Mack’s Morning Report – 2-16-14 – Trade Pitching, Mets Spending, Kyle Farnsworth, OD Roster

Collette-Chat –

Comment From Guest - If you’re the Mets over the next year do you, trade some pitching for a bat or hold on to the excess pitching for 6/7th starters and bullpen/injury depth ?

Jason Collette: It sounds cliche, but you can never have too much pitching. See Toronto over the past few seasons. I’d hoard as much pitching as I possibly could.

Mack – Okay, it does sound cliché, but there’ only 11-12 pitching slots on a team and the Mets system looks like they will be boiling over that come 2016. You have to move some of these out for bats.

We spend most of our time talking about the future starter studs in this system; however, we’re about to start seeing around 5-6 quality relievers graduate from the AAA/AA portion of the Mets system.

It's one thing to plan on converting the likes of Darin Gorski, Logan Verrett, Jake deGrom, and Cory Mazzoni to the pen... well, what heppanes when Adam Kolarek, Chad Bradford, Jack Leathersich, John Church, Jeff Walters, and Joel Carrero are ready?

I’ll say this for what Collette said… the Mets are still a year away from their best rotation (Harvey, Wheeler, Syndergaard, Montero, and somebody). These are all young arms that will be around for at least four years. You simply are not going to be able to bury guys like Steven Matz and Michael Fulmer on a future Las Vegas roster.

Jared Diamond wrote a very interesting article for the Wall Street Journal which won’t make for pleasant reading at Sandy Alderson’s breakfast table (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303704304579383054271020812?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303704304579383054271020812.html). 

It’s another one of those ‘the Mets didn’t spend enough money this off-season’ spins, taking the road that the Mets once again lied to the fan base about their goals in this off-season.

It’s an easy story to write… $54.5mil went off the books, $56.5mil new money went on, creating a +$2.1mil net increase to the money spent for this season.

The problem with this is that the story isn’t that simple.  

$31mil of the old money was paid to Johan Santana. Jason Bay was paid $18.125mil in 2014. Neither one of these guys spent one day on the field so you must factor in that this $49.125mil represents dead money.

I see all of this differently. I don’t see the Mets having a $93,684,590 2013 payroll, as reported by Cot. My payroll deducts the dead money from this, creating a 2013 ‘field payroll’ of $44,559,590. This figure represents the team you watched last year.

Now, put this up against the team built for 2014 and what is being spent here (estimates from $86-89mil), and, yes Dorothy, the Mets have taken the steps to put a better team ‘on the field’ in 2014, vs. 2013.

Kyle Farnsworth on going from a 100-mph fastball to one that averages 92.6:

“I wish I could still do that. I don’t know. it’s just one of those things that you’re blessed to do, and you hope to be able to harness that. Over the years I’ve learned that you can get away with more mistakes throwing that hard. But the older you get the more you learn how to pitch. That’s where you have to mature and grow into things like that.”

Mack – I’ve never heard it said better. Bodies simply slow down far quicker than minds do. I actually used to think that baseballs were being hit harder to me at third base as I aged. Paul Altruda, my shortstop, said to me “you used to get those…”, which was the beginning of my realization that I had to play the game differently in the future if I wanted to keep in the starting lineup (play deeper and closer to the line).

Bartolo Colon is a perfect example of a guy that has learned to maximize what he has left at his age. One pitch, kept in the box, hitting the corners. Hopefully, some of this can rub off on the ex-Yankees closer.

Adam Rubin’s Projected OD Roster –

Rotation - Jonathon Niese, lhp  - Bartolo Colon, rhp  - Dillon Gee, rhp  - Zack Wheeler, rhp - Daisuke Matsuzaka, rhp

Lineup - Eric Young Jr., lf - Daniel Murphy, 2b - David Wright, 3b - Curtis Granderson, rf - Chris Young, cf - Ike Davis, 1b - Travis d'Arnaud, c - Ruben Tejada, ss

Bench - Anthony Recker, c - Josh Satin, 1b/3b - Anthony Seratelli, if/of – Juan Lagares, of – Lucas Duda, 1b/of

Bullpen - Bobby Parnell, closer - Jose Valverde, rhp - Kyle Farnsworth, rhp - Vic Black, rhp - Scott Rice, lhp - Jeurys Familia, rhp - Carlos Torres, rhp - 

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