Morning Report – September 16 – Juan Lagares, 2015 Rotation, Noah Syndergaard, Chicago Cubs

One must re-evaluate, after last night's pitching performance by Jacob deGrom, who exactly is going to be the 2015 SP1 of this team. No one dominated another team like deGrom did in his first five innings. I haven't seen a curve like that since Dwight Gooden. There is no question in my mind that he deserves the Rookie of The Year, but it's very hard for a pitcher to win this award. Still, baseball people in the know realize that the Mets have truly been blessed with this pitcher, ever since he showed up in Savannah and stopped everyone dead in their tracks when he threw his first bullpen session. I was there and remembered the look on Frank Viola's face who knew very little about him up to then. 

My guess is we, as Mets fans, are set with three-fifths of our "Dream Rotation" for the remainder of the decade... and it just may be in the order of deGrom, Matt Harvey, and Zack Wheeler.

The Mets continue to heat up the stealing game of Juan Lagares. As of the end of Saturday’s game, Lagares has stolen nine bases in his last 15 games, being caught only once. His eight stolen bases in the last 14 games is most in baseball, three more than the closest other speedster.

Saying the word ‘speedster’ always sounds strange when using in the same sentence with this guy. He just wasn’t known for this kind of approach early on and even the scouts thought he was rather slow.

The Mets are grooming your leadoff hitter. This will be the 2015 version of Carlos Gomez.

Ted asked –

Mack, do you really think that Noah Syndergaard won’t be on the 25-man come opening day?

            Mack – I don’t Ted, but frankly it’s just too early to tell.

My guess is Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler are safe around here (frankly, I’d shut down Wheeler after his last start and have Carlos Torres cover his ass until the season ends).

Frankly, everything gets a little cloudy after that. The Mets problem is that they have too many starters, the ones they want to trade aren’t high on the buyers list, and the ones buyers want are too valuable to trade. Confusing?

It looks like the Mets are making a permanent home down in the pen for Rafael Montero. Good. He’ll do well there and, if someone goes down with a similar injury that Harvey had a year ago, Montero can be stretched out and return to the rotation.

This leaves Jacob d’Grom, Bartolo Colon, Jon Niese, Noah Syndergaard, Logan Verrett, Matt Bowman, and Corey Mazzoni either all major league veterans or ready to make the plunge.

My ‘perfect rotation’ would be deGrom and Thor, followed by Steven Katz replacing somebody in 2016, but so many things have to go in so many directions for that to happen.

Sandy Alderson is in charge here and he can put together the final pieces of this team. He can protect deGrom and Syndergaard and build a lethal rotation that can stand up with any other team in baseball.

He can ten bargain for, and then trade for, the best hitters he can obtain with the remaining pieces mentioned above.

That’s all he can do and that’s what I hope he does as well.

Ready for the Majors: Noah Syndergaard, RHP: Syndergaard's stuff was still just as good this year as it was in the past, the kind of stuff that got him named among the top pitching prospects in all of baseball. He had some minor elbow and shoulder issues, but he responded from them just fine and his stuff was not diminished. SImply put, pitching in Vegas sucks and pitching prospects shouldn't be subjected to it. His struggles there stalled him briefly, but he'll be in the majors next season, possibly out of spring training, though probably after the super two deadline in June. There's not much left for him to prove in Vegas. 

http://www.mlbprospectwatch.com/mlb_prospect_watch/2014/09/organization-recap-new-york-mets.html

Jeremy Hefner @jeremy_hefner53 ·

Visited Dr. Andrews this morning and not really anything new to report. Surgery is likely. Always appreciate your prayers and encouragement.

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The Cubs may be proving that you can actually have too many prospects in this game.

Take shortstop.

Everything seemed all locked up when they signed now 24-year old super-prospect Starlin Castro (528-AB, .292) to a 7-year, $60mil deal that ends in 2019 (with a team option in 2020). The problem is that along came two more viable SS prospect options, Javier Baez (136-AB, .169) and Arismendy Alcantara (219-AB, .210). In fact, Baez projects as being more talented that Castro, though it would be hard to guess that right now.

So, the first thing they do is try and get all of these guys in the game at the same time. They move Baez to 2B and Alcantara to CF, which seemed to be working out… in the beginning.

Then, Alcantara went cold followed by Castro being shut down for a high ankle strain. Baez has moved back to short, giving the baseball world a look-see at his potential there.

Another prospect, RF Jorge Soler (.382) will start in RF next season while a bunch of fourth outfielders will try to upgrade to third via a competition contest in spring training. Other outfield talent (Albert Almora, Kyle Schwarber) are at least a year away.

Which leads us to recently acquired SS Addision Russell, who simply has no place to play on this team. He most likely will start off in AAA next season.

Mack Observation – My guess is that the Cubs would strongly consider moving Castro, keeping Baez on second base, and playing Russell at short next season. The Castro contract is actually considered quite friendly, but the Mets are not going to sign anyone through the 201season. It’s not going to happen.

The word is that Baez is untouchable, so one has to ask why did this team trade for Russell, other than the fact that he could be moved in a future trade for the pitching they desire.

None of the Cubs catchers have lite up the league and this could be a perfect opportunity to go one-for-one for Kevin Plawecki. Russell is ranked as the 5^th prospect by Baseball America… Plawecki the 40^th… so, feel free to add in a secondary prospect pitcher like Logan Verrett, Matt Bowman, Corey Mazzoni, Gabriel Ynoa, or Rainy Lara.