Morning Report – September 10 – Top 10 Tradeabe Players, Noah Syndergaard, Arizona Diamondbacks,

Derek McKnight asked - 

Mack, do you think you cangive us your tradeable top 10 list? What I was looking for is a top 10 of players in the majors and minors who you, if you were the gM, could live with giving up in order to get a RF, LF, or SS. The question of who youcould get for one or multiple players on the list is another topic, but building for 2015/2016 who are your trade pieces.

The ranking would be on such attributes as: organizational depth, where players position played, contract/org control, for example.

I know you have to give up quality to get quality, but with Parnell and Harvey coming back and some prospects on Soto's list getting closer to major league ready, who can you live with going.  Thanks.

            Mack - An interesting question…

My answer, and ranking, is not based on the return that the player would bring. It’s solely based on my opinion as to who currently is expendable and who’s loss would not currently hurt where this team stands. I’m not saying trade these guys in this order. I’m just saying they are tradeable.

1.     RHSP Noah Syndergaard – this is the top trade chip in the Mets system and, as of today, he is expendable. Harvey, Wheeler, and deGrom lineup as next year’s SP1-3 and any combination of Gee, Niese, or Colon can fill in the 2015 opening day rotation (I wouldn’t trade him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not available for the right player).

2.     2B Daniel Murphy – Anybody want an all-star second baseman? The recent placement of Murphy on the DL and the impressive fill-in job done by Dilson Herrera, have forced the Mets to strongly put off any plans (if there were any left) to sign this guy to a long term extension. His trade window is this off-season through the 2015 all-star break.

3.     RHSP Bartolo Colon – The Mets had expected Colon to be gone by now and nothing has changed for the future. His 2015 contract is considered cheap for the return he brings. Even at his age, he is worth a decent prospect.

4.     C Kevin Plawecki – Baseball America currently has Plawecki as the 40^th top prospect in baseball, ranking him ahead of Austin Meadows, Clint Frazier, D.J. Peterson, and Stephen Piscotty. The Mets are committed to Travis d’Arnaud as their long term catcher and the 2015 off-season would be a perfect time to put together a prospect-for-prospect deal here for this catcher.

5.     RHSP Rafael Montero – The baseball world, in general, and the Mets, in particular, don’t get hot at the whisper of this guy’s name anymore, but he’s still a quality projectable low-end rotation prospect with four quality pitchers. If you want to trade this guy for the most you can get for him, you need to do this quickly.

6.     LHSP Jon Niese – the next two are based on whether or not any of the starting pitchers listed above (Syndergaard, Colon, Montero) aren’t traded. The current Mets have two kind of top end talent… limited everyday players that I currently consider untradeable (example: Wright, Lagares, deGrom, Herrera) and excess rotational pitchers. Now is the time to start using this excess to your advantage.

7.     RHSP Dillon Gee - +1 to the Niese paragraph

8.     C Juan Centeno – Hey, don’t laugh here… a lot of baseball scouts think Centeno will have a long, successful career in the majors. This is the perfect guy you trade one-for-one for a quality prospect relief arm.

9.     And 10. – Nobody – First of all, I can’t project the value of a ballplayer for a trade if he hasn’t played at least at the AA level. Frankly, I’m really more conservative than that, but this is a good ‘line in the sand’ to begin with.

Players like Matt Reynolds, Cesar Puello, Jayce Boyd, etc. have some trade value, but they currently aren’t players you would build a trade around. They are throw-ins and expendable, but really don’t make any kind of major ranking list.

There's been an awful lot written this past week on the fact that the Mets have decided not to promote SP Noah Syndergaard to Queens this September. Some actually would have been just happy to see him sitting on the bench next to his fellow pitchers.

I think the Mets made the right decision.

I know September doesn't count for much in Mets-land, but you do still have to contribute something. Your first promotion to the Big Leagues should be worth more than being in charge of handing out the bags of seeds to everyone.

Syndergaard had a... well... somewhere between good and meh... season. The strikeouts were there but the results weren't always. No one that scouts him questions his talent and his ceiling in this game. When he is on, he has four + pitches and scouts out ahead of both Zack Wheeler and Matt Harvey at the same time in their career.

This whole PCL thing is just screwing up the whole maturation of the Mets youngsters. Hitters look like Tony Gwynn while pitchers look like they are being hit around the park. You have no idea how a ball carries out there. You don't need to get the entire barrel on the ball. Apiece of your bat and drive a pitch into the right or left field corners/stands as a line drive.

The balls also get to where they are going faster than even a great infielder can cover. They just come off bats like a rocket shot and (a perfect example from an old third baseman) half the balls a third baseman would normally cutoff grounding in the hole, shoot through before  the glove gets down.

The batters are never going to tell you they can't hit this well. And the pitchers just have to live with the fact that a 4.00 ERA is a good thing in this league.

I don't know what the Mets long range plans for Syndergaard is this summer. I assume he is totally shut down unto he can toss sometimes in Florida, in January. He will come to camp fully fueled and ready to compete for a rotation spot in 2015. That's what you want out of him right now and that's how you want the Mets to handle this situation.

        From Baseball Prospectus - Noah Syndergaard, RHP, Mets (Triple-A Las Vegas) - When a player experiences adversity, we experience doubts and second guessing of our projections. We want to see progress on a definitive upward trend, but the path followed by prospects is rarely linear. There is no doubt that this season has been bumpy for Syndergaard. The 22-year-old blitzed through two levels last year, causing the main question this off-season to be, "When will he be facing big-league hitters full-time?" Syndergaard’s growing pains are a good reminder that even when it seems like players are close, there are still nuances to be mastered. Even the most highly regarded prospects are works in progress and growing pains can appear without warning. My view on Syndergaard is that the 6-foot-6 Texan bounces back and makes the necessary refinements to fulfill his projection. Reports from the second half of the year have been strong and indications were that the issues were more along the lines of fine-tuning his command than any regression of his stuff. –Chris Mellen

We continue our series of looking at possible off-season trading partners with our fourth team out of the NL West, the Arizona Diamondbacks.

According to Cot[i], the Diamondbacks have a 2014 payroll of $112,315,500.

They have a number of long term contracts, but we are only going to concern ourselves with the positions the Mets may be looking for help in.

They also have no one leaving at the end of this season via free agency.

Outfield wise, Cody Ross (162-AB, .241) has $9.5mil left/2015 on his original 3-year deal.  He has been injured often and is no longer considered a starter on his own team.

David Peralta is pre-ARB and is hitting .292 in 301 at-bats.

Ender Inciarte is also pre-ARB and is hitting .268 in 328 at-bats, his first year in the majors.

Lastly, the Diamondbacks have excellent backup in A.J. Pollock (185-AB, .319).

Now, as we have discussed many times before, it gets interesting. Simply put, Arizona has a glut of middle infielders that can play major league level shortstop or second base… Chris Owings, Nick Ahmed, Aaron Hill, Didi Gregorius… Hill has two more years at $12mil per year left while the other three are all pre-Arbitration.

Mack Observation – I’m sure Sandy Alderson has spent a considerable amount of time trying to get some kind of deal done here with Kevin Towers, the General Manager of the Diamondbacks. Well, Towers is history and, with it, all the things he did and didn’t do. I can’t think of a more perfect time to approach who will be in change and serve up a pitcher package that will help breakup the logjam they are suffering from.

I will say this… I’m falling back in love more with Wilmer Flores as each September game is played, but, if the Mets are going to reach outside the organization for a new shortstop, this is one of the key teams to keep targeted.

---

[i] http://www.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/nl-west/arizona-diamondbacks/