Mack’s Morning Report – 3-21-16 – Bartolo Colon, Mets Rotation, Zack Wheeler, Jenrry Mejia

Good morning

I hate to say ‘I told you so’ but we just may have ourselves a Colon problem, and I’m not talking about something in the lower bowel area.

3 games… 11.2 innings pitched… 13 earned runs… 15 hits… 10.03-ERA

And strangely, no one seems to be writing anything about this. It’s like it’s okay for your SP5 to stink like fish.

Here’s the good news… the season opens on April 3^rd and because there are four days off in the first 12 days, the Mets won’t have the need for an SP5 until April 19^th against the Phillies.

All joking aside, the Mets could be scurrying to figure out an option here until the projected return of Zack Wheeler around July 1^st.

Options could be Seth Lugo (0.00), Logan Verrett (1.50), or Sean Gilmartin (4.50).

Going into Sunday’s game…

          Wilmer Flores ranks third among all NL players with a .440 batting average this spring.

          Asdrubal Cabrera resumed swinging a bat on Saturday and repeated the activity on Sunday

          Eric Campbell is 2nd among all NL players with a .563 OBP this spring. Flores ranks 3rd with a .531 OBP

A lot of bold predictions on Fangraphs these days…

          Josh Shepardson   –

The Indians and Mets will account for six top-20 starting pitchers. Projecting any of the six pitchers I expect to finish within the top 20 at starting pitcher wouldn’t be bold if done so in isolation, but given the rate of attrition of pitchers, collectively it qualifies as bold — in my opinion. Among pitchers who tallied a minimum of 150 innings, four in the top eight pitched for the Indians or Mets (Carlos Carrasco, Corey Kluber, Noah Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom) and two more cracked the top 17 (Danny Salazar and Matt Harvey). Harvey was the lowest ranked pitcher in the group ranking 17th with a 24.9% strikeout rate. The rest of the sextet’s statistical profile was jaw dropping, too, and all six ranked within the top 36 in FIP with five ranking within the top 21. This is a supremely talented group of pitchers, and as a nifty fallback, Steven Matz is a long-shot option to pick up the slack if one of these guys suffers an injury or falters. Matz turned in a 3.61 FIP, 22.8% strikeout rate and 1.23 WHIP in a half-dozen starts for the Mets last year.

          Mack – No surprise here.

Syndergaard had a sort of rocky time on Sunday, having to work himself out of two jams in the 4^th and 5^th innings.

Final stat line: 5.0-IP, 6-H, 2-R, 1-ER, 5-K, 0-BB… pre- season ERA: 1.54, 54 pitches

The most important thing is his speed is already in the 98-99 range, making him just about season ready.

It was interesting listening to the Mets announcers discussing Zack Wheeler and how he planned on changing the angle of his pitching arm when he returns to action. You might remember that the San Francisco Giants thought that Wheeler was a TJS waiting to happen and first changed those angles, which didn’t sit well with Wheeler.

All that changed when the Mets traded for him and let him go back to pitching the way he wanted to. Guess what happened next?

Two weeks to go and major members of the Mets pen continue to stumble.

Jerry Blevens (3-runs, 7.20-ERA), Antonio Bastardo (2-runs, 8.10), and Hansel Robles (2-runs, 5.68) all had bad outings on Sunday.

Those safe to go north seem to be Jeurys Familia (0.00), Addison Reed (1.42), and Logan Verrett (1.50).

Everything… and everyone else… is up in the air.

Jenrry Mejia on Facebook -

They say they talk criticize but they don't know where I come from or where I am there is only one God not two and the will of the there is k respect it because that's what he wanted, and this must be what I'm here because I wanted to and here I'll stay because he wants it Now tell me who it says the word of God is the k puts an end to it and the decision of God is lak there is k accept love

You look down and then you realize that in the ground there's only failure lift up your eyes like that same cm lift the body if you drop it, don't look good if the low in the sky there are better thing k on earth hey said ‪#‎ask ah pope God

          Mack – Blow it out of your ass, Mejia.