Mack’s Friday Morning Weekly Mets Recap – 2-27 – Harvey Day, Blocking Nimmo, Chris Mitchell Prospects, Playoffs, dD vs. Kirk

Good morning.

We’re getting closer to opening day and no one seems to agree when Matt Harvey’s first game will be. First they said it would be the home opener on April 13^th, but then Terry Collins said on Saturday that Harvey would pitch in the first five games of the season.

Either way, there’s a tremendous amount of concern in camp whether or not the old Harvey returns to the mound now that he’s put surgery aside. Sandy Alderson says that it’s ‘not out of the question’ for Harvey to achieve 200 innings, ‘including the playoffs’. Let’s go back and remember that the last time he did pitch for the Mets, two things stood out. One, he averaged 6.85 innings per outing and two, it seemed like the Mets never supported him with a single run during most of those outings. If Harvey starts late in April, that would mean a probable four starts in April and a max of 27-28/190 innings.

I wonder if the lack of support added to Harvey’s headstrong attitude regarding how he approaches the game had anything to do with his injury. Did he ‘over pitch’ because his team couldn’t manufacture him a lead?

The 2015 Mets rotation will have much more talent than the 2013 version, but that means nothing to Harvey. He’s a one man head case either on his way to the Hall Of Fame or a hospital ward named in his honor.

I believe the Mets will have much success from their rotation this season, but not here. My guess is a .500 season, countless uncomfortable moments and quotes  with both coaches and the press, and even a possible repeat of his arm problems.

Harvey will not throw a ball below 100%. He just won’t do it and everyone could suffer here because of it.

There’s a story out of Binghamton that Mets outfield prospect Brandon Nimmo may start the 2015 season back with the B-Mets due to the fact that the Mets outfields, as Sandy Alderson said, are ‘backed up’. He also said this was the same thing that happened last year to catcher Juan Centeno.

We talked about ‘blocking’ a few weeks ago and I said that I didn’t see a single situation where a Mets prospect was being blocked. Now, it seems this could happen to Nimmo and did happen to Centeno (though I never considered Centeno a prospect).

I have no problem with Nimmo beginning the season in Upstate New York. He's used to snow. In fact, that’s where I have him projected, but I do have a problem if he gets clogged down behind a bunch of non-prospect wanabees that are going nowhere. The current Mets outfield is built around Juan Lagares in centerfield, who I see someday playing in an all-star game. The other two positions are dominated by the contracts that stand behind the players; however, I see an opening in 2016 for Nimmo if the Mets don’t slow track him.  

The best I can predict for Michael Cuddyer is a disappointing 2015, a probably return to the DL at least once during the season, and a platoon at first base in 2016 (frankly, there’s plenty of material here for an entire separate post).

Nimmo could start the year for the B-Mets, end the minor league season in Las Vegas, spend September with the Mets in Queens, and open up the 2016 season as one of your starting corner outfielders.

And before anyone writes back because their nose got out of joint with my definition of excess outfielders at the AAA level, this is how the game works folks. You draft a bunch of players, sign a bunch more internationally, and no matter how long or well they play the game, it comes down to three starters and two substitutes on the parent team. Most very decent baseball players never get above the AAA level. 

Even more depressing is most of them never get the chance to hit against both right handed and left handed pitchers. They are brought up through the system as platoon players and don't stand a chance of being an every day player in the majors.

Occasionally a Lagares comes along and surprises all of us, but most of the time we can figure out who is going to make it and who isn’t. Right now, the Mets system has a lot of ‘who isn’ts’ and they sadly need to step aside.

This is the time of the year that everybody comes out with their prospect list. Thomas Brennan and I took a stab at ours last month and Chris Soto is posting the official Mack’s Mets list as I write.

Chris Mitchell over at Fangraphs may have outdone us all.

He lists the current top 200 prospects, in order, and, for the Mets they would be: #6 RHSP Noah Syndergaard, #12 2B Dilson Herrera, #55, RHP Marcos Molina, #56, RHP Rafael Montero, #102, OF Brandon Nimmo, #123 RP Akeel Morris, #126 IF Thomas Brennon  Matt Reynolds, #130 OF Ivan Wilson, #153 C Kevin Plawecki, #158 P Matthew Bowman, #159 SS Amed Rosario, #182 P (he is a pitcher, right?) Emmanuel Zabala, #188 OF Cesar Puello, and #190 SS Wilfredo Tovar.  

I mean, 14 Mets prospects and no Steven Matz? 

Mitchell spends a considerable amount of time trying to defend his ‘KATOH’ system of picking prospects and dissing the likes of players like CWS SS Tim Anderson and Houston RHP Mark Appel. I’ve got my own problems with picks like Zabala over Matz.

I always tell this to anyone who asks me advice on how to develop a prospect list. Do not make this a popularity contest by flaunting one player for what he has produced in one year of his career or predict him to double or triple what he has done in the past in the next year. Now you’re just being an untrained fan and your whole list loses validity 

I loved the amount of Mets on Mitchell’s list but I wouldn’t give his next list a second glance.

 I do want to stop here and say one thing in case my Harvey ‘gloom and doom’ assessment makes you feel that I feel that the Mets will not make the playoffs this season. That’s wrong. I think they will win enough games to qualify for one of the wild card teams and, then, they’ll turn it over to the hot pitcher at that time of the year (with the right amount of rest) and we’ll all cross our fingers.

However…

I don’t think this will be a season where any particular players are going to max out, stat wise. It’s just not that kind of lineup. My guess is Lucas Duda and Daniel Murphy will give us the same kind of season they did in 2014, and Juan Lagares might increase his batting average into the .290 range. Past that, I do look for excellent seasons from David Wright (for his age… 25-HRs, .275-.280) and the POY will be Travis d’Arnaud. My guess is at least five d’Arnaud clutch home runs will either create the lead that the team wins by or is a genuine walk off. I think d’Arnaud is going to be a perennial all-star. I really do.

Past that, I don’t expect positive results from either corner outfielder or anyone that plays shortstop.

However…

What the Mets are going to do this season is teach itself how to win ballgames. They will stop throwing of kicking away a lead and they will follow where their pitching staff takes them. The pitchers will create the routine fly balls and soft grounders needed to stay out of the error column.

I've told you a number of times that I played third base. I never made an error on a routine ground ball. It was always the ones that were hit sharply, especially the ones right at me. Bad pitching creates those kind of hit balls and the Mets have very little of that these days. It will be the pitchers that reduce the errors in the field, not the players making the plays.

You’re going to see a lot of 2-1, 3-2, and 4-3 ballgames here. Timely hits and decent (lucky?) defense is going to determine what side of the final score the Mets are on.

dD vs. Kirk – I was reading something that Reese Kaplan wrote about Matt den Dekker and I realized that I never seem to talk about this guy. I think what happens to me is that the Mets turn most of their outfielders into platoon players and I just never have the respect for them anymore to become full time major league players. 

The perfect case would be both den Dekker and Kirk Nieuwenhuis.

Neither one of them have anything more to prove in the minor leagues, but the only major league at-bats they have received have been against right handed pitching.

Whether you like it or not, the starting Mets outfield is Curtis Granderson, Juan Lagares, and Michael Cuddyer. This leaves two substitute slots, one for someone that hits from the right side of the plate and the other from the left.

Den Dekker and Nieuwenhuis are both lefties and, in 2014, hit .255 (den Dekker, 137-Abs) and .262 (Nieuwenhuis, 103-Abs) against righties.

Here’s the problem. These are their platoon numbers and they don’t say .355 and .362. This is the best they have done against the kind of pitching they should be eating up. 

It’s just not there.

For me, the difference is the three home runs that Kirk had (dD had none!) and his .855 OPS. They both offer excellent defense and, frankly, I also give Kirk the push here, arm wise.

My hope is to see a lot of one of these guys in the eighth and ninth inning of every game the Mets are leading. I really don’t care if either one of them get a hit… I care that they prevent one.