9/2/14

Morning Report - September 2, 2014 - LAA/MET Trade - Projecting 2015 Rosters - Eric Campbell, Jacob deGrom



Sean Patrick Lallen -

I am a regular visitor of your website and I truly appreciate your work on this blog. May I ask a question regarding a trade speculation? Daniel Murphy, Jon Niese or Dillon Gee, Travis d'Arnaud or Kevin Plawecki for Corey Seager and Joc Pederson. Would the Mets be able to pry away those two expendable prospects from the Dodgers with such an offer? Could they obtain at least Seager for Murphy and Gee? Contending teams like the Dodgers may be enticed with seasoned veterans in the off-season and we have the supply to accommodate such demands. Thanks! LGM

Mack – First Sean, thank you for your following the blog and your email.
I love the trade, especially since it really only uses pieces of the Mets that are expendable.

I have one big problem with it and that’s it is hard for me to believe that the Dodgers will trade Pederson for anyone at this point in his career. I expect him to be in the LA starting lineup on opening day next spring.
As for your second idea, both Gee and Murphy would only be desired by the Dodgers if they intended to sign them to 3-5 year deals. We both know they aren’t afraid to spend the money for what they want and it’s just hard for me to believe that the Mets have players anyone wants anymore. They already have Dee Gordon who is under team control through 2018 so I can’t see why the Bums would pay Murphy what he’s worth.

This then takes us down to the nitty gritty of your trade… the SS prospect Seager. You get his for the one thing the Dodgers will always trade for… young, healthy, power pitchers.

The only change of a one-on-one trade here is Noah Syndergaard.
Any other, like Jacob deGrom, would have to have another pitcher added to the offer, like one of your power relievers (Jeurys Famila) or a secondary starter with an unblemished minor league history (Matt Bowman or Logan Vettett). Steven Matz, Rafael Montero, and Corey Mazzoni have too much medical baggage.

Sean, you can get Seager from the Dodgers. Stay targeted on that trade chip.

Why not Syndergaard and Plawecki? Only projected loss at this point for both teams, but the Mets could have their future star SS to play next to Dilson Herrera for the rest of the decade.



...................................................................................

I want to take you through the process that some teams do when they set up their roster baords at the end of each season.

I'm not saying that the Mets do it this way. I'm also not saying YOU would do it this way and please, offer up your opinions here if you thing certain players should be at different levels. They just may wind up there anyway, but, for now, my initial concern is to line them up by age. I know that if I had a player at the GCL level, that was 23 years old and only got 40 at-bats, that he should probably be somewhere other than Binghamton or St. Lucie next year; however, I first want to put down on paper where he should be by age alone. We can adjust it from there.

The biggest obstacle here is there is always a gap between the past year's high school senors that were signed (average 18-19 years old) and the college juniors that join the organization three years older. There's nothing we can do about that, but we can still line them up properly by their age and... again... get a first peek at what we have.

For now, we have the 2014 GCL Mets to work with. There season is over and, frankly, most of the players earned themselves another year with the organization.

However, every team has some players that may not get an invite back and I have a few I have left off this graph. They are: SP Audry German, RPs Jose Medina Waldo Rodriguez, and Dan Hermann, C Manuel Hilario, 1B Elvis Sanchez, and 2Bmen Santo Marte and Dale Burdick. The Mets may disagree with me on some of these choices, but my guess is all of these names will be left on the side of the War Room board that breaks out who goes where in 2015. Decisions on who to draft in June or who to sign internationally in the off-season will not be based on this list.

So, now I begin to place the names on the board, with a few general rules...

    1. I've got five players returning to the GCL Mets simply because they are still young enough and played very little in 2014.

    2. The Kingsport team will be dominated with the 18 and 19-year olds.

    3. 20 and 21-years old are place in Brooklyn

    4. And the college kids, that range from 22-24, are placed in Savannah

There is one exception I've already listed. RP Flabio Ortega will pitch 2015 as a 25-year old, so I put him on the St. Lucie list, even though there is no way he's going to get promoted from the GCL team four levels in one off-season. We will have to come back to this.





St. Lucie Savannah Brooklyn Kingsport GCL
SP
Adrian Almeida - 20 Darwin Ramos - 19
Tyler Baldamo - 23 Kevin Canelon - 21 Erik Manoah - 19
RP Flabio Ortega - 25 Jose Celas - 24 Nabil Crismatt - 20 Joel Huertas - 19 Jose Medina - 19
Gabriel Feliz - 22 Eucebio Arias - 20  Kurtis Horne - 19 Gabriel Llanes - 19
Brent McMinn - 24 Adonis Uceta - 21
Derreck Benard - 23 Alex Durham - 18
CL Alex Palsha - 23
C Darryl Knight - 22  Dionis Rodriguez - 20
Natanael Ramos - 22
1B Manuel Hilario - 23  Dash Winningham - 19
2B Franklin Correa - 19 
SS Milton Ramos - 19 
3B Gregory Valencia - 22
Alvin Maracaro - 22 
OF John Mora - 22 Emmanuel Zabala - 20 Arnaldo Berrios - 19
Hengelbert Rojas - 21 Rafael Ramirez - 19

As I said, these are not etched in stone.

This is just the beginning of the process that will show you how your current team stacks up going into the season of trades, Rule 5, the draft, International signings, and free agency. 

Talk away... and we'll re-visit this as each team closes their books on the season.




Why Eric Campbell should be playing LF now (and maybe next year too!) -         http://mets360.com/?p=22906     


 Jacob deGrom

Why I watched: He throws fast.
Game Watched 4/23 vs. Dodgers
Game Thoughts
• He throws gas. The 97 mph pitch ate up the Dodgers to begin with.
• I like his 4-seam fastball a lot more then his 2-seamer. It has a little release side cut when in the 94-95 mph range. He gets a 9.7 SwgStr% with the 4-seamer versus 6.5% with the 2-seamer.
• He seems to get a ton of foul balls on his heater. This is should not be a surprise since a faster fastball usually gets more foul balls than ones thrown at slower speeds.
• Works away.
• None of his non-fastballs seem elite by themselves. Not a ton of late sharp break. They are getting good results, but they are each working off the 95-mph fastball. The hitters are pretty much helpless if they are looking heater and he throws the curve.
• Additionlly, Eno recently broke down all of deGrom’s pitches and grips if you need more info on the pitcher.
Final thoughts: He established his fastball and then his other pitches just throw off the batter. If he can refine his breaking pitches, I actually could see him be an elite pitcher like Justin Verlander. The problem right now is if he can keep the high heat going. If he begins to lose velocity, I don’t think his other pitches are good enough (in their current state) for him to maintain his results.  





12 comments:

Tom Brennan said...

I read the Mets 360 Campbell article, and here we go again. Mack, you know I was a huge advocate for Campbell, but the writer is giving up on Dekker already. he is 13 for 51 (.255) with 9 walks since he returned, which is a fine on base %. His K's are down in an acceptable range. He got flat-out robbed of 2 hits in his first few games. If those were hits, he is hitting .295 since his return. He plays a great CF. He deserves to play against all righties in Sept. If someone gets benched to let Campbell hit, bench Chris Young (err, I mean Curtis G - the only difference between Curtis and Young is 3 more years at more $$). I'd love to see Campbell play, but not at the expense of Dekker. PLAY DEKKER. PERIOD.

I think what you are doing to work the player board for next year makes a lot of sense. Clearly, this is a first iteration, as some guys who did little or nothing won't end up (if retained) as high as listed, and others will be pushed up faster. For instance, Eucebio Arias, who struck out very few batters %-wise in GCL, will not be in Brooklyn next year - probably Kingsport. I don't mean to single him out, but just as an example - if you can't K them there, you're in trouble moving up.

But it is a rational way to start the sorting out process for trades and 2015.

Kudos for Dilson - a few errors, but his fielding will be fine - his bat is encouraging.

Anonymous said...

I would like to wait on any big trades until after the Mets move Colon, Gee, Niese and Murphy, which I expect to happen over the course of this off season and early part of next year. Since all have internal replacements in line, I would hope that Sandy could get a decent haul of upper level prospects that could be used as replacements in a trade for the young arms. I couldn't help noticing all of the TV shots of DeGrom, Harvey and Wheeler always sitting together and thinking how nice it would be to see either Thor or Matz joining them depending on who is actually pitching. Even if it requires a little patience, I would like to keep that group as a core. High ceilings 1-5, under team control and a bullpen on the rise. I know the Mets need a bat, but if DW and Grandy repeat this year, next year will be another wash

Mack Ade said...

Thomas -

I'm going to keep aligning the players up either by age or the next affiliate they are due to play.

An example would be Dom Smith... can't send him back, right.

You're the guppy expect so please... start a list of adjustments you feel should be made here and we'll build them in late on in the process.

Mack Ade said...

Anonymous -

I think the four guys you have picked to move is a perfect list for the Mets. I wish them well finding other teams to want what only they want to trade.

I would add Plawecki to that list as well.

Michael S. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Michael S. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mack Ade said...

Michael -

you emailed me about this AFTER the email above, but I still answered yours... it comes out on one of the Morning Reports this week so let's wait for my response until then

Michael S. said...

Much appreciated, thank you Mack. When I read Sean's question I chuckled because it was similar to mine. I thought you'd stick with his in lieu of mine.

Looking forward to your additional thoughts. I'll delete my comments.

Anonymous said...

they may not get the haul they are looking for with these players, but adding in some secondary talent should get some value back and it could prove crucial to creating trade inventory that allows them to keep the beasts

Charles said...

Dale Burdick was just drafted out of HS. I think he probably deserves another 2 years to try to develop into the player the Mets thought he may become when they drafted him.

Jose Medina had a huge year in 2013 in the DSL. I wonder what happened? He completely bombed in the GCL, but if like to see another year from him as we'll.

Ml teams should have in depth player bio's of most of their prospects. Not just the top 20, but of most of the players.

The one guy I wish was able to put together a full season was Brandon Broser. His first 5 games were outstanding and then he went down with injury. Next year will be his third with the organization and I hope he is in Brooklyn. He seems to have a huge bat with massive power potential.

Tom Brennan said...

Speaking of Brosher, anyone have a feel on whether a post-ACL player can catch?

Steve from Norfolk said...

Thomas,

I found a good article on Baseball Prospectus about ACL injuries. Basically, the rehab seems to be approximately a year in length. It may affect a player's ability to cover ground, since it's a knee injury, but his catching shouldn't be impaired. Chipper Jones is probably the best-known ACL injury in baseball. He had surgery in August of 2010, and was ready for Opening Day 2011. Another player to suffer an ACL injury is Jason Castro. It's more common in football and basketball than baseball, as it's usually caused by sudden changes in direction.