Reese Kaplan - How Many Other Clubs Have 26 Year Old Rookies?

A question I asked last year came to mind once again regarding when is it the right time to promote younger players from the minors to the majors?  The problem as I see it is that the Mets organization has taken a firm philosophical stance that a player must have X number of innings or Y number of ABs in the minors before they are deemed ready for the majors. 

Standards are a wonderful thing when you’re dealing with finite things like processes.  “We cannot have more than 1/10^th of 1% defects on the manufacturing line.”  The last time I looked, however, the game of baseball is played by PEOPLE and not by machines.  People are different.  There are early bloomers and late bloomers, early faders and people like Bartolo Colon who are still productive while most others his age have gone onto the baseball card show autograph circuit. 

I did some preliminary research and discovered something.  The last time the Mets had the honor of having the youngest player in the big leagues on their opening day roster was 30 years ago when Dwight Gooden came north with the club at age 19.  You know, if you look at the statistics regarding his performance (before his lifestyle became an issue), it sure didn’t look like this early promotion harmed him one bit. 

In fact, as I perused the list of youngest players in the majors for the past 30 years, there were quite a few standouts for whom an early promotion did not seem to damage their tender psyches or get overwhelmed by the new level of competition.  In fact, you could field a pretty decent All-Star team from this list:

AL:

Jose Rijo

Gary Sheffield

Pudge Rodriguez

Alex Rodriguez

CC Sabathia

Felix Hernandez

Rick Porcello

Chris Sale

Mike Trout

Jurickson Profar

NL:

Greg Maddux

Steve Avery

Cliff Floyd

Andruw Jones

Adrian Beltre

Matt Cain

Justin Upton

Clayton Kershaw

Madison Bumgarner

Starlin Castro

Bryce Harper

Jose Fernandez

Javier Baez

The babying of pitchers hasn’t seemed to have helped, either.  In fact, the trend now is alarmingly towards more injuries and more Tommy John surgeries than happened back in the day when pitchers completed games and weren't on pitch counts, innings limits or shut down in the middle of a pennant race.  Once again clubs are trying to place one set of rules as if every individual was identical.

With respect to the Mets, there seems to be a trend in the opposite direction – artificially holding players down in the minors longer than necessary (to say nothing of not playing them once they make the big club).  As an example, Wilmer Flores has been with the organization for 7.5 years and just this month finally got the opportunity to play steadily while healthy.  The results have not been good thus far, but it’s probably fair to say you develop quite a bit of rust when your manager only penciled you into the lineup less than once a week. 

Now sometimes late promotions are due to health issues.  Jacob de Grom and Steve Matz are examples of players whose careers got sidetracked by injuries.  Pitchers in particular seem to need to have some time to develop command as we’re seeing with Noah Syndergaard this year as he’s struggled for the first time.  On the other hand, when you have someone like Rafael Montero who, before his injury, was exhibiting all of his usual stellar control, there was no reason to hold him down in the minors as long as they did at the expense of John Lannan, Kyle Farnsworth, Jose Valverde and others of that ilk.  You saw last week what Montero can do when he’s healthy. 

For batters you would assume it’s the breaking stuff and movement that gets better at each level and it takes some time to adjust.  Many people can hit a flat fastball, even one thrown near triple digits.  However, when the pitches break left, right or drop down it’s a whole new ballgame.  Still, why is it that other clubs see fit to promote 19 year olds while the Mets typically wait an additional 4-5 years before declaring someone possibly ready for the majors? 

To be fair, in the entire history of the ballclub you could probably count on one hand with fingers left over the number of solid offensive players they’ve developed.  That’s a topic for another day.  Still, if you’re not going to improve the roster through trades nor acquire in-their-prime free agents or test the international waters from Cuba or Japan, then you should be doing what you can to get players up to the show rather than filling the roster with has-beens whose best days are behind them.   Marlon Byrd was a great story, but Rick Ankiel, Andres Torres, Collin Cowgill, Chin-lung Hu, Danny Herrera, Ramon Ramirez, Kelly Shoppach, Aaron Laffey, Brad Eamus, Ronny Paulino, Rob Johnson and others were not.  

Going forward for 2015 I’d like to see the following happen:

• Give Matt Reynolds a chance.  He was hitting .355 before the PCL and .340 in it. 
• Fast-track Dilson Herrera to the majors.  If he can’t handle it, there’s always AAA waiting for him.
• Fast-track Michael Conforto.  Get him into AA as soon as possible to see how he handles better pitching.
• Fast-track Steve Matz.  That enables you to consider trading your sole lefty, Jon Niese.
• Trade Daniel Murphy.  As a baserunner and a fielder he’s a pretty good hitter.  Sell high.
• Trade Bartolo Colon.  Unless you want him to be the next pitching coach, spend his salary on LF or SS.
• Don’t be afraid to sell Dillon Gee or Noah Syndergaard or Kevin Plawecki. 
• Find some outfielders somewhere!  Curtis Bay gets another year to show if he’s done or not.  LF is a black hole.  Fill it with a professional slugger. 
• Hopefully a winter off will allow David Wright to heal.  Either he’s too stubborn (or his manager is) to recognize that his ailing shoulder is affecting his swing.  You’re stuck with him until 2020, so don’t make a bad situation worse by running him into the ground.
• For Tom Brennan:  Bring in the fences.  It’s a change that benefits both clubs’ offense equally but with a great crop of young pitchers, the Mets still will be at an advantage over most of their competitors. 
• Finally, get a real manager.