Today was Rafael Montero’s
spot start at the AAA level and you have to
leave impressed: 6.2-IP, 2-ER, 5-K, 1-BB, 2.70-ERA. I’ll take that all day in
that league. He actually held Iowa scoreless for the first six innings which is
absolutely amazing and it will interesting to see if the Mets now ship him back
to Binghamton. I like Michael Baron’s comments today on Twitter: “I would not be shocked if
Montero got a cup of coffee this year. The Mets can potentially have a
ridiculously good rotation in 2015.”
We talk all the time about the lack of success of the
starting rotation, the non-outfielder situation, and the bullpen that is ranked
last in the League, but we need to target on another factor regarding why our
beloved team is a mess. We know this engine is flawed, but there are active
pistons that fire every day and keep this dream alive. The problem is, three of
those pistons just aren't punching out the kind of horse power they are
supposedly capable of. Ruben Tejada (.213), Lucas Duda (.223), and Ike Davis (.152) have all hit in the range of .280 before in their
professional career. Tejada has hit it a number of times as a Met and both Duda
and Davis have had hot months that have produced even bigger numbers.. The
problem is they aren't close to this season. Look, I don't know how to
translate this, but if these three 'pistons' were hitting .280, and Duda and
Davis were putting out the kind of power they can, my guess is the Mets would
have won at least, oh, let's say, four games. Sure, many of them could be 8-7
losses what with the state of the pitching staff, but four wins seems like a
safe number. That would take the team from a 17-25 record to 21-21... and, all
of a sudden you're three games away from a wild card slot. Still a rotten
pitching staff and no outfield... just your main pistons putting out.
A Cesar Puello update… Puello continues his one man protest of Cory
Vaughn being named player of the week. His batting average (as of post 5-20
game) is .320, ranked 7th in the Eastern League (Vaughn is 11th
at .305).He’s .395/.465/.579/1.044 in the past 10 games and there is nothing left
for him to do at this level. I find the whole Juan
Lagares promotion to Queens interesting
because it gives me a chance to compare some of these guys games. In my
opinion, both Puello and Vaughn have more talent and dimension than Lagares, so
maybe there is some hope to building a home grown outfield next year around a
Korean to be named later (hint hint).
Congratulations to Joe D and Mitch Petanick on their
joint venture, MetsMinors.Net (http://metsminors.net ). The Mets
world can’t have enough coverage on the kids in the system and Mitch does as
good a job as all the rest of the dedicated bloggers out there. Keep up the
good work guys!
From Steve Wilson – Hey Mack, not sure if you've noticed but Toronto has
been batting Bautista 2nd! Do you think its something the Mets should try with
Wright? Bat David 2nd after Murphy…
Mack
– Can’t hurt, but someone still has to drive them in and, as I wrote earlier,
the ‘pistons’ aren’t firing. Steve, just sit back and watch this team once
every five games. Harvey will keep the team in the game and you’ll watch around
a .750 winning percentage for the year. Forget the rest of the games. They
don’t count.
We listed the “Big 10” pitchers in the chain. There are
others that are ‘on the cusp’, like St. Lucie’s Alex
Panteliodes. The big lefty won his first FSL
game yesterday afternoon, going 5.2-IP striking out four, while walking two.
There was only one earned run and ‘Pants’ went away with a highly respectable
2.49-ERA. This was only his fourth start
of the young season, after starting out on the DL with ‘inflammation’, or
something like that. This is Panteliodes’ second season in the Mets
organization (2012 – Savannah: 5-8, 3.64) after being drafted out of the
University of Florida. He’s known more as a control pitcher and his ‘go-to’ is
his ++ curve that sets up his entire game. His DL stint this spring probably
will prevent any chance of him to move on to Binghamton until next season, but,
with this team, you never know, right?
Others that could have been considered for this list were
starters Hansel Robles, Jake deGrom, Gabriel
Ynoa, Luis Cessa, Matt Bowman, and Robert Gsellman and
relievers Jack Leathersich, Jeff Walters, and Adam Kolarek.
No comments:
Post a Comment