8/5/17

Peter Hyatt - The Excitement of Youth Tempered By Terry Collins




Regarding Amed German Rosario:

I do not wish to pour cold water on anyone's enthusiasm, but for the sake of truth, I will. 

This kid is very exciting to watch.  He is 21 years old. He is young, strong, personable and so very talented.  


He has all the tools we love to see.  

The contextual reality:  

Terry Collins is playing him reluctantly.  

First, Sandy Alderson was deceptive about this time table for promotion. He did not say his plan was to promote him August 1st.  He hedged and qualified: 

 "That was basically the plan all along." 

He did not say, "this was the plan all along." 

 I know he is here, but I prefer to either hear the truth, or "I don't wish to discuss that" or "I am leaving options open.." and not be lied to.  

His plan was to stick with contracts even over productivity.  Like good soldiers under orders, other brass just assent by silence.  

The truth is that concerns were being raised from Vegas and from within Mets brain trust that Rosario was getting discouraged and that Dom Smith was more than ready.  

Alderson was pushed into a compromise, as if waiting a week for Dom Smith was essential.  

Ridiculous.  

As to the reluctance to play for the future, meaning, "play", rather than just make moves for 2018.  

Ego has been a factor in this losing season, just as lack of leadership has let the inmates run amok.  

Secondly, listen to Terry Collins. 

In the immediate aftermath of the excitement of watching this young kid on the major league field, Collins deliberately told reporters that he will not be playing all the time.  He will get "tired", Collins said because he is "young."  This is Collins' devotion to the veterans in his clubhouse which takes precedence over what is best for the New York Mets.  

Although I continue in uncertainty how much of this is by order from above (Alderson) and how much is his assimilation with older players, the result remains the same.   

The only way for this to change is for Amed to do what Conforto did:  just keep hitting to make it impossible to take him out of the line up.  If Rosario turns into an All Star, we can hear how "surprised" Terry Collins is.  

What nonsense! 

As an aging manager, Collins bond with the veterans is so strong, that it comes at the expense of tomorrow. 

It was frustrating in the month of June to wait for the Mets line up to be produced (perhaps 90% of the time late and after the other teams' posting) to see if our best natural hitter, Michael Conforto, was in the line up or not.  He finally got hot enough to make it impossible to remove him, which led to the "surprise" of Terry Collins when Conforto was elected to the All Star team by his peers.  That is to say, everyone but his manager knew.  

Sorry, but I don't buy it.  This was a signal of Collins' thinking and not management orders from the top.  

Whenever Grandy was put in instead of Conforto, we would have to lose and Grandy not hit in order to get Conforto the at bats he needed to work his way out of the slumping period.  It became discouraging to watch and I do not want to have to check the line up with the same feeling about Rosario.  

Keith Hernandez, not always the "best" employee, kept at the Mets publicly, about this, including some fascinating and intellectual insight into managing batting slumps over the course of 162 games. 

Twitter helped pressure the young All Star into the line up.  

Now Collins needs to tell the fans that Rosario, at age 21, will get "tired."

                                       Did you see the kid?

Did you see the energy even in his body language?

Did you see the love of our game that is in his DNA?

Does he strike you as someone who will willingly want a single moment of time off??

I hate this part:  

In order to see what young players can do, and develop for 2018, we have to lose games. 

 This is the short sightedness of both GM and manager who may not be around next year.  

We are no longer "show casing" for trades.  

We need to be putting younger players out there to see what they can do.  We couldn't get a box of baseballs for the disgruntled Cabrera.  

Dom Smith should be at first base. 

Now. 

If we are ever to learn if he can hit .300 with 40 doubles, Brandon Nimmo should be in the OF. 

Now. 

30 year old free agent to be slugger Jay Bruce should be offered an extension.  He is better defensively than credited, may give us 30 home runs plus each year and is a positive influence on young players.  He might be a perfect match for Dom Smith to locker next to.  

We are very likely to see Yoenis Cespedes continue to be hot, cold, streaky, productive, disinterested, happy, brooding, and with nagging injuries next year. 

 Management must consider this now, even as he says he intends to alter his off season work out.  

Do we learn our lessons about failing to think ahead...again?  

Or do we prepare with contingency planning and balancing putting a competitive team on the field now, while developing young players?

Winning with 36 year old legs for a lost season versus allowing for development for what could be a most promising 2018 season?

                                Which do you prefer?

By the way, anyone hear the sound of groveling to be resigned at 8.5 mill next year to be a utility player after NOT getting any interest from other teams?  Suddenly, there is...love. 

Surprise, surprise. 

We need to be playing for tomorrow.  

We need to be developing players now, not just in September, for 2018.  

We need to redeem the time.  

8 comments:

Tom Brennan said...

If Rosario did not get tired playing daily in Vegas heat, he'll be fine here playing every day. We need him playing every day. Maybe Terry would prefer Reyes because penciling in Rosario is a few more letters, and old guys get tired, so he'd prefer to not exert himself.

Dom Smith needs to be here too. Now. Nimmo deserves to play and show what he can do. Lagares will be back any day now.

Whichever veterans have to sit or go bye bye to make room for the young dudes - well, that is what has to happen ASAP.

Viper said...

Nice article Peter. Couldn't agree more.

Reese Kaplan said...

As I said earlier, the promotion of Rosario was a smokescreen to shelter Alderson from his failures at the trade deadline. How is it that they didn't want him to be poisoned by the bad mindset of Asdrubal Cabrera and now he plays alongside him as if none of the previous BS ever was said?

Don't get me started on Terry Collins who might want to consider that older players need more rest than do younger ones, particularly younger ones with a chip on their shoulder and an adrenaline rush from their first taste of the majors.

I also agree that the world knows what Asdrubal Cabrera and Curtis Granderson can do. If they wanted them, then they would have traded for them. Bench them and create room for the future -- Smith at 1B and Flores at 3B every single day. The only variation of this plan would be if you wanted to showcase Walker at 3B and let the defensively challenged Flores play 2B. There's no need to play Reyes or Cabrera or Granderson anymore.

While we're at it, let's see Drew Smith.

Viper said...

Going forward the Mets should be playing:
1B Smith
2B Cecchini (since TJ is hurt)
SS Rosario
3B Flores
CF Lagares/Nimmo whichever one is healthy or platoon.

But we still need to trade players that should have been traded already if not for the resident Genius who either asked for too much or wasn't willing to pick up any of the money owed.

Collins is not going to sit Cabrera or Granderson if they are still on the team. The only one who should be playing if he is still on the Mets is Bruce. But Collins has to play his veterans.

greggofboken said...

I agree with you about Smith.

I think you're completely off-base re: Collins and parsing what his comments meant regarding Rosario not playing every game. Rosario is at 98 games thus far and has never played more than 120. With 50 games left to go it's a good shot that hes' going to get gassed if he plays every day. And there are veterans who can spell him.

You also seem to conflate Collins with Alderson. The button to be pushed regarding Rosario's promotion was Sandy's, not Terry's. Given what was reported to be some tension in the Met locker room, he attempted to see if he could offload Cabrera first and ease the logjam. It did not happen (though the timing of Rivera's injury helped).

As to the assertion that "Twitter" (Who is "Twitter" anyway?) pressured Collins into putting Conforto into the lineup, I'm sorry...but that's just silly. Collins (who is not on Twitter) is not letting fans dictate playing time. If he was, he would never have lasted a season as a manager.

It's baseball. Not America's Got Talent.

Tom Brennan said...

BENCH...THE...VETS...BENCH...THE...VETS

Statement Analysis Blog said...

Greg,

I did not confuse Collins with Alderson regarding the promotion of Rosario. This was Alderson's call.

As to Collins playing vets over youth and making all sorts of dopey excuses, listen to what he says. Believe his words and don't interpret them.

Then, ask yourself, "why?"

Why does he need to say this now?
Why here?
Why these words?

Then, take a look at line ups.

Consider why Nimmo road the pine when his entire family came out to see him in a rare opportunity.

Did we really need 36 year old Grandy out there?

Then, begin to consider both Alderson's and Collins' age and the future and what would be most important to them;

the here and now, or

tomorrow.



What I do not know is how much of a line up is Collins and how much is Alderson.

Alderson has a very strong personality.

Reese Kaplan said...

Hitler had a strong personality. Donald Trump has a strong personality. While I'm not equating Alderson with either of them, merely having a strong personality isn't necessarily a good thing.