Coming Later Today –
12 00
noon - Craig
Mitchell - An Open letter to Angry Met fans...........
3:00 PM
-
Have you noticed that sometimes a player comes along and
they simply can’t produce at an advanced level for a particular team. IF Anderson Hernandez was like that for the Mets back in
the early 2000s. No matter how well he did for the Mets in the minors it simply
never was duplicated when he made the translation to the major league level.
Then, we just finished a similar example with 1B Ike Davis, In his case, he had a wonderful half season
followed by nothing buy misery and every time he was sent to AAA to correct his
game, it looked like things would get back to those 30+ home run days. They
still haven’t in Pittsburgh but I truly believe his career will go better now
that he’s got the Mets out of his head.
I’m afraid we’re developing the same kind of situation
for C Travis d’Arnaud. This has nothing to do
with natural talent. This is all about New York, the beat press, the fan base
here, and how this organization conducts its business. Baseball just isn’t
supposed to be this stressful and I’m afraid the Mets need to get what they can
for this kid during the upcoming mid-season trading period. Most of baseball
still recognizes him for the projected talent he can still be at his young age.
They also understand the mind fuck you can fall in trying to do your job for
Flushing’s answer to The Lannisters. I love the three hits on Friday night and you all know I've been a big fan of his, but the Mets need to pass his name around prior to when the trading season starts to see what interest there is out there.
He''s still very young, considered very talented defensively and many team know that a good hitter can get caught up in all this New York horseshit.
He''s still very young, considered very talented defensively and many team know that a good hitter can get caught up in all this New York horseshit.
We can get by with Anthony Recker
and Juan Centeno for the remainder of the
year until it is Kevin Plawecki’s turn.
Ira Bloch to me -
Mack – Question from a loyal reader: I know a lot has
been written about how you can’t really judge hitting stats in Vegas. But, on
the other hand, I don’t read a lot about how much credit Backman and his staff
might be due priming these guys to thrive. Look at Vaughn, who couldn’t hit a
lick in AA. Numerous others like Duda, Davis, D’Arnaud etc etc. I think about
how that would translate to the ML club and I can’t help but think Backman
could really turn this franchise around.
It will never happen under Alderson, but my hope is
Alderson disappears after this season and ownership starts giving a shit about
the fans again.
Your thoughts?
Mack – Hi, Ira. It’s always great to hear from you.
There are a lot of people like yourself
that are in Backman’s camp. The players swear by him, but, let’s remember, the players
swear by TC also.
There’s a couple of factors here:
1. Forget the air, remember the pitchers. This is not
pitching at the major league level. Half are prospects still trying to find
their way while the other half are ex-major leaguers that have lost their way
2. Minor league managers spend far less time with the hitters than
the batting coach does. It’s the coach that starts off in the cages with the
kids and winds up standing behind the batting cage when they take BP. Managers
tend to look over the entire flock during practice and hit ground balls to the
infield.
3. Backman is sort of the Joe Biden of the New York Mets. Yes, on paper, he’s
next in line, but you just know it’s only a matter of time before he pisses
someone off.
I don’t think Backman is high on Alderson’s
list and he’s kept around to prevent more negative press. I also don’t think
Alderson will stay a Met past the end of this season. He’s the same age as I am
and, financially, doesn’t need all this shit. I expect him to either go into
the
commissioner’s office or return to the Latin American systems he loved
being part of.
Backman?
I have no idea. He has a great baseball mind but he’s a hand grenade
waiting for the pin to be pulled. I tend to think we’re looking at a career
minor league manager.
Mark Simon broke out an interesting stat the other
day. He took the number of ‘good plays’ a team made (avoiding a mistake),
misplays, and errors and came up with a Good/Bad Ratio in the field so far this
season.
The Mets have to be happy with this result.
The Mets came in 6th with 204
good plays, 128 misplays, and 45 errors, resulting in a 1.18 Good/Bad ratio.
They were only beaten by the Royals (1.32),
the Nats (1.28), the A’s (1.22), the Red Sox (1.21), and the Blue Jays (118…
one less error).
Need another reason to hate Terry Collins?
Brian Mangan compiled an interesting set of facts about TC’s usage of Chris Young, using 1-4 (.250) at the plate as an
average ‘good game’:
After the “bad games”, he was started 57%
of the time and benched 42% of the time.
However after the “good games”, he was
started 25% of the time and benched 75% of the time.
Amazing.
Klaw-Chat –
Rave (NJ) - Flores demoted, Mets going with 6 OF's and no
middle infielders. What is Sandy thinking?
Keith Law - How does the demotion of Flores alter the number of
middle infielders on the roster?
Dave C (Albany, NY) - What kind of upside do you see for Kevin Plawecki. Regular catcher on lower end team or
something more?
Klaw - More. Solid-average everyday catcher.
Minor Stuff -
Yes, the upper levels of the Mets pitching rotations leave a lot to be desired right now; however, I believe that it is time for the Giancarlo Alvarado experiment to be first, re-evaluated, and, secondly probably come to an end. Friday night was a wild one, with five walks over 5.2-IP. His saving grade was the fact he only gave up one earned run keeping his ERA at a high 5.82. He has no future in Queens and, frankly, if he has any purpose this year in the organization, I would think it would come out of the pen... Binghamton 3B/OF Dustin Lawley's bat is being to pop again, bring home his 10th home run last night, Always a slow starter, Lawley has his BA up to .343 his past 10 games, He's one of the few upper level potential 20+ home run hitters we have in the system... SP Luis Mateo pitched another rehab assignment on Saturday for the GCL Mets: 2.0-IP, 1-H, 0-R, 2-K, 1-BB... overall rehab ERA: 2.08. It will be interesting to see what level he winds up with at the end of his rehabbing. He's 24-yrs. old now, and has not pitched a full season since 2012 with Brooklyn. My guess is St. Lucie...
And lastly from Bill Metsiac on Sunday...
Minor Stuff -
Yes, the upper levels of the Mets pitching rotations leave a lot to be desired right now; however, I believe that it is time for the Giancarlo Alvarado experiment to be first, re-evaluated, and, secondly probably come to an end. Friday night was a wild one, with five walks over 5.2-IP. His saving grade was the fact he only gave up one earned run keeping his ERA at a high 5.82. He has no future in Queens and, frankly, if he has any purpose this year in the organization, I would think it would come out of the pen... Binghamton 3B/OF Dustin Lawley's bat is being to pop again, bring home his 10th home run last night, Always a slow starter, Lawley has his BA up to .343 his past 10 games, He's one of the few upper level potential 20+ home run hitters we have in the system... SP Luis Mateo pitched another rehab assignment on Saturday for the GCL Mets: 2.0-IP, 1-H, 0-R, 2-K, 1-BB... overall rehab ERA: 2.08. It will be interesting to see what level he winds up with at the end of his rehabbing. He's 24-yrs. old now, and has not pitched a full season since 2012 with Brooklyn. My guess is St. Lucie...
And lastly from Bill Metsiac on Sunday...
Here we are at the halfway point of the season, and the Mets are on pace to finish exactly as predicted by "the experts". The "over/under" in Vegas for the Mets, as of OD, was 74.5. With the win total at 37, that projects to 74. How close can it get (not enough for me, because that would leave me one W short, since I bet the "over")?
The way I judge a mgr is how the results compare with the expectations. Given the results so far, the team (and Terry) are neither better nor worse than what was reasonably predicted. I guess by Alderson's ridiculous "90 win" standard, the season to date is a flop.
The second half will tell us if it's a flop by normal standards.
9 comments:
Jumping the gun on d'Araund a bit. He's hitting .350 since coming back up with a HR, RBI, 2 RS. Sure it's a small sample size but he's trending upward heading into July. It's a little early to think he can't handle NY and its media.
Keith Law sees Plawecki as "solid, average everyday catcher." I see more than that. Think he will perhaps reach All Star status at some point in his major league career. He hits, hits for power, lacks K's...that is a success formula.
Wish Ike well, other than against Mets, but since he hit his 2nd April slam, he is 41-171 (.240), 3 HR, 17 RBIs, and a good number of walks.
Kind of reminds me of the production of another power hitter - Ruben Tejada. I wish we got Jose Abreu when we had the chance, but Duda was fortunately kept over Ike, in my view.
When is someone going to write about that fact that the mets have only a -1 run differential but are 8 games under 500? Just attribute it to bad luck? Atlanta is 6 games over with no run differential. Thats a 14 game swing between two teams that have both scored and given up the same number of runs. The Mets are 10-19 in 1 run games the Braves are 16-10. This feels like an area where the manager can make the difference. Playing the percentages the right way to come out on top.
I don't know what Flores has done to make Klaw slap him in the face like that, but that sarcastic answer is almost like Alderson's "what Outfield?" crack in the Winter of '12-'13. WOW!
As for everyone's favorite whipping boy, Ruben, he's doing just fine, thank you. Besides playing stellar D (only 4 Es all year, and a highlight-reel play almost every game), his improvement with the bat shouldn't be dismissed. Since May 20, a stretch of 29 games, he's reached base in all but 3 of the 29 while raising both his BA and OBP by over 50 points.According to Gary and Ron this weekend, he's over .300/.400 in that time. And he's riding an 8-game hitting streak, while his OBP now ranks 2nd among ALL MLB SSs with 200+ AB.
Yes, he got off to a terrible start, but other than power he's far ahead of millionaires like Reyes, Peralta and Drew, while his salary doesn't kill the budget. And, lest we forget, he was over .280 BA for two full seasons before his awful '13.
He's no All-Star, but neither is he what he's usually painted as.
The Chris Young/Terry Collins thing doesn't surprise me at all. I've been saying for as long as I can remember he punishes people who succeed and rewards those who fail.
What my friend Bill fails to point out is that Tejada was given prolonged playing time to get into a groove due to an injury to Jose Reyes. Wilmer Flores never got that chance. Two days after a 6-RBI game he was back in his familiar spot on the bench to make room for a guy who is at 1 WAR right now -- which places him around replacement level. Screw me for wanting more...
Then again, just as they extended Terry Collins' contract, quiet mediocrity trumps the potential for success every time.
On a separate topic, what do we make of Darin Gorski? 3 of his last four seasons (with some injury time in-between) have been awesome, but his name never surfaces. He's not a Randy Johnson, blow-the-ball-past-you kind of lefty -- more of the sneaky John Franco mold.
Take last night's game -- he lost -- and that's all most people take away from it. However, look at his line score -- 6 IP, 6 hits (1 solo home run included), 8 Ks and 2 BBs. I don't know about you, but I'd sign up for that in every single start. Well, I would if the Mets fielded a team capable of scoring 3 runs. Usually the 51s can :)
meenanlaw
In June - Duda is hitting .293 with 10 doubles and 5 home runs. Correlates with Lamar's arrival and Ike's departure. Given the clear opportunity, with a reasonable time for adjustment, Duda is thriving at first base.
From what I've seen, to date it's Plawecki over d'Arnaud, but still too early to draw a conclusion. I would give TD the balance of this season, which is lost anyway, to see how well he does batting 6th in the order with some reasonable protection behind him (Lagares/Niewenhuis/Brown/EYJr). He shouldn't be batting 7th or 8th. Let's find out what he's really got.
Mack - I love the lead post - too funny! When it comes to managers, here's my bottom line - Wally understands the importance of scoring a run. Yesterday is a perfect example. Lagares up with one out and Duda on 3rd. Juan's been struggling since his return, but he can bunt. We're down 3-0 & the game is still in hand. No reason not to safety squeeze & push a run across. ('Scuze the double negative lol)
Nothing better than chipping away at an opponent's early lead and challenging your opponent's bullpen later in the game. TC has no concept of this strategy. It's just a slow death. On the other hand, I can definitely see Wally scratching and clawing his way back into a game and motivating his players to overtake the opponent. It's called "Winning Baseball"...
Reese -
Gorski is potentially an SP5 on some small market teams and and I guess that means us too :)
Mack - Business stinks. Maybe what this team needs is a "hand grenade". Eh, I wish I knew, but my gut tells me Backman is the man. I felt the same way about Davey Johnson who won at every level in the Met org.
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