Morning Report – June 30th – Travis d’Arnaud, Wally Backman, Good Plays, Klaw-Chat

                                                                                                                                            

Coming Later Today –    

            12 00 noon  - Craig Mitchell - An Open letter to Angry Met fans...........

            3:00 PM - 2015 Draft Profile  -  RHP  -  Mike Matuella  -  Duke University - UPDATED 6-30-14

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.

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 6^th 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...

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.