Mack’s Morning Report – Off Season, Part One – Pitching

Good morning.

I’ll try and write 2-3 times a month in the off season. I’m sorry but I can’t write more.

The site is down to three writers and, for some reason, the site will not allow new writers to join. I have had five people email me in the past month and ask to join, and I added their email address to a special place in the Blogger site that send an email to the person you invite into the site. The person than clicks on that and I assume Blogger walks them through the joining process.

That doesn’t seem to happen anymore. Something must be broken and I have no knowledge or no one to help me fix it.

That being said, I’ll jot down a few of my thoughts now that the off-season has started and where I think this team to do.

   1.     I have followed this sport for over 35 years and the one thing I consistently walk away with every year is that there are too many damn injuries in this business. I always ask ‘what the hell is going on here… these wussies aren’t playing pro football or pro rugby’. Successful baseball teams have Plan B’s as well as Plan C’s and have huge depth in their system. We learned the hard way this year that having 6 great starters simply wasn’t good enough. First, one of them (Zack Wheeler) never made it back and then, 2 nobodies (Robert Gsellman, Seth Lugo) almost pulled this team out of the fire. They say that every team averages 9 starters a year. I agree on that number, but, for sure, you better come to camp with at least 8 guys that have the talent to fight for the 5 rotational slots you are going to hand out on opening day. One of the other three could open as your long man while the other two could open at the AAA level and also be used for trade bait.

   2.     I no longer believe we will ever see a fully healthy ‘Generation K version 2.0’. Most of them just have had too many issues. Evan Noah Syndergaard, who chose not to have off-season surgery, has bone spurs to deal with in the future. I’m almost happy we didn’t go deeper in the playoffs. We never had enough healthy pitching to win it all this season and we need as much time as we can get to let all these walking wounded heal. I assume Alderson and Company will do everything they can to resign Bartolo Colon for one more season. He easily was one of the top five Mets in 2016. As for the 2017 rotation, I would send to camp the five guys I mentioned above, plus Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Steven Matz. I then would tell all of them they will determine their rotation fate in spring training; however, I would give the edge to Harvey, deGrom, Syndergaard, Colon, and Matz and tell them it’s their job to lose their rotation slot in spring, not win one. The other three would be told they go into this competition behind the eight-ball, but they still could be part of the 5-man rotation come opening day

   3.     Relief wise, I’ve always wanted four great 95-mph heaters I can come out of the pen with. Nothing fancy… just 4 guys that can throw up to 25 pitches each as hard as they can. I can rotate these guys throughout the season and I have the 6^th through 9^th inning covered. Who do we have that fits this mold? Well, Jeurys Familia is definitely one and, in my opinion, 2017 will be the year of Hansel Robles. Past that, I’d take a hard look at resigning Addison Reed and Fernando Sales, but I also would look outside the system like LAD’s Kenley Jansen. Imagine these 5 guys with the 8 above? Is that enough talent for one team?