Mack’s Morning Report – 8-13-15 – Lucas Duda, Juan Lagares, Jose Reyes, Brandon Nimmo

Good morning.

Learned on Twitter –

          Steven Matz Will Make First Rehab Start Saturday

Gavin Cecchini -  (AA, age 21) - 454 PA, .320/.377/.448 (.825 OPS), 60 R, 24 2B, 4 3B, 7 HR, 51 RBI, 37 BB, 48 K - was 4-6 with two RBI last night. Now 2nd in Eastern League with .320 average and 9th with 51 RBI this year for Binghamton

Last year, Major League Baseball saw gross revenues hit $9 billion, a staggering sum for any business, and hardly the numbers of an industry “dying.” And that figure was a 13 percent increase from 2013 when revenues hit $8 billion.

Nats had 4-1/2 game lead in NL East after Fourth of July. Since then, they're 13-18 with third-fewest runs scored in NL.

Mets are averaging 5.2 runs since July 24. Prior to that, it was 3.4.

Mets are 44-7 when scoring 4 or more runs. That .863 winning pct is second-best in MLB.

Lucas Duda’s tight back/sore back (pick one) seems to have a fair amount of Mets insiders worried for the pennant stretch. The conservative approach would be to put him on the disabled list for a couple of weeks and let his rest with while receiving therapy, but how do you do that with the Nationals biting up your arse. Stayed tune to this one folks. It might get ugly.

 Juan Lagares on playtime –

“I come here ready to play every day. If I don’t play, I have to be ready to be in the game. I’ve just tried to control what I can control. I work hard every day and when I have the opportunity I try to take advantage. It’s a little hard, but we’ve been winning a lot of games and that’s what matters,. I’ll just keep working hard.”

Mack – I really have grown to love this guy, but I just don’t have a solution here. The Mets are going to play Yoenis Cespedes every day and Curtis Granderson is going to get the lion share as well. This leaves Lagares to compete against Michael Conforto and Michael Cuddyer for play time.

I like Terry Collins’ recent policy of ‘the hot bat plays’, but, if that is true, it would be Cespedes riding the bench right now and that’s not going to happen.

          Do any of you have an idea here?

Jose Reyes told Tim Rohan –

Reyes still keeps a home on Long Island and lives there in the off-season. Like any baseball fan with New York roots, he follows the Mets from afar. He knows about their young, dominant pitching. He still thinks about 2006, the year he was one victory away from playing in the World Series. When he walks the streets of New York, people shout at him: “Come back! Come back to the Mets!” He gets the same messages on Twitter and Instagram, too. It all makes him smile.

“It’s not that easy,” Reyes said Tuesday afternoon, after he had had some more time to reflect. “I’d love to — not now, because I have two more years on my deal. But I’d love to finish my career here in New York. I have some great memories here.”

          Mack – This isn’t going to happen.

There is no one on earth that hated the fact that the Mets didn’t resign Reyes before he left. Reyes and David Wright represented everything the Mets were in those days, but I can speak first hand that neither the Mets or Reyes reached out to get a deal done. They both deserved the loss.

Still, Reyes never returned to an all-star team, after leaving the Mets.

 Fangraphs has a brand new interview with Brandon Nimmo  on hitting. Here’s part of it:

                             “My plan is simply to hit something hard. I’m not trying to hit home runs, or anything like that. Home runs are actually mistakes that come from getting under the ball a little bit. I’m trying to hit line drives, and if I can get something on the barrel, that’s where I’m going to have the most velocity and the most chance of having something fall. I want to be short and direct to the ball.

“If you looked at video of me from when I first got into pro ball, and compared it to now, you wouldn’t see a whole lot of difference. I think I’m pretty much the same, outside of strength. I’ve mostly been going with what feels comfortable, and what helps me get to pitches.

“Our hitting philosophy was drilled into me early on. It’s basically to get a good pitch to hit. A lot of people misinterpret our hitting philosophy as wanting to draw a walk. That’s not what it is. It’s to get a good pitch to hit and not be afraid to walk. It’s never a bad thing to get on base.

Mack – Fangraphs compared him to Miami’s Christian Yelich.

 I’ll take it.