The
Farm System - Part Deux
“So whaddya think?”
“Whaddya mean? What do I think?”
“You were talking about the Mets’ farm and
the rookies.”
“You might find this hard to believe, but I
have a tender spot in my heart for kids coming up out of the minors.”
“You’re right.”
“About what?”
“I do find it hard to believe you have a
tender spot in your heart.”
“You have failed to see the very deep vein of
sensitivity that runs through my core.”
“No, the only thing I’ve actually seen run
through your core are the drinks Percy pours you.”
“You can sometimes display a sad leaning toward
sarcasm.”
“Okay--Sandy’s rookies.”
“The geniuses who rank the farm hands only
put Gsellman and Rosario in the top 100 around the majors.”
“So?”
“If Sandy’s farm system is so great, why
aren’t there more of these guys in the top hundred?”
“Because they don’t feel they’re good
enough.”
“Good enough for what? Let’s look at Rivera,
Nimmo, and Cecchini. They finished one, two, and three in batting in the PCL.”
“The PCL’s a hitter’s league.”
“So take twenty points off everyone’s
average, and they were still the top three.”
“And what does that give us?”
“It gives us that the PCL probably has a
whole bunch of guys who are on the top hundred who didn’t hit as well as them.”
“Yeah, but those other guys have more potential.”
“And how good is potential? That and a Metro
card gets you a ride on the subway.”
“Provided the Metro card is paid up.”
“That too.”
“So whaddya want to do with these kids?”
“I wanna see them play.”
“Okay, where?”
“That is where that old canker g-naws. How
about second base?”
“You’ve got Walker there.”
“I know. That last question was rhetorical.”
“Huh?”
“I think for the second straight year we
might be developing 20/20 hindsight about the second base position.”
“You mean Walker...?”
“...Is costing us a whole lot of money for a
possible draft choice. Maybe Sandy should have let him go.”
“Who’d play second base then?”
“Well, let me see...You’ve got Reyes, you’ve
got Flores, you’ve got Cecchini, you’ve got TJ. Do you think we’ve got a choice
there?”
“Could be. Terry likes to have Reyes leading
off.”
“And I want to see these younger guys prove
themselves.”
“What if they prove themselves to be not good
enough?”
“But we got the numbers. We’ve also got some
pretty good stats from these guys from last year. With Walker out, Terry played
TJ at second and he got a .333 average out of him. Nobody else on the Mets had
that kind of average over any appreciable number of at-bats.”
“True.”
“Cecchini had the same average, only with six
at-bats, but I’d like to see more of him. I wanna see what they can do over a
longer stretch.”
“What about Nimmo?”
“Same thing. He hit a respectable .274 over
73 ABs.”
“Yeah, but he only had one home run.”
“Which almost reached the Shea Bridge. They
could try him in center field.”
“They say he don’t play it that well.”
“He’s probably about as good as Grandy, and
right now that’s who they got.”
“So Terry can just put the rookies in the
lineup.”
“You got two problems relative to that.”
“What are they?”
“One of them is the first word you just said,
‘Terry.’ He likes to look at the back of a guy’s baseball card. Obviously
rookies don’t have a lot of impressive numbers there.”
“Okay, so what’s the other problem?”
“If you start a rookie who’s making something
like the minimum, you’re probably sitting a guy that the front office signed
for a lot more money. Putting an expensive veteran on the bench makes the GM
look bad and makes the owner begin to grumble.”
“So whaddya gonna to do?”
“It’s a conundrum.”
“You should stop grumbling. You should be a
little more full of holiday cheer.”
“That’s an excellent idea.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Percy, if you could make your way over to
this part of the bar, this fine gentleman just said he wanted to buy me an egg
nog.”
“Merry Christmas.”
(Note- Mr. Herr is one of those guys who puts holiday things off until Christmas Eve. Since the site was closed on Saturday, the last part of this posting is a bit belated.)
(Note- Mr. Herr is one of those guys who puts holiday things off until Christmas Eve. Since the site was closed on Saturday, the last part of this posting is a bit belated.)
Whenever Richard Herr isn’t solving all the
Mets’ problems, he spends his time writing humorous science fiction novels.
You can see his books at https://www.amazon.com/Richard-Herr/e/B00J5XBKX4.
Offensive rookies get little respect in Mets Kingdom. We'll see if that changes in 2017.
ReplyDeleteIt won't change unless the offensive Skipper is put out to sea.
ReplyDeleteThe youth run into a brick wall here when we are competing for a world series. If this were 2012, we'd probably have seen Rivera, Nimmo, and Cecchini getting tons of at bats in 2017. But you can miss the playoffs by a game by experimenting, so they stick to the tried and true. Those guys are Plan B.
ReplyDeleteNot only that, since Collins was a good-field-no-heet player, I've always felt he didn't like the guys who could hit but had a fair glove, a la Flores. He had a helluva time breaking into Terry's rotation.
ReplyDeleteAll -
ReplyDeleteI'm going to assume that we go to camp with what we currently have under contract.
Like it or not, we all must respect that the team has Cespedes (22.5K), Reyes (22K), Wright (20K), Walker (17.2K), Granderson (15K), Bruce (13K), and Cabrera (8.25K) under contract in 2017.
This is our team and management will play them until they break.
2018 will be the year for Rosario, Smith, and Nimmo.
2018 won't be a year for rookies unless there's a new manager in charge.
ReplyDeleteReese -
ReplyDeleteI think you will get your wish in 2018.
I turned 69 this year and it would impossible for me to keep up the schedule your buddy Terry has to do every day. I expect 2017 to be his last year, especially after the team fails to even make a wild card birth (right now I see the Nats winning the NL East and the Braves and Marlins fighting it out for a wild card),
Hard to imagine Trump's energy, both before and since the election, at age 70. Remarkable, whether you like him or not.
ReplyDeleteMack
ReplyDeleteHow can you have the Braves and Marlins Ahead of us...
We won 90 games 2 years ago and with extreme amounts of injuries and Nothing from Bruce we won 87 last year.
We get back Degrom, Matz, Harvey, wheeler, Walker, and Duda from the team that ended the year. And while all may not have great years can Half of them recover their form? that's a lot of production to add.
I fully expect to be in the NL East race and expect a wild card game the Low water mark.
I believe this team has 2 years left to contend before we have to peel away from the starting pitcher...