Morning Report – 4-10-14

1923 Yankee Stadium 

Coming Up –

         11 am -  Big League Futures - Top 25 Prospects - 3rd Edition

          2 pm  -  Top 10 SS in 2014 Draft - Updated 4-10-14   

         6pm -  Michael Gettys, Max Pentecost, Erick Fedde, Derek Hill, Carl Chester

         8pm – OF - Alex Verdugo - Sahuaro (AZ) HS

Tuesday was Mike Jacobs’ 1000^th minor league baseball game. Isn’t that special…

ESPN has added Mack’s Mets to its ‘Blog Roll’

Mets team batting average through seven games: .192 (2^nd worst in team history)

The ‘almost win’ continued Wednesday night. You simply can’t consistently win ballgames when you only have six team hits. The only time the Mets have had a lower team batting average at this point in the season was 1963.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that this guy had a great hit and that one made a great play. The team came off a great victory by Bartolo Colon and, even though Zack Wheeler didn’t have the best gave in the world, the Braves did score only four runs.

This game could have been won if the management and ownership would have invested the money needed to put an ample offense on the field… not only before day one of the season… but immediately after the Chris Young injury.

I’m going to write a lot more tomorrow about the minor league kids, but I really, really am starting to feel sorry for David Wright and the story he bought into.

Observations on…

You could tell Tuesday night that Bartolo Colon was very happy with his outing. He kept tossing the ball in the air and catching it before beginning his facing a new batter. Terry Collins had asked Colon to keep the ball down (the home plate umpire was also giving Colon the lower portion of the box) and he basically did throughout the first six innings. He did have to wait for quite a while for the Mets to give him ample support (three runs), but it made it much easier to come back out for the seventh inning.

Lucas Duda seems to only have one swing and that’s an attempt to clear the fences. It works once in a while but it will never produce a decent batting average. I don’t think I will understand how the Mets came up with proof that Duda would be a better choice than Ike Davis. I, like many, just feel that the Mets front office wants nothing to do with Davis anymore and are just holding out for a little better deal than has crossed their desk.

It was reported that Bobby Parnell had successful TJS today and the Met have targeted his return for opening day 2015. It sounds a little early to me, but what the hell do I know? I would hope that the Mets would target one of the free agent closers in the off-season and take the pressure off the return of Parnell. I still feel his natural position is in the eighth inning.

Should we take 1B Matt Clark serious? The Mets seem to have a lot of first basemen that ‘almost’ have the game needed to be successful in the majors and maybe we should keep an eye on this guy as the season goes on. This 27-yr. old 6-5 left hand hitter went 3-5 Tuesday and raised his early seasonal batting average to .412.

Savannah OF Steven Sabol had a miserable 2013 (Gnats: 365-AB, .203). Guys like this have a way of disappearing in the off-season but, no, he came back this year again to Savannah and the 22-year old is off to a much better start. He went 3-3 in the first game of the doubleheader, which included a home run in the sixth, and raised his seasonal batting average to .500.

St. Lucie’s SP Luis Cessa had a wonderful first start for the season: 6.0-IP, 8-H, 2-ER, 2-K, 0-BB, 3.00. Cessa is one of those ‘blue’ prospects… not quite a ‘red’ one like the Syndergaard’s of the world, but still talented enough to be taken serious. Christopher Soto did not have him listed in the Mack’s Mets Top 25 prospects.