Morning Report – July 19th – John Mora, Dilson Herrera, Bartolo Colon, Matt Kemp

                                                                                                                                            

Coming Later Today – 

  

            10 00 am – Reese Kaplan – The Orwellian Process of Prospect Advancement

            12 00 pm - Stephen Guilbert - Shortstoptions: Get Over Starlin Castro

             2 00 pm - TRADE VALUE - SP - Matt Harvey

             5 00 pm - 2015 Draft Profile  -  RHP  -  Carson Fulmer  -  Vanderbilt - UPDATED 7-10-14

Christopher Soto - 

Over the last 7 starts, Noah Syndergaard is 2-3 with an extremely ugly 8.71 ERA.

However, amazingly enough he is still striking out over 20% of batters faced while walking under 5%.

This amasses to a ridiculously high .422 Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP).

Normalized....this comes out to a 4.08 ERA which is in line to what both Zack Wheeler and Matt Harvey were producing before their respective call ups to the majors.

(In other words.....get him the hell out of Vegas. He's pitching fine just getting extremely unlucky.) 

I’ve mentioned many times that we just can’t judge any of these baseball players at the rookie levels they play in, especially both the GCL and DSL level. The DSL is basically Latin high school ball and the GCL teams are where most teams place their high school draft picks to get used to ‘the grind’.

That being said, we need to single out OF-1B John Mora, who is simply tearing it up for the GCL team. He went 5-5 on Thursday, raising his seasonal BA to .397 and making him the BA leader in the league.

 He’s only 5-10 and has no home runs… not for the season, but his entire three year professional career that started with the DSL Mets in 2012 (.268). His .310-BA last year got him a trip stateside and I’ll turn the spyglass over to Thomas Brennan to keep an eye on this guy.

Like I said… far too early but a lot more exciting than him hitting, let’s say 100 points lower.

Let’s remember one more thing when we are trying to figure out who the Mets future shortstop is going to be:

-         AA-Binghamton 20-yr old Dilson Herrera (.326) has played about one third of his games this year at shortstop

-         Herrera was originally signed out of Columbia as a shortstop

-         Herrera considers himself a shortstop: "If you play short, you can play anywhere on the infield. I like shortstop more, because it's harder to play. I move my feet more and take charge of more stuff. It's more responsibility to play short."

Herrera is a much better hitting version of Ruben Tejada, with pop. He’s also 20-years old. Lastly, the perfect scenario for me here would be to sign Daniel Murphy to a deal through 2019, let Tejada hold down the SS fort until Herrera is ready (probably mid-season 2015) and sell off Wilmer Flores.

I’m a big Flores fan, but I simply am in love with the possibility of having both Herrera and Murphy in the same infield. 

There does seem to be a movement for all the Mets affiliates to operate with a six-man rotation at this point in the season. This might be a combination of limiting their innings to the fact that the organization is loaded with ‘B’ to ‘C’ starters.

For now, it lines up:

            Las Vegas (5):  Noah Syndergaard, Corey Mazzoni, Darin Gorski, Logan Verrett, Giancarlo Alvarado (anticipate Rafael Montero to also return next week)

            Binghamton (6): Steven Matz, Gabriel Ynoa, Rainy Lara, Greg Peavey, Tyler Pill, Matt Bowman      

                                                                                                                        

            St. Lucie (6): Michael Fuller, Matthew Koch, Kevin McGowan, Domingo Tapia, Luis Cessa, John Lannan

            Savannah (6): Robert Gsellman, John Gant, Logan Taylor, Ricky Knapp, Alex Panteliodis, Chris Flexin (I anticipate Panteliodis moving to the bullpen when Robert Whelan returns from rehabbing with the GCL team)                           

                                              

            Brooklyn (6): Marcos Molina, Casey Meisner, Cory Oswalt, Carlos Valdez, Alberto Baldonado, Octavio Acosta                         

                                                               

            Kingsport (6): Blake Taylor, Gaby Almonte, Yoryi Nuez, Andrew Church, Christian Montgomery, Craig Missigman

From http://beisbols.org/2014/07/16/second-half-pitchers-watch-2014/ -

            - Starting Pitcher Bartolo Colon (New York Mets) – I have been tooting Bartolo Colon’s horn for seemingly months, stating that he would be a great trade acquisition for any team looking for a starting arm heading into the playoffs, despite being owed $11 Million next year. Bartolo is a slightly better pitcher than his basic numbers have indicated this season, posting a SIERA, or Skill-Interactive ERA of 3.81 this year, although Colon’s ERA sits at a mediocre at best 3.99. During his last two seasons, both with the Oakland Athletics, Colon posted an ERA of 3.43 in 2012 and 2.65 in 2013, respectively. In 2012 his SIERA was 4.26. In 2013 his SIERA was 4.10. Colon is also striking out one full batter more per nine innings in 2014 than he did in both 2012 and 2013, currently with a K/9 ratio of 6.58. Colon’s walks per nine innings are also down this year, sitting at 1.26 batters per nine innings this year, down from 2012’s 1.36 and 2013’s 1.37. What has exactly changed since than that leads to such an inflated ERA? In 2012, Colon left 76.3% of runners on base. In 2013, Colon left exactly 80% of runners stranded on base, which is absurdly high and helped contribute to his ERA of 2.65 that season. According to averages, both seasons were relatively lucky, especially the 2013 season, as 72% of batters should be left on base. Colon is only stranding 70.6% of runners on base this season with the New York Mets, a massive drop from his lucky season last year and down from both his career average of 73.1% and the general average of 72%. We should expect more runners to be stranded on base for Colon in the second half of the season. His home run to fly ball ratio is also up this season, going from 6.0% in 2013 to 9.1% this season, despite playing in Citi Field, a park with similar park factors in terms of home runs as the Oakland Coliseum. This 9.1% does however match his 2012 in Oakland, leading to two possible conclusions; Colon’s 2013 was exceedingly lucky or this year’s ratio is out of line. Unfortunately, it appears the latter is true, with his career home run to fly ball ratio sitting at 10.2%. While it does not help my case on Colon, it is something to keep an eye on for the remainder of the season to see if and how much it deviates from the current ratio.

            Mack – I love when I see other writers talk about Colon this way. He’s the one guy the Mets can sell off this month without sending signs out to the rest of the team that you’re throwing in the towels you are supposed to be waving.

I think Colon could get a pretty decent Top 100 prospect return. I’m even willing to wait a couple of years and get a future outfielder out of this transaction. Can you picture Colon in pinstripes? How about Aaron Judge?

I can’t help keep going back to this…

            As Ken Rosenthal puts it: The outfielder’s agent, former major-league pitcher Dave Stewart, told FOX Sports on Wednesday that Matt Kemp again wants to be an everyday center fielder, something that isn’t in his immediate future with the Dodgers.

Come on guys… this is Matt Friggin Kemp. He’s a real time all-star roaming out there when he’s not injured. He’s a defensive liability and probably would be the Dodgers 4^th, maybe 5^th choice to currently play centerfield.

From Fangraphs:

Of course, last October, Kemp had ankle surgery. It wasn’t a minor procedure, and Kemp might still be trying to get back to 100%. So we can look over a longer scale, to see how Kemp ranked before going under the knife. Over the 2004 – 2013 decade, among center fielders, Kemp ranked sixth-worst in UZR/150, and ninth-worst in DRS/150. Over just the four years between 2010 – 2013, he ranked third-worst in UZR/150, and fourth-worst in DRS/150. This is one of those situations where both the advanced metrics agree, and they agree on the idea that pre-operation Kemp was a comparable defensive center fielder to Shin-Soo Choo, who is not a center fielder.

Oh yeah… did I tell you he’s owed a little over $100mil through 2019?

The upside…

           He’s really good at hitting the snot out of the ball.

           He is hitting like shit this year:  .269/.332/.430/.762, 305-AB, 8-HR, 35-RBI

           Come on… part of you have to love the possibility of a 2015 outfield of Kemp, Granderson, and Lagares.

           Then you add Conforto and Nimmo to the mix in 2016.

           Remember… it’s not our money…

           Who would the Dodgers want in return? You’d be surprised how little they would demand if you paid the freight. Probably one AAA/AA SP and two A+/A type long range prospects

           (I can’t wait to read the responses to this one…)