My rankings
is solely subjective and based on nothing more than what is in my head at time
I’m writing this. I’ve followed the Mets minor league players for many years
and I feel I can recognize talent at various levels of their development. What
I have failed at is how to determine when this talent seems to diminish. It’s
amazing how many first round picks never make it in this game.
I’m old
school, so you won’t seem much SABR-discussion here, I do research and, when I
find a good quote or two, I’ll add them to my analysis, but, like I said in the
beginning of this post, most of this us subjective.
Let’s get
started.
# 34 –
RHSP Chris Flexen - age: 20 -
6-3, 215
Drafted in the 14th round of the 2012 draft
No college – Newark Memorial H.S. (CA)
2012: K-Port, 7-G, 6-ST, 5.63, 1.63,
32.0-IP, 26-K
2013: K-Port, 11-ST, 2.09, 0.94, 69-IP, 62-K
2014: Savannah, 13-ST, 4.83, 1.62, 69-IP, 46-K
Flexen was
another of the highly projectable high school pitchers that the Mets scouted
through the west coast in 2011. His being drafted so late was due to his
demands for second round bonus money, which the Mets did eventually pay.
Like most
high school players, Flexen struggled in the first year of ‘the grind’. The
Mets stuck with him and it paid off with a sterling 2013 season.
Once again,
in 2014, Flexen struggled, but did rebound in his last five starts in June
(2.57). On July 21, 2014, Flexen underwent Tommy John surgery and had bone
chips removed from his pitching elbow.
I had the
pleasure of sitting behind the radar guns on two of his starts last year and
the two nicest things I could say was he struggled to find the zone, but kept
his fastball velocity throughout his problems. His fastball sits in the 94-96
range and is backed by pretty decent slider. It’s an excellent 1-2 combo when
on, though I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing it firsthand last season.
Speculation: The first thing Flexen has to do is heal. He
could start off the 2015 season in Savannah, or move on to St. Lucie, but both
rotations are bloated with 9-10 projected starters on each team.
Because of
his age, I’ve return him to Savannah and build a rotation around Marcos Molina, Casey Meisner,
and Logan Taylor.
Past that, I
believe Flexen has the makings of a very successful back end reliever, but that
will come in time.
1 comment:
Good to see he threw that hard. He won't add to the logjam, it seems, until at least July, which is a year after his surgery, but I look forward to seeing what he's got when he returns. I'd imagine they'll baby him in 2015 in hopes of a fully healthy full season in 2016.
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