Mack - New Weekly Report

Good morning.

Here’s week three…

          There was a superb article on The New York Post , written by Anthony Barstow, regarding the long term free-agency contract and how they just might be dead. Houston Astros’ owner, Jim Crane, said that the numbers don’t support the kind of lengthy deals superstars are looking for.

Is this a sign of the future? Is it a safer version of collusion? My thoughts are it’s a little of each.

Analytic gurus can make the case that the last 25% of a long-term contract to a free agent usually don’t produce anywhere the numbers this player turned out early in his career. And, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to add to this the injury factor (cough Yoenis Cespedes cough) that adds more insult to (sic) injury.

Read the short article so you are up to speed if our two super free agent studs out there are left at the gate come opening day.

Me?  If I was their agent, I would talk these relatively young free agents to sign a three year, $40mil/yr. deal, with a 4^th year team option. There will still be plenty of money still out there when this contract runs out and $160mil should be enough to buy them enough chewing gum in their late 20s.

          Every team makes an Anthony Swarzak acquisition. You know, one of those signings you do because it doesn’t seem like any of your telephone calls are being returned. I pray that the ten million bucks shelled out to Justin Wilson doesn’t turn out to be a repeat of the Swarzak fiasco. Will we be happy with a repeat of his 2018 Cubs stats of 3.46/1.42 in 54.2-IP, along with 69-Ks? I guess, if this represented the worst numbers in the 2019 pen.

I’m being told there is a plan here.

You see, Mets pitching coach Dave Eiland feels he’s seen something in Wilson’s delivery that can be adjusted and lower his BB/9 numbers, while keeping the strikeouts coming.

Yeah, I know. How many times have we’ve been taken down that one-way road?

Well, this is supposedly the plan.

Me? A lefty throwing 96?  Just give me an inning an outing with reduced walks and we may have something here.

None of us were very surprised when the Mets cut fish with ex-first round pick Gavin Cecchini, though most Mets blogger out there are quick to criticize the people in the Mets organization that make picks like this.

Are the Mets doing something worst than the other teams out there?

Well, let’s look at a five year period of 2009-2013. If you were drafted in the first round during one of these years, you should be playing MAJOR league baseball right now.

So what did I find?

2009:     14 out of the 48 first round picks never made it to the majors

2010:          18 of the 50 first rounders haven’t made it there

2011:          20 of the 60 first rounders haven’t yet made it there

2012:          21 of the 60 first rounders haven’t yet made it there

2013:          13 0f the 39 first rounders haven’t yet made it there

In total… 86 out of the 257 first round draft picks never played an inning in the majors.

That’s 33.5% 

Any questions?

One of our readers, Mets Monkey, had a request this week:

Hey Mack, don't know if you've done this or if you take requests, but can you write about what you personally observe empirically or viscerally about a minor league prospect, that is not covered in that 40/70 stuff? When did you ever know for sure, even if that surety is not a consistent prognosticator overall and everyday, but more of a "transcendental" one-time only appraisal? ThanX

We first have to spend sometime figuring out what the hell the Monkey is saying, since he does speak a different language than the rest of us.

I think I have two examples here that fit (both of which I have talked about in the past so excuse me for being redundant… redundant… that’s a Mets Monkey word…)

Both happened at different times during pre-game practice at a Savannah Sand Gnats game.

The first was about an infielder that played parts of four, I repeat, four seasons in Savannah. He really couldn’t find a place to fit into this team until the day he strolled out to right field after he took his turns at the infield practice and started to shoot the shite with a team buddy in right field. Well, manager Tim Teufel started hitting fungos out to the outfielders and calling out where they should throw after he hit the ball in the air. For the hell of it, he got under a ball that Teufel wanted thrown  across the field to third. He did. On the fly. Teufel sort of was stopped in his track, stared out to make sure he recognized the player, and hit another one, yelling ‘same base’. The infielder repeated the throw to third. On fly. So was born the outfielder… Juan Lagares.

The other happened while I was interviewing Pitching Coach Frank Viola on the field. The story was going to be his quick analysis of his pitching squad that year when, I’m not sure who we were talking about, someone walked by after arriving late ‘off the bus’ with the media guy. Viola than smiled and said ‘wait until you see this arm’. I asked where he pitched the previous year and he said he didn’t.

Well, the media guy brought him over to the home bullpen mound down first base and he stepped in immediately. None of the other Mets pitchers around the mound obviously didn’t know him and he started warming up with catcher Camden Maron. He waved his glove to tell Camden he was ready and threw his first pitch down the pipe at around 94… the pop in Maron’s glove could be heard in St. Augustine, all the other pitchers on the team started to head in that direction to check out what was going on, and the legend of Jacob deGrom was born.