Mack – Morning Report – 2- 3 – Morning Reports, Lew Rhodes, Ann Mara, Steven Matz, Blocking

There continues to be a limited amount of information being released on the New York Mets so I apologize if my morning reports are shorter than usual.

In addition, apologies go out to Lew Rhodes for me reading a comment of his, having it all wrong, and then erasing the comment. I pride myself on not erasing comments which I violated here. Sorry, Lew.

It was very sad to see that Ann Mara, wife of former New York Giants owner Wellington Mara, passed this weekend.

There never was a more dysfunctional sports ownership team that the Giants in the 80s-90s. The Giants were 50% owned by Wellington and 50% owned by his nephew, Tim. No two co-owners ever hated each other more and it was joked that the only reason they hired George Young as the General Manager was to ask as message boy between their two opposite corner offices.

And yet, most of this remained filtered from the general public because that’s how the press worked in those days. There were certain players and coaches that were considered part of only one owner’s pool (example: Bill Parcells was a ‘Tim guy’)

I guess, we as Mets fans, could have it worse. I mean, Fred and Jeff could be fighting in the hallways and Saul could be filling the role once filled by Young.

Will the Wilpons ever sell this team?

Sure they will, but not because of any substantial cash offer. Only boredom or poor health to son Jeff would get the bean counters pulling out their abacus.

Steven Matz seems to have been added as one of the major topics of discussion as we wait for something to come out of the Mets offices. It seems there are two completely different schools of thought here. One, let the kid pitch 2015 in Las Vegas and keep the pace slower than the prospect weenies would like it to be… and two, target him to be promoted to Flushing around the AAA all-star break.

Here’s the problem with that… where to?

The Mets can’t even find a home for Dillon Gee right now, would still have one too many starters (Colon, Niese) needed when Noah Syndergaard is called up, and now you want to make room for Matz… over who?

Matz has only pitched three years in the Mets system, but let’s remember that all comes after two years on the surgical table and DL. Yes, he’s been healthy since returning, but I’d like to keep things conservative here, especially since it looks like he may be the last ‘AAA’ pitching prospect to come along for a few more years.

What the Mets need to do is concentrate their trading efforts on exiting three pitchings in a very specific order… Gee… Colon… Niese after 2015.

There was some chatter on the site this weekend about ‘blocking’.

There’s a big difference between blocking and promoting conservatively. I just don’t see anybody currently blocking being done by the Alderson administration.

I looked over the roster and nobody is in the way of the Mets top prospects (Syndergard, Matz, Whalen, Molina, Leathersich, Seward, Robles, Morris, Plawecki, Smith, Herrera, Rosario, Urena, Nimmo, Conforto, Becerra). They all look to open up 2015 at the level they were projected to play and there is room ahead of them at the next level for others to be moved aside and left they continue their ascent to (hopefully) stardom.

Only Rafael Montero may suffer from this malady, but we’re going to have to wait and see what his status is on opening day. If he’s sent to the Mets pen than he too hasn’t been blocked.