Morning Report – July 5th – Sandy Alderson, Bartolo Colon Daniel Murphy, Jose Ramirez

                                                                                                                

Coming Later Today –    

         12 00 pm - Reese Kaplan -  Winning Ugly

            2 00 pm  -  Mack  -  'Sandy-Speak'

            4 00 pm  -  BASEBALL AMERICA - Minor League All-Star Team

           6 00 pm - 2015 Draft Profile  -  OF  -  D.J. Stewart  -  Florida State - updated 6-30-14

Juan Lagares over the last calendar year (486 PA's): .267/.310/.377 22 2B 5 HR 3.9 fWAR

Daniel Murphy in the last calendar year (733 PA's): 164 GP .299/.340/.428 15 HR 37 2B 4.6 fWAR

Over the last calendar year, Jon Niese has the 12th best ERA in baseball at 2.93


SP Dillon Gee should be activated sometime today.



RHP Matt Bowman was transferred from Binghamton to Las Vegas 

RHP Cory Mazzoni was transferred from St. Lucie to Binghamton.
, in a proper timely manner.

            Mack - Two big time moves that happened yesterday before game time. Mazzoni's time with St. Lucie was one rehab start and he returns to the team he had 12 starts with last year.

This sets up a Vegas rotation of Noah Syndergaard, Logan Verrett, Darin Gorski, Greg Peavey, and Bowman. I have no idea what they will do with Giancarlo Alvarado or Joel Carreno. 

Observation - The Mets seem to be promoting their players, especially their pitchers, in a proper timely manner.

Tons of Shortstops –

Ken Rosenthal ‏@Ken_Rosenthal  -  DEAL IS DONE: #Cubs send Samardzija and Hammel to #Athletics for Addison Russell, per sources. May be other players and team(s) involved.

          Mack – You’ll never see the Mets operate this progressive.

Both Samardzija ($5.345mil/ARB-2) and Hammel ($6mil/2014) are not under a 2015 contract with the Cubs so why not?

The interesting this is plethora (I always wanted to use this word) of shortstops already in the Cubs system… Starlin Castro ($60mil through 2020), Javier Baez (Cubs #1 prospect), and Arismendy Alcantara  (AAA: .311, 10-HR, 41-RBI).

Where the hell are you going to play the top SS prospect (Russell) in baseball?

The Cubs have got to have a plan to spin one of these guys.

Mike Puma – According to club sources, the team will listen to offers for Bartolo Colon and may actively shop the veteran right-hander.

The 41-year-old Colon, who signed a two-year contract worth $20 million last offseason, is 8-6 with a 3.88 ERA in 16 starts for the Mets in 2014. - http://nypost.com/2014/07/03/mets-will-listen-to-colon-offers-as-deadline-nears-sources/

  Mack – The most interesting part of this story is information is beginning to leak out that the Mets will be sellers this month.

$10mil a year is not a big figure for an effective starter, which Colon has been for the majority of the season.

It’s hard to estimate his value. My guess it chances team by team, but we all know what the Mets will look for… a SS, a LFer, and a possible replacement for Daniel Muprhy.

       

Sandy Alderson got in front of a microphone again and told us all that he feels the Mets are a better team than the one currently out there on the field. Why does he think he needs to justify his position all the time and not take any blame for what is (or isn’t) happening with this team? The win-loss record is no better that it was last season and, while we’re throwing daggers, the team has never finished above .500 in his administration. Run differential? Does this replace the win-loss record? I mean, if we have a better run differential than the Braves, can we host the first playoff series? Look Sandy… I know you didn’t sign on for this miserable budget and not everyone you signed in free agency has been a winner, but do us all a favor and stop pontificating about how unlucky this team is. Frankly, the unlucky ones are the ones that remember what this team was like under Frank Cachen.

Mets VP John Ricco on trading Daniel Murphy -

We haven’t specifically talked about Dan recently. He is one of the more valuable guys we have. He leads the league in hits. He’s settled in as one of the best second basemen in the game, certainly offensively, and is a leader on our team. It depends what the return is.”

          Mack – Ricco sounds more like his agent.

Mets fans would go bat shit if Alderson traded for one more low level prospect, but what if a trade for Murphy brought you two legitimate positional players that could step right in at LF and SS. All you have to do is move Wilmer Flores back to 2B and you may just have a better team on the field immediately.

Look, I’m running out of legitimate subjects to write about in the report and Murphy is one of the few top field players on the team. You all know I’d love him to have a long term contract, but, if that’s not possible, I’d rather get this over with and move on here.

He won’t stick around past the 2016 season.

As if things aren’t bad enough, Bobby Parnell, Daniel Murphy, Eric Young, Taylor Teagarden, Dana Eveland, Dillon Gee, Ruben Tejada, Lucas Duda, Jenrry Mejia, and Anthony Recker all are scheduled to go through the process of arbitration in the off season.

We talked Tuesday about Cleveland prospect 2B Jose Ramirez. Fangraphs featured him in their ‘Fringe Five’ feature saying:

Probably because he was absent from the relevant preseason prospect lists and certainly because he’s produced pretty miserable numbers (in a limited sample) at the major-league level this season, Cleveland prospect Jose Ramirez has received little attention of late. Still, his minor-league achievement continues to deserve recognition — insofar, that is, as he’s recorded an exactly level walk-to-strikeout ratio and a not entirely insignificant home-run total over 206 Triple-A plate appearances as a middle infielder who’s also just 21 years old. After losing about two weeks to a hamstring injury, Ramirez returned on Saturday and has compiled a 2:0 walk-to-strikeout ratio over 12 plate appearances since then.

Pitchers who induced the most swings and misses Wed: T. Ross (21), J. deGrom (16), J. Danks (15), C. Young (13), B Peacock (12), H. Ryu (12)

Minor Notes –

The last eight (8) starts by Noah Syndergaard are considered to be ‘non-quality’ starts, leading to heightened concern amongst Mets pitching coaches. Thor hasn’t had a quality start since May 5^th (7.0-IP, 1-ER) against Tacoma… we can only assume that, after his third start Thursday (5.0-IP, 1-ER, 1.13) for the GCL Mets, that Logan Taylor is not rehabbing and has gone to the back of the bus in the organization (it makes no sense to be pitching GCL ball at 23/yrs. Old)… Savannah’s Dario Alvarez did not allow a run in June and struck out 30 of the 60 batters he faced, while walking only 2… St. Lucie’s Gavin Cecchini played third base Thursday night for the first time this season… Binghamton is 10-0 in the last 10 Tyler Pill starts… Savannah activated IF/C Nelfi Zapata from the DL...