Reese Kaplan - What Purpose Does Spring Training Serve?

That question sparked a lot of debate among my Mets fans friends and we couldn’t agree exactly on one unified answer.  There were several schools of thought on the matter.  Regarding the Mets, it's obvious that there are some people clearly not paying attention.

“It’s to let the veteran players show they’re healthy and their stats don’t matter.”

To some extent I agree with this line of thinking if the veteran player in question is coming off a career average season.  If his performance the past year (or more) was substandard, then I think the stats are telling.  They indicate his preparation done during the off season for the upcoming campaign and are an indicator of what to expect.  When a David Wright hits under .200 I won’t lose sleep over it based upon his track record.  However, when you’re looking at an Ike Davis or Lucas Duda or Ruben Tejada you want to see some positive signs that might indicate that the negative track record was an anomaly and not the start of a negative trend.  John Lannan was cut by his last two teams and is pitching north of 4.38 ERA and a very ugly 1.54 WHIP.  Daisuke Matsuzaka is pitching to a nearly 5.00 ERA and also allowing 1.5 base runners per inning pitched.  Unfortunately these players are following trends of their most recent years (or in the case of Dice-K, his whole career), yet they’re being spared under the veteran player stats-don’t-matter proviso.

“It’s to let young players fight their way onto the roster.”

Would that it were so, but on the Mets it seems your fate is pretty much sealed even before reporting to Port St. Lucie.  If not, then you would have expected that 9 spring training RBIs by Wilmer Flores, a 2.89 ERA by Jenrry Mejia, 3 HRs by Zach Lutz, a .350 batting average by Matt den Dekker, a perfect 0.00 ERA by Miguel Socolovich or a .342 batting average by Erik Campbell would open some eyes. 

“Spring training statistics are meaningless.”

Oh really?  Ask Kyle Farnsworth or Josh Edgin or Jack Leathersich or Joel Carreño or Gonzalez Germen how little their numbers contributed to their future on the big club?

On the flip side, you have players who are in that predetermined chosen group who can do no wrong and they will still make excuses for their performances.  Everyone’s flavor of the week, Noah Syndergaard, is a good example.  His ERA is 5.19 for the spring, yet he’s all anyone talks about in terms of his future as an ace.  Rafael Montero pitched to a 3.00 and you hear less than half as much about him. 

“Let’s see what players can do.”

Now here’s a conundrum.  If we accept that veterans are merely there to show they are healthy and get into shape, then it’s doubly important to allow younger players and newcomers to demonstrate their capabilities to the manager and GM who make the roster decisions.  Towards that end you’d think a player who led AAA in RBIs would somehow be in the team’s plans for the future with a clear position in mind, but the recently kicked-to-the-curb Wilmer Flores played some 2B, some SS and some 3B.  Even when Ruben Tejada was unable to play, did they give as much opportunity as possible to see if Flores could handle the job?  No, we got a plethora of Omar Quintanilla ABs as well as a handful of innings to newcomer Anthony Seratelli who also should have gotten more chances since they have not seen him before but endured two years of Quintanilla lowlights. 

I could see spending time evaluating Eric Young, Jr. at 2^nd base since he played pretty much exclusively left field last year, but what value was there in seeing him in the OF when you have arguably the best defensive outfielder in the game in Juan Lagares fighting to even get into the lineup?  If there were questions about his ability to hit the ball or serve at leadoff then shouldn’t he have played virtually every game in the number one spot in the order since you already had nearly a full season of Eric Young, Jr. proving his incompetence there? 

What about poor Juan Centeño?  He got a whopping 11 ABs in order to evaluate him against the likes of Taylor Teagarden who got nearly 3 times as many.  Anthony Recker supplied occasional power and seemed to gel with the pitchers last year, so it was pretty much a foregone conclusion he would get the nod for backup to Travis d’Arnaud, but when you have a defensive whiz like Centeño who has shown recently he can hold his own as a singles hitter, you’d think he’d get at least some consideration.  Instead he was stationed well below the veteran second stringers (probably due to his youth as that’s an anathema to making the team under the current manager).  Once again, it seemed he was shut out before the auditions even began.

So as we move into the 2014 season with a starting pitching rotation that excludes Mejia, Montero and Syndergaard in favor of Matsuzaka, a lineup that may indeed exclude Juan Lagares in favor of Eric Young, a shortstop position that features a guy with no speed, run production and questionable defense, more questions than answers at first base and better players in AAA than some who come north.  So again I ask, “What purpose does Spring Training serve?”  Surely it's not to assemble the best team possible.