Mack’s Morning Report – 4-10 – The First Week, Aggressive Promotions, E-60, Lucas Duda, Jayce Boyd

Good morning.

I’ve said it a number of times… if you win every series you play, you will easily make the playoffs. Baseball teams are going to lose baseball games, but the Mets were 4-15 against the Washington Nationals last season. How much of an aberration was this from the rest of the season? Check this… the Mets were 75-68 against the rest of the teams they played.

In addition, even though the season is far too young, you can’t limit the amount of distance you can achieve early from teams that could compete with you for a wild card position. Yes, the Mets didn’t play the Marlins this week, but the Braves did and, if you’re playing the odds on which team has the best talent and will finish the season ahead of the other team, your money would definitely be on the Marlins. Trust me… root for the Braves to win every game against Miami.

So, what can we say about week one?

Well, the Mets won the series from the Nationals and the Braves won the series from the Marlins.

Only week one, but what a great week!

The minor league rosters for both St. Lucie and Savannah were released last Friday afternoon after I had already gone to print with the morning report. I printed the press releases and you can view the full rosters either here or here .

I want to applaud the Mets for promoting SS Amed  Rosario, 3B Jhoan Urena, and SP Marcus Molina past an assignment to Savannah and, instead, assigning them to St. Lucie at the A+ level. In addition, I applaud the promotion of OF Wuilmer Becerra to the full season Sand Gnats.

These are aggressive promotions that relevant teams do when they recognize that a certain player, regardless of lack of age, has more talent that the players around him. The Mets have not been famous for doing this, though there have been exceptions.

I watched, and enjoyed, the E-60 special on Matt Harvey.

I found it fascinating that a network could guess so accurately about a high school pitcher going into his junior high school season. Did ESPN film the same coverage on 20-30 other high school players back when no one could have possibly guessed if he would someday be worthy of an hourly special?

I did notice that the filming of his days in college were limited. Did they turn off the camera once Harvey said no to the one million dollar bonus? I’ve watched a lot of high school phenoms disappear after not signing a pro deal after their senior high school season.

Look, I think we got very lucky here when it came to this special and it’s a great way to start off what looks to be an exciting season to be a Mets fan.

I was both surprised and disappointed that the Mets and Lucas Duda couldn’t come to an extension agreement before the season started. There never are enough public details on things like this so you just don’t know if it was a player, team, or agent snag.

Sandy Alderson doesn’t seem to like to keep going back to the same table so I’m not sure what the future has in store for Mr. Duda. He is making $4.2mil this year and has two more arbitration years until he would become eligible for free agency in 2017.

For what it’s worth, 2017 seems to be a good projection for former first round pick, 1B Dominic Smith.

I’ve always been a guy that goes with what I have if it looks good. Having a first baseman that hits 30 home runs a year is perfect in my book and I’m not sure if Smith will ever produce these kind of power numbers.

Things like this never make any sense to me. I look at a guy like Juan Lagares and he would never allow money to get in the way of fulfilling his dream to play centerfield in New York City, for the team that drafted him. Duda was a couple of seasons ago away from losing his job to Ike Davis and he could be riding some bench or playing AAA baseball right now rather than being four point two million dollars to PLAY BASEBALL!

I hope Alderson, Duda, and his agent can put any ‘negative waves’ aside and revisit this in the next off-season.

Shame.

I didn’t find too many roster shockers when the minor league teams were released; however, the conversion of 1B Jayce Boyd did catch me off guard. This is a brand new position for Boyd who has played every minor league game at either first base or as the designated hitter due to a serious shoulder problem that limited him from throwing. Now, he comes back as an outfielder which I always thought needed a stronger arm than a first baseman.

I also was told last year that his return included an ‘unconventional’ throwing motion that, when told to me, I thought would limit his progress.

Look, converting him to the outfield can’t hurt. Boyd is a pure hitter with a lifetime .299 minor league batting average. He’s limited in power (22-HRs in 1,072-Abs) and, at 23-years old we’ve probably seen the end of any chance of developing additional power, but he’s a gap hitter who has only struck out 138 times and has an OBP of .382.

Why not?

I love this. 

After Cesar Puello cleared waivers and the Mets put him back on the Las Vegas roster, he tells Mets officials that he’s hurt (stress reaction on his back). The Mets had to rescind the demotion, put him back on the 40-man, and my guess this is just one more reason that Puello and Sandy Alderson will never get together for a future Thanksgiving dinner.



Lastly, do not look to the next draft to be a windfall for the Mets. The numbers for the signing bonus pool have just came out and the Mets rank 30th (dead last) in baseball, with a total of $3,587,800 available for their 50 picks.

Look for a fair amount of secondary high school players and college seniors.