5/31/14

Morning Report – May 31st – Brandon Nimmo, Frank Viola, #10 Pick, Vic Black


                                                                                             
Coming Later Today –            
                                                 
        9 30 am – Herb G – Minor League Report 

       10:30 am - Reese Kaplan - You Can't Win 'Em All in El Paso
  
        11 30 am –   Stephen Guilbert - A Quick Look at Outfield Draft Prospect Bradley Zimmer

        1 pm - FANGRAPHS - The Best and Worst Teams - Two Months In

          2 pm -  MLB Draft Insider – Mock

          3 pm -  Draft Profile - RHP - Aaron Nola
          
         4 pm - 2015 Draft Profile  -  LHP  -  Nathan Kirby  -  University of Virginia

          5 pm - Draft Profile - LHP - Kyle Freeland

         6 pm – Justin Twine, Carson Sands, Bradley Zimmer, Mac Marshall, Mike Papi



Want to learn more about sabermetrics… for free?  Go to: https://www.edx.org/course/bux/bux-sabr101x-sabermetrics-101-1558#.U4dvZWfQeJA



Brian Mangan @brianpmangan  -  Mets are ranked 12th or higher in OPS at 4 positions (2B, 3B, CF, RF) and 25th or worse at 4 positions (C, 1B, SS, LF).  No middle ground.


Mets Director of Player Development Dicky Scott on Brandon Nimmo’s soon-to-be promotion to Binghamton –

“He’s tearing it up down there right now. It’s the perfect scenario where you have guys forcing your hand. It almost leaves us no other response than to promote him. That’s what you want from your players. You want them to push and play well as opposed to playing an entire year and saying, ‘Well let’s send him to the next level just because, kind of a right of passage.’ That’s just not how it works.”

I posted this yesterday as part of a local Binghamton newspaper article on Nimmo. It has a direct quote from Scott which just doesn’t happen without Sandy Alderson signing off on it. Right now, with all the humidity around the clubhouse/front office, no one is opening his mouth about anything unless it has legs.

The bottom line here is Nimmo is your only true outfield prospect in the organization (for that reason alone you would think they would pick one with the 10th pick on June 5th).

This is a no brainer move. No one is rushing Nimmo. He has done everything the organization has asked him to do in Florida. He needs to get a good half-year under his belt in New York State so there is a good chance he could start the 2015 season in the desert.

I still haven’t changed his opening day 2016 ETA.



Frank Viola will return to Las Vegas next week as their pitching coach.
He also will be representing the Mets at the draft in June. He seems to be getting a lot of extra exposure, but so did Mookie Wilson once. The difference here is I think there is a good chance we are talking about the Mets next pitching coach.

Viola is father-like with his pitching staffs and most of the players that are now bubbling to the top were part of one of his squad. The Mets need change and it starts with the coaching. I’m not criticizing who’s in place now. I’m just saying that pitchers like Jake deGrom and Rafael Montero and products of Viola and they would respond much better to one of their mentors.


Andy Martino

        Word of the street, or at least in scouting circles, has the Mets looking at college shortstop Trea Turner (NC State), and lefthanded pitcher Sean Newcomb (Hartford) as strong possibilities for their first-round picks in the June 5 amateur draft. That’s what I heard, anyway.

        Martino isn’t the most popular of the beat reporters so it’s hard for me to believe he has any knowledge what the Mets are going to do. Frankly, after reading some of the stuff he has written, I wouldn’t tell him shit.

        Still, I agree that, if there are two players up on the board when the 10th pick comes around that the Mets think have equal value, and one is a college player, I would hope they would see the urgency of filling in some of the holes on this team.

        And, I’m the last one to tell you to draft by position, but if both players that are tied as the best player left on the board when #10 comes around are both college players but only one is an outfielder, well, you know where I’m going here.



PEDs –
        PEDs are part of our culture and our history, and nothing anyone can do will change that. And that’s OK. We can acknowledge that, understand that, and then learn to move on. Nelson Cruz has 19 home runs. Ryan Braun is getting a ton of All-Star votes. Jhonny Peralta signed a fat free-agent contract. The game is moving on with those players, and thankfully, we seem to be moving on as well. http://grantland.com/the-triangle/nelson-cruz-ryan-braun-melky-cabrera-ped-returns/


Robert Smiley to me -

        Mack, I know we'll probably find out late next week but have you heard anything else about the PTBNL in the Ike Davis deal? Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

                No, hush is still the word here.

        Regarding the list of 2013 draft picks, I really don’t see anyone that jumps off the table here. It’s not going to be either Austin Meadows or Reese McGuire. I would be thrilled with OF JaCoby Jones but even he doesn’t ‘light my fire’, if you know what I mean. Past that, there are a bunch of young starters and it could be any of them.

        Don’t expect to be dancing in the halls here.


I do want to revisit Vic Black.

       All I’m looking for at the back end of the bullpen are three nasty arms attached to guys with attitudes. This is my sole notice in wanting to move Rafael Montero there.

               You don’t need a bunch of sophisticated pitches from relief pitches. Two are enough. Mariano Rivera proved one was just fine.

               Black has a wonderful fastball that sits about 95, (over the last week, Mets relievers lead all MLB bullpens in average fastball velocity (94.0  mph). Black, Familia both averaging over 96) but his bread and butter pitch is his 12-6 curve. It’s unhittable if it works and it leads the league in walks if it doesn’t.

               Thursday outing was epic. It’s one thing to guess it’s coming… it’s another to find it to swing at it.

               If Black could pitch this was effectively, and join Mejia and Familia in the back end of the bullpen, the Mets could move on to try and solve other problems on this team.

                

16 comments:

Tom Brennan said...

I agree that if there is a strongg and close-to-ready OF to draft, I'd lean there. Other than Nimmo,and possibly the perplexing Puello, and Brownie points Andrew Brown (another HR, .750 slug % last nite) as unlikely longer solutions), the OF needs help. A lefty like Newcomb is also tempting. I think out of the middle infield propspects already in the system. I'd pass on Turner, even if he has a higher ceiling than all of them, because it seems to be an area of future major league strength already.
Another of the types of losses last nite to remind you to not get your hopes up with this Mets team.

Mack Ade said...

Thomas -

Morning.

Let me bring back another name from the past.

Vanderbilt's RHP Tyler Beede turned human halfway thru this season and he's now projected as now as a second round pick.

I always loved him and it looks like he got his act together last night for the NCAA tourney... went 8.0-IP, sat 93-97, hit 99 and struck out 14 Xavier batters.

The thing I always liked about Beede is his projectability. He's another Matt Harvey 6-4 power righty who some say could step into a major league rotation as early as 2015.

Mack Ade said...

Thomas, we can talk back end of the bullpen all day, but great teams don't go scoreless for that long against bad teams.

Teams like the 2014 Mets can't give up 5 runs in the first 9 innings. They simply are going to lose most of those games.

Regarding drafting an outfielder, yes, I would be happy for either Zimmer or (someone I didn't like earlier) Conforto. We need a college outfielder to open up in St. Lucie and join Nimmo there.

Ernest Dove said...

Good luck to deGrom tonight. ....over 120 pitches in his last start, and Mets simply can't afford for the young man to go less then 7 today.

Reese Kaplan said...

Last night while at the game I earned a new respect for Andrew Brown. In addition to his home run he hit a check swing to the opposite field and it was caught against the right field wall. He has some serious power. When I interviewed Wally two week ago he said he is a plus arm in the outfield, too. It makes you wonder why den Dekker, Abreu the Youngs would get chance ahead of him.

Mack Ade said...

I was surprised when they pulled Dice-K.

There are games you are destined to lose and this looked like one as soon as Montero started giving up runs. Pulling him and then Dice seemed like a desperate move to get back on track. The problem would be the lack of the Mets offense past 5 runs.

Did you ever notice those games when the starter goes bad, the team tends to send in the high-ERA guys to just get the game over with.

Sadly, they should have maybe considered that approach here and, even though Dice's ERA is good, leave him in for a few more innings. Now, your pen is stretched for the whole series.

Then again, who could have planned for this to happen.

The Mets don't have many days off coming up, Look for some 'relief' from the desert.

Mack Ade said...

Reese -

Did you get a chance to say hello to Josh for me?

Ernest Dove said...

I would much prefer Brown and his power on the bench, then watch den dekker continue to strikeout during his one at bat a game.........
Brown may be a kind of aaaa player, but when abreu starts, what do we have on the bench? DeKKKer, the singles hitting Flores, CY (don't get me started on CY).....the only homer threat is Recker, and TC is one of those managers who worries about worst case scenarios of team being left without a catcher on bench.

Reese Kaplan said...

Yes, Mack...I got to say hello to Josh Satin on your behalf during his stretching exercises in the shallow outfield just behind 1st base. He said to say hello. (It's in the article coming out later).

Ernest Dove said...

Any chance that this old guy Buddy, instead of reportedly replacing Montero, could instead be replacing Scot Rice?

Ernest Dove said...

How much longer can the Mets have a LOOGY who can't get lefties out?

Mack Ade said...

On pace to win... 75 games

Michael S. said...

SS are usually the most athletic players on the field (except for Wilmer Flores). Even if we have a few SS in the system, drafting another wouldn't be a problem as most would be pretty easy to convert to OF - the skillsets are pretty similar.

Steve from Norfolk said...

Still praying for Trea Turner, but Conforto or Zimmer wouldn't disappoint me.

Mack Ade said...

It doesn't matter if you draft another shortstop... you just need to get it right one time and you can deal the rest off.

This is why you always go 'best player on the board'.

Even catcher.

God forbid you drafted the best pure catcher in the draft (Max Pentacost) and you had him d'Arnadud, and Plawecki in your system at the hardest position in baseball and the toughest for teams to find pure talent. Your phones would ring off the hook.

Tom Brennan said...

Couldn't agree with you more, Mack, which is why I campaign for a guy like Brown, who Reese saw and commented on (thanks, Reese) was impressed by his raw power. Given who we have in the entire organization to work with, I like him because he has huge power, is aggressive, and can hit, period. I think he gives you a minimum of ,240 and a lot of power at the big league level. Maybe he hits .280 with regular playing time.

Better than I'd project Young, who looks like a .200 hitter until proven otherwise, and much more aggressive than Duda - as his approx. 170 RBIs in less than 700 at bats at AAA in 2012 - 2014 show.

Duda seems at his worst with guys on - Brown's #'s show he loves to drive guys in (how could a guy knock in more, frankly). To go scoreless the last 9 innings last night is the hallmark of a losing team. We need bats in there.