Morning Report – August 11th – Chris Young, Noah Syndergaard, Jeurys Familia, September Call-Ups

Chris Young ‏@CY24_7 

Thank you to those with the positive messages. Appreciate the love and support. #KeepPushing




The Mets have had 24 walk-off losses since the beginning of the 2013 season.

  

Martino on Thor - http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/tk-article-1.1897969

                        Frank Viola - “He gets to minor league ball, and he has no idea who he is as a pitcher. He gets in trouble, he goes to his 97-mph fastball. It worked in low-A, it worked in high-A, it worked in Double-A, but guess what? It doesn’t work in Triple-A.”

I’ve tried a number of times to explain what it is like going from one level to the next, but this is about the best explanation I’ve read.

What's more obvious every day is the fact that your 'young' pitchers that have showed the ability to dominate at the MLB level are Harvey, deGrom, and Wheeler.

Syndergaard is a couple of years younger and the safe route would be to bring back two from Colon, Gee, and Niese and let Thor return to AAA, where ever that's going to be.

Reality tells me that every team that Alderson approachs for either a shortstop of left fielder will demand either deGrom, Wheeler, or Syndergaard.

My number one trading chip is the guy I don't know... Thor.

September arrived on Friday for the New York Mets. No one had to make any announcement that the season was over and the direction of the team would be 2015 from that moment on. All you had to do was listen to Terry Collins talk about ‘the kids’ who were going to be inserted into the lineup.

It now becomes painfully obvious that Collins and Sandy Alderson were going to stay with the ‘old’ 25-man squad as long as they thought they had an outside chance for either a wild card slot or the division title. That was erased with the Washington series which ‘features’ just more sub-standard hitting from the same crew that all seems to hit around .230.

So, we’re going to clean out Las Vegas of any potential outfield bats (Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Matt den Dekker), play Wilmer Flores as the starting shortstop, and allow Lucas Duda to hit against left hand pitching.

And that’s about it folks. I wish I could tell you that we have some ex-Cuban al-star that just hit 40 home runs in the PCL, but we don’t. This is about the extent of the major league ready talent in the organization and, frankly, they all may just eventually turn out to be future utility players. Excluding Duda, I don’t see much potential for more power here, but they’ll all now have two months to show us what they can accomplish playing on an almost daily basis.

Oh, and one last thought on Chris Young. I wish him well and thank him for his effort. It’s not like he tried to hit .200 or that someone forced him to take the seven plus million bucks for less than a year. My hopes are that he saved some because I don’t see him getting this kind of money again out of this sport.

Fangraphs on Jeurys Familia –

            On the season, Jeurys Familia has a 1.89 ERA (3.00 FIP) and 1.18 WHIP. He has just a 20% strikeout rate despite an average fastball topping 96 mph and an altogether too high 10% walk rate. But over the last month, few relievers have been as dominant as the late-inning Met reliever. In his last 12 games he’s thrown 11 innings, given up just five hits, giving up one run and striking out eight.

The knock on Familia is his wildness, however, and over the last month he’s also had a 12.5% walk rate and xFIP pegs him at something closer to 4.00. But if you’re digging deep on holds, he’s managed to register five of them out of those 12 outings. He started the season appearing mostly in the sixth and seventh innings but since the beginning of July, he’s been used almost exclusively to set up Jenrry Mejia. And heck, if you’re looking to snipe some saves, Mejia is dealing with some kind of calf issue, so it might be worthwhile to stash Familia anyway.

Mack – I love seeing national guys write about Familia. He’s come a long way. I still think the Mets will have five potential back end relievers on opening day 2015… Bobby Parnell. Vic Black, Rafael Montero, Mejia, and Familia… which would open discussions as a potential trade chip to come out of this bunch.

Fangraphs makes it sound like Familia is a wild man, but this is a guy that reduced his BB/9 from 6.8 in 2013 to 3.6 this season. He has also produced a 1.0 WAR this season.

The roster changes this past week have made me look back over the minor league rosters and try and figure out who the September call-ups will be. The entire 40-man roster will be eligible to head to Queens, though I don’t expect everyone will be promoted.

Bat wise, there isn’t that much left. Eligible are outfielders Andrew Brown and Cesar Puello, infielders Wilfredo Tovar and Josh Satin, and catchers Juan Centeno and Taylor Teagarden.

Pitcher wise. Gonzalez Germen, Erik Goeddel, Steven Matz, Rafael Montero, and Jeff Walters are available.

 Minor Notes –

            GCL SP Adrien Almeida continued his dominance of the GCL League on Friday: 5.0-IP, 0-R, 1-H, 5-K, 2-BB, 1.97… Daniel Murphy is .306/.346/.438 with 95 R, 205 H, 44 2B, 3 3B, 13 HR, 75 RBI, & 22 SB over his last 162 games… Jenrry Mejia’s curveball slash line: .375-.412-.438, thrown 131X… opposing batters are hitting .164 off of Zack Wheeler's curveball…