Morning Report – May 27th – Draft Day, Singles Hitters, Perception

        Coming Later Today –

                10 am -  Herb G - Minor League Report

                12 noon – Stephen Guilbert – The Skinny on Draft Prospect OF Michael Conforto

                  2 00 pm - Top 26 Projected Draft Picks In The 2015 Draft

                4 00 pm - 2015 Draft Profile -  RHP  -  Mike Matuella  -  Duke University

                6 pm - Isiah Gilliam, Sean Newcomb, Justin Smith, Ben Smith, Alex Destino, Aaron Mizell

Noah Syndergaard        ✔ @Noahsyndergaard -    Not exactly how I pictured my trip to New York this summer to be, but no need to worry folks. I'll be just fine. Thank you everyone!

We’re getting closer to the draft every day. The plan here is simple.

        I am going to post up on June 4^th the top ten players in the draft, by position.

        Stephen Guilbert will have an open thread up all day on Day One and Day Two (June 5^th and 6^th) to discuss what’s going on and who was picked.

        I will follow up each draft pick chosen by the Mets with a brief history of the draft pick.

Let me know if you want any other info those first two days.

I keep having to go back and re-write this because it seems like something changes about this team every ten minutes. Is this what they call 'fluid'?  I call it leaking like a sieve.


First of all, Las Vegas is going to have to make some decisions about their rotation. Rafael Montero and Jacob deGrom are in Queens, and Noah Syndergaard is on the DL and getting an MRI in NYC. This leaves Logan Verrett (4.37), Dana Everland (3.95), the recently converted reliever Giancarlo Alvarado (6.17) and Greg Peavey (2-starts, 12.96). My guess is sometime today Darin Gorski will be announced as joining the staff (after his 2-hit CG shoutout yesterday. Gorski is 9-starts, 4-2, 2.22, 1.01 for Binghamton and there really isn't much more for him to do there. Plus, we sure could use a 6-4 lefty in the wings.



Most of us that do this for a living (sic) use Twitter as our main source of information. I follow all the Mets beat reporters as well as at least 50 other Mets writers throughout the journalistic world. The one thing that seems to becoming the norm is the complete lack of writing anything positive about this team, the owners, the management, or the manager. 

There were a few left, but even they seem to have vanished.

Some, like Mike Silva and Mark Healey, have just become one dimensional. Others, like Ed Ryan, have just disappeared. Go ahead, try doing this every day for a team that can’t produce more than a couple of runs every game.

Brian Magnon left this on Twitter right after Lucas Duda hit into a doubleplay with the bases loaded on Sunday:

Brian Mangan ‏@brianpmangan  -  Oh, stop bitching #metstwitter and writers. You act like every AB is the end of the world or like you've never seen a ball game before.

You all are going to have to start living with the fact that, once again, this team does not have enough to compete with the rest of their division, no less the National League. The young pitching is turning out to be as advertised, but the everyday players on this team are simply singles hitters that now don’t seem to have any confidence in each other in the field.

We have spoken many times that you can win close games if you pitch well and play excellent defense; however, losing games by one run due to a defensive mistake seems to be the norm lately. First it’s David Wright, than (who else) Wilmer Flores, and Sunday it’s Daniel Murphy. This could have resulted in a three win swing that would make things look an awful lot better right now.

For me, the arrival of both Rafael Montero and Jake deGrom have been a good thing. Neither one is getting any offensive support but welcome to the club.

Yesterday's outing by deGrom did prove to have some control issues, but let's not forget that rookie pitchers get different strike zones from home plate umps.

Regardless, both Montero and deGrom have proven they were ready and probably left too long at the AAA level.

The spot start of Daisuke Matsuzaka Sunday could result in a number of moves and marketing plans. Michael Scannell pointed out in a comment earlier this week that the reason our fearless leader might have quietly released both Montero and deGrom to any ‘Super 2’ strangle hold was because they both could be the first pitchers  marketed for out of town. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense, not because I want either of them to leave, but because this sounds so Sandy-like in the way he operates.

Remember… the 2015 rotation, on paper, will be Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard (hopefully there is no long term problem from yesterday's placement on the DL), Zack Wheeler, the lefty (Jon Niese), and the contract (Bartolo Colon).

This leaves Dice-K, Dillon Gee, Montero, and deGrom to still find a home for.

Matsuzaka isn’t under any long term contract, but he can’t be marketed at the all-star break unless you first can show other teams that he can still effectively start. He’s also cheap as hell for another team to pick up what remains of the 2014 contract.

Forget about 2014… I just listed nine starters. There’s plenty of guys to find a rotation to end this year with, but there’s at least 2-3 players that could go to other teams and still leave the Mets with a very talented rotation.

Is Colon marketable? Well, his contract isn’t and, if the Mets won’t spend this kind of money for someone to play for them, why would they eat this kind of money for someone to pitch against them? No, Colon will either be in your 2015 rotation, or the highest paid long man in baseball.

The last question is, if the Mets have 2-3 starters they can move for everyday players, why can’t Sandy seem to get that started in the right direction… but that’s another post.

Let me try and explain what’s going on in another way.

Perception is reality.

If you like Coca-Cola and I like Pepsi, we’re both right.

I’ve worked the clubhouse and interviewed pitchers after a game.

Let’s say, in Game 1, a pitcher goes seven innings, giving up four runs, three of which came in the last inning he pitched, but the team won the game, 7-4.

Then, in Game 2, a pitcher goes the same seven innings, gives up only two earned runs on one hit and an error, but the team loses 2-1.

These are two completely two different interviews with two completely different mindsets by the pitcher. The final feelings are always depended upon the results, so Game One would have a positive ring (even though this pitcher gave up 4 runs vs. only 2 runs by the other pitcher), both to the reporter and the pitcher. You might approach him with a ‘did you find yourself becoming tired at the end’ approach, but the conversation always ends with a team victory and the pitcher talking about what he did well. You will never write a story that says someone ‘rallied’ from 7-1 to 7-4 to still lose the game.

Now, the other pitcher just had his back broken with that loss and your first inclination is to just leave him alone with his thoughts in front of his locker. He knows he did his job and he also knows it was the team that lost the game, though you will never hear him utter these words. My approach here would be to target into the ‘stuff’ he had in the outing and lead the interview away from the final results.

This is, what I assume, is what’s going through the minds of the Mets pitchers right now. The team is not supporting a very talented pitching staff and management doesn’t seem to want to do anything about it also.

They also have one other big problem. They have no one on their side. Every Mets write, be them either bloggers or beat reporters are coming up with every way to negatively represent this team.

I can’t understand why any Mets player would have a Twitter account.

It’s like that Ricky Gervais Audi commercial.