant on...

In fact, I wish you were a weekly writer and had a 'Zozo-Rant' column...

Think about it

Unknown said...

Lol, actually can anyone name the last time this ownership group has ever done anything right by us fans? And please don't say extend David Wrights contract, cause we forced their hand.

That Adam Smith said...

The last thing they did right by us? Well, firing Steve Phillips was like a gift. And firing Omar felt like a gift at the time, though the longer we go the more I think that Omar's biggest screw-ups were Jeffy's ideas.

Hey Mack, I've got a question... do you think we can find someone who will put together a weekly Luis Guillorme highlight package and put it on YouTube?

Anonymous said...

@Adam

Well Guillorme should be in Brooklyn next year. I have a few contacts down there so I'll see what I personally can do.

Reese Kaplan said...

@ John Zozo

If it was a true rebuild then paying Wright was collossally stupid on their part. They should have gotten 2-3 Zack Wheelers in exchange for him, opened up a spot on the infield that could have been manned by a Zach Lutz until Flores was ready. Then you'd have those three hot-shit prospects plus all the money allocated to Wright to improve in other areas such as SS and 1B.

They CAVED to fan pressure on Wright. From a business perspective you paid for past accomplishments, not what he does now or will do in his declining future.

As far as what the ownership has done RIGHT by the fans...I can't fault Alderson as much as others would given the dearth of capital and the fact he is the paid mouthpiece to lie on his employers' behalf. I think hiring Alderson (which might be more a push from Selig than a pull from the Wilpons) did right by the fans. Given the very tight shackles he's had he's done far more good than bad. No one bats 1000.

Cutting Jason Bay felt very good. They were willing to admit their mistake. That was good for the fans.

Trading Beltran and Dickey for future stars felt good. Even trading Byrd & Buck and getting younger talent in return felt better than hanging onto Scott Hairston ever did.

I think the Colon signing was the best of the three he did this off season. Granderson should be OK, but probably in the 25-30 HR range while I'll never understand the Chris Young signing at all, particularly when there was someone like Jose Abreu out there for the taking. I don't care if you have a logjam at 1B. The lefties can't hit, Satin is a bench player and Flores hasn't had enough reps at the position to be handed the job.

Mack Ade said...

Adam - Let's wait and see what team he is assigned to and we'll try and find someone there.

BTW - his father follows us... he used to follow me on Twitter than unfollowed mefour days later after I wrote something nice about him

go figure...

Ernest Dove said...

Sooooooo....Jacob deGrom.
Maybe I'm just talkin out my ass here, but. .......
What if he becomes the 2014 (pitching) version of Juan Lagares? What if he outshines some other prospects if/when given his chance.

Mack Ade said...

Brian -

I am being aggressive and I hope you are wrong. Alderson needs to taka lesson from some of the other teams and the movement of their young prospects.

If you have the talent, move up.

Anonymous said...

Mack
This is luis.I have been following you I guess that time I might have unfollowed by mistake but still follow you. Have a great day