Mack’s Apples – Starting Over, Santa Rosa Baseball, Dillon Gee, 3-mil Baseball Cards, TJS

Good morning.

The New York Mets should perform a ‘Derek Jeter 'and start from scratch –

           

Consider this …

Using a different chart from Cot’s Baseball Contracts, Noah Syndergaard has four years of arbitration due (beginning this season) before he becomes a free agent in 2022, and Jacob deGrom has three years before he earns his freedom in 2021. Team control over both these players is over, and their salaries will rise each season dramatically during the arbitration process. How long will it be before the Mets say, uh-uh, see ya later, because they can’t quite afford them, unquote?

Matt Harvey will be history after this season when he becomes a free agent, and both Steven Matz and Michael Conforto will begin their arbitration years in 2019. If the penny rich Mets can salvage just one of all the players mentioned when they’ll be $100+ million valued as free agents, it’ll be considered a miracle.

            Didn’t I say this last week?

Santa Rosa baseball clinic benefits kids who lost homes to fires –

         

  On Friday, about 220 young baseball enthusiasts — a good many of whom lost their homes in the deadly wildfires in October — will get a chance to learn skills under the tutelage of baseball veterans, including some big leaguers, minor leaguers and area standouts. It’s part of a four-hour clinic and fundraiser at Epicenter in Santa Rosa to benefit youth baseball players who have lost their homes.

Dillon Gee signs with the Chunichi Dragons –



2018 Mets International signees (thanks go out to Jacob Resnick - www.http://metsminors.net  for this) - 

        

         In 2011, Gee went on that magical 8-0 run, which caused even ESPN to turn heads. Gee would end up finishing the year with a 4.43 ERA and a 13-6 record. Not bad for his second year in the majors.

I’m thrilled that Dillon has become a seven figured pitcher. Enjoy the sushi.

(I took this picture of Dillon, with his original Mets number of #73, when he came to his first spring traing)

Collector giving up 3-million  baseball card collection -

                      

                 

After nearly 60 years the collector who spent a lifetime accumulating 3-million baseball cards – weighing five tons - says it's time to say goodbye to his prized possessions.

Soon, each and every card will be up for auction, but he says it was a hard decision to make.

Have We Passed Peak Tommy John ? –

        

   There were concerns that sports specialization, the focus on velocity over feel for the craft, was stressing arms even before they arrived in the majors. It seemed possible that rising league-average velocity marks — for which there’s now a new record set each year — were creating demands on pitchers’ elbows that their bodies couldn’t withstand.

Tommy John surgeries reached a record level in 2014, a level surpassed again in 2015. Velocity kept inching up. Pitchers with medical histories and red flags kept flowing into the game via the draft. Said Pirates GM Neal Huntington to this former newspaperman in 2014:

“They were blown away by the number of significant injuries high school and college pitchers had this year compared to three years ago, five years ago. The level of injuries is growing exponentially,” Huntington said. “We are just starting to get to the front edge of this (Tommy John surgery) wave. We might not even be through the worst of this yet.”

Maybe I’m wrong here, but it seems that the Mets are currently behind the curve here.