Mack's Apples - 10-6-17 - Josh Edgin, The Error, Mock, Warthen Slider, Jeff Glenn, D.J. Artis

Good morning.

Mets reliever Josh Edgin has chosen to become a free agent. He was taken off the 40-man, designated for assignment, and cleared waivers.

Josh was always respectful for what I did and I wish him the best. 

The New Yorker -

The error in baseball is a unique phenomenon in sports—a judgment of the quality of play that makes no difference to the outcome. No other sport, not even a close cousin like cricket, has anything like it. Records of errors are as old as official scoring; the rulebook devotes as many pages to the error as it does to equipment. At each of the 2,430 games played this past season, official scorers, nestled in the press boxes, have devoted considerable intellectual energy and an elaborate casuistry to working out which plays are errors and which aren’t. The statistic’s sublime pointlessness is pure baseball.

Time for a mock draft update.

This one uses the last six mocks out there on the internet. The results were:

   1.     RHP Brady Singer – Florida

   2.     OF-1B-DH Seth Beer – Clemson

   3.     SS Bruce Turang – Santiago HS (CA)                    

   4.     RHP Kumar Rocker – N. Oconee HS (GA)            

   5.     RHP Jackson Kowar – Florida                                 

   6.     OF Jarred Kelenic – Waukesha West HS (WI)    

   7.     OF Joe Gray Jr. – Hattiesburg HS (MS)                

   8.     2B Nick Madrigal – Oregon State                         

   9.     LHP Konnor Pilkington – Mississippi State         

10. RHP Chandler Day – Vanderbilt                           

11. RHP Ethan Hankins – Forsyth Central HS (GA) 

12. SS Mateo Gill – Timber Creek HS (TX)                 

13. OF Trevor Larnach – Oregon State                      

14. RHP Lukan Baker – TCU                                           

15. RHP Casey Mise – Auburn                                      

16. C Will Banfield – Brookwood HS (GA)                 

17. SS Kendall Simmons – Tattnall Sq. Aca. (GA)   

18. LHP Kris Bubic – Stanford                                       

19. RHP Jason Bilous – Coastal Carolina                   

20. SS Charles Mack – Williamsville E. HS (NY)       

21. LHP Justin Hooper – UCLA                                      

22. RHP Owen Meaney – St. Thomas HS (TX)          

23. SS Sean Guibe – Berks Catholic HS (PA)             

24. OF Jake Magnum – Mississippi State                   

25. 1B Tristan Casas – Plantation HS (FL)                 

26. OF Brennan Breaux – LSU                                       

27. RHP Dallas Woolfork – Mississippi                      

28. LHP Shane McClanahan – USF                              

29. LHP Nick Sprengel – San Diego                             

30. SS Jimmy Glowenke – Marcus HS (TX)                

31. RHP Bryan Hoeing – Louisville                              

32. OF John Stowers – Louisville                                 

33. 1B Chayce Bryant – Redan HS (GA)                     

34. LHP Cole Sands – Florida State                             

35. 3B Jonathan India – Florida                                    

36. SS Jeremy Eierman – Missouri State                   

37. SS Nander De Sadas – Montverde Aca. (FL)      

38. C Joey Bart – Georgia Tech                                     

39. C Cal Raleigh – Florida State                                 

40. LHP Luke Bartnicki – Walton HS (GA)                 

41. OF Tristan Pompey – Kentucky                             

42. LHP Matt Liberatore – Mountain Ridge HS (AZ)

43. OF Travis Swaggerty – South Alabama              

44. RHP Davis Sharp – Mill Creek HS (GA)                

45. OF Brock Hale – BYU                                                

46. OF Manny Gonzalez – Hernandez HS (PR)         

47. RHP Sean Hjelle – Kentucky                                    

48. 3B Nate Eikhoff – Virginia                                      

49. OF Jake McCarthy – Virginia                                 

50. SS Nolan Gorman – O’Connor HS (AZ)                            

51. LHP Steven Gingery – Texas Tech                         

52. OF Elijah Cabell – Winter Park HS (FL)

53. RHP Colton Eastman - CSF

Eno Sarris on the ‘Warthen Slider’ –

The Mets’ quick slide from a National League championship in 2015 to 90 losses this season had to claim a victim. Manager Terry Collins appears to be one of them: according to reports, he’s unlikely to return next year. Now, pitching coach Dan Warthen is a candidate to join him on the chopping block in New York.

It makes sense to some degree. The Mets’ fate over the past few years has been tied closely to the quality of the pitching staff. Once a clear strength of the club, that staff represented a weakness for this year’s team. But much of that weakness was a product of injury, and injuries hit every team at a seemingly random pace. Is Warthen a scapegoat here, or is he somehow directly responsible for the current situation?

Two years ago, Warthen’s brand of slider appeared to be a revelation. Somewhere between a cutter and true slider, the hard breaking ball seemed responsible for the breakouts of multiple pitchers: Jacob deGrom, Jeurys Familia, Matt Harvey, Steven Matz, Jenrry Mejia, Hansel Robles, and (of course) Noah Syndergaard.

The Mets consistently led the league in slider velocity and may have even inspired other teams to try out the harder version of the pitch.

The Mets have released catcher Jeff Glenn.









John Sickels has begun his award winning scouting reports on key players available for the 2018 draft.

Here’s one of the first on Liberty University OF D.J. Artis –

Coming into his sophomore season, he had grown from 5’9”, 165 as a prepster, to a more solid 5’11”, 190. He was named as the Big South Conference player of the year pre-season by Baseball America. He somehow put up even stronger numbers as a sophomore: .359/.532/.552, with 62 walks to 30 strikeouts, and 23 stolen bases in 26 attempts. More importantly, he also more than doubled his ISO, from .095 as a freshman to .193 as a sophomore. That brings his two year totals to .365/.515/.504, 112 runs, 35 extra base hits, 86 RBI, 46 stolen bases, and a 114/58 BB/K ratio over 540 PA.