Good year in 2015. Better year in 2022?
I dunno about you, the Mets added a few hitters (Vogelsbach and Naquin) and are hitting again.
Plugging holes turns stinky, farty hitting into hearty, party hitting.
Pitching’s been incredible.
And the Mets are making 3 major “acquisitions” this week: deGrom, May, and McCann.
Why trade the guts of the farm for help you don’t much need?
The farm gets panned. “It suks!”
Overall, the 4 minors teams have a collective losing record, true.
But looked at through another prism, the key is … is there real talent to help the Mets thrive inexpensively in the future.
So, out comes MY prism…Our hitting prospects are (to me) collectively the BEST I have ever seen the Mets have.
1) Alvarez - 20 - top hitting prospect in baseball. Light tower power.
2) Baty - 22 - a .350 hitter with 9 doubles and 13 HRs spanning 47 June and July games.
3) Mauricio - 21 - 18 HR, 58 RBI, 39 XBH in only 83 games.
4) Vientos - 22 - if you skip over his cold April this year, in his last 113 non-April games going back to June 2021, he has 40 HRs. FORTY. Alonso in his great, final minors season in 2018, by comparison, hit 42 in 159 games.
5) Alex Ramirez - 19 - looking like a great super CF in progress. Scorching hot lately.
6) Parada - great college bat. Has Mack smiling.
Darned good six. Have the Mets EVER had 6 hitters that good in the minors at the same time? Maybe in the early 80s, but I don’t think so.
Why trade any of them?
Cohen isn’t stupid.
Even with his wealth, the luxury tax that comes from signing one Uber-expensive vet after another would be brutal. I think the above 6 team-payroll-deflating players (and there could be a few more, like Jett and Junior) represent viable replacements for aging vets with expiring contracts.
Pitching? Ditto.
Messrs. Allan, Tidwell, Ziegler (if healthy), Hamel (pitching great), Zwack (ditto), Seymour (ditto), and Montes de Oca (whoosh!) seem like a Magnificent 7.
Add in others like Keyshawn Askew, Nate the Great Lavender, (yeah) Tommy Szapucki, and even more “others”, and the future seems bright from the mound, too. Just remember, everyone hated Paul Seward while with the Mets. He is beloved now. I don’t know if Szapucki and beloved will ever be used in the same baseball sentence again, but I have hopes of a renaissance.
(Not to further digress, but Tony Dibrell a/k/a Tony Dibs) has had several excellent very short post-TJS outings and he seems to be better than before. 6.2 scoreless innings, 2 hits, 2 walks, 10 Ks. Tony’s a Tiger again).
I think these guys all represent a strong future for the Mets.
We CAN have our cake (a World Series heavyweight contender) and eat it, too, by keeping our young budding stars.
P.S. SNY article hinted that if Vientos is not traded, he may be called up soon). That would be fun.
P.P.S. My brother strongly disagrees. "GET SOTO!! GET CONTRERAS! GET ROBERTSON! BE THE BEST - NOW!"
16 comments:
It doesn't matter what we think. It's what Steve thinks.
I believe the Mets have quietly sent word out the past two days that our top prospects are not available for a rental.
I applaud the move.
I've said before... hang in there for one more year and these kids will begin paying dividends in Flushing.
Mack, agreed - although I do believe that if we don't get a righty bat, Vientos will be called up and possibly see the heating up Alvarez on Sept 1.
Baty I was long disappointed with, similar to how I felt about Nimmo in his early minors years. Baty's last 2 months, though, have been sensational.
It is tough for Mets fans, though, when the Yanks just seem to do their annual "deals for cheap" - Yanks have really bolstered their team.
I watched Corbin pitching to JD Davis last night and JD swinging thru fastball after fastball. Very disappointing. I'd love to get a good righty hitter in his place. Or promote Vientos and demote JD for a while.
I agree with you on Vientos
I wish I had an accurate scouting report on Baty's defensive game this season.
Both JD and Dom might have proven they have peaked
They said right on TV last night that teams are going after JD with high fastballs. Seemingly for good reason.
Baty's error rate seems to have come down a bit, but that is not a scouting report, so the extent of his improvement is unclear. Besides having missed some games, he has a total of 20 games in the outfield and at DH, so his # of games has been more limited than I'd have liked him to see.
I think that the trade deadline has postponed promotions. Maybe not all the way to Flushing, but to stops along the way.
With Vientos playing other positions, Baty becoming the 'Cuse 3Bman should be imminent.
A-Ram has overcome his slow Brooklyn start, has been on fire this month, and should be showing hus skills for Bingo soon.
As the. newly signed draft picks begin actually playing, some players at the lower levels will move up, while others will be cut.
The next 10 hours will lead to a reshaping of the system.
Agreed 100% Tom.
Keep our top prospects and if you can get a DH like Martinez for someone like Smith or JD, great. We know they are better players than what they have shown this year with the Mets but is time for them to move on. I wish them the best going forward.
Why the Mets have not tried to see what Vientos can do is a head scratcher for me. For what they are getting from Smith and JD, why not try Vientos?
Still believe that Szapucki has a bright future with the Mets.
I’m thinking Vientos gets traded today,A’s Tigers,Cubs…..
Yes we are hitting better now but PLEASE stop hitting Escobar in front of McNeil. You are wasting potential RBIs. Sandwiching McNeil between Escobar and Nido completely minimizes the impact of a .300 hitter. You can put him at 3 and move Lindor to 5 or you can put him at 5/6 to protect the power above him.
Boy, it is nice to complain about trivia like this when the team is on a 7-game winning streak!
For the first time in a long time I feel really good about the state of our farm system. Trading top prospects for a rental makes little sense to me.
Vientos and Nido for Contreras?
Today, the Phillies just put themselves into post-season and the Mets
just blew their chances to win the World series.
Teams that went all-in like the Padres and Phils have clearly won the
trade deadline.
Mets get Darin Ruf for JD Davis + Szapucki/Seymour/Zwack
I HATE this trade, the guy is 36, I've never heard of him, he's batting .216,
and the 3 prospects were all having fine seasons.
Meanwhile, Drury went to the Pods, and Robertson & THOR to the Phils
Every one of our competitors have improved WAY more than us.
Boston and Cubs chose to let their walk-year players walk than
accept what we were offering.
What the Mets desparately needed was a LRP. They scewed up not signing Chafin
after the lockout ended, after having screwed up not retaining Aaron Loup. They again screwed up today, not acquiring Chafin again. They could have had him for nothing but $ back in the spring. Now they having nothing from the left side for the rest of the season and post-season except Jo-Ellie. That's not going to cut it against any good team...an Achilles heal
Likewise, after screwing up by not signing Realmuto last year, and depriving the Phils of him, they gave a long-term contract to an impotent McCann instead. Then repeated the same screwup by not signing Schwarber after the lockout, and depriving the Phils once again. Now, needing a bat, they had to give up 3 prospects, when they could have solved this after the lockout. They did well before the lockout, then just quit.
Now, with all their oponents having improved hughly at the trade deadline, the Dodgers and Padres are at a higher level then they are, and I predict that they don't even get to sniff the World Series.
So instead of getting the LRP we needed, we got Mychal Givens, who totally SUCKS. Who the hell scouted and analyzed this guy before we traded for him? The FO performance at the trade deadline just got significantly worse as if that were even possible. His guy has no swing and miss pitches or put-away pitches. He would have blown a 9-0 lead if Buck hadn’t
dragged his ass off the mound. Talk about the circle of trust...if I was Buck I’d bury this guy so deep in the corner of the bullpen, he’d never see the light of day again. How the hell was he getting anybody out in Chicago? This guy’s already on my SH*T list, along with 26 other minor league pitchers on the Mets 7 affiliates. The 4 we traded away were all having a good season.
Nickel, we all have misgivings about Givens now. Hopefully, that does not become his norm.
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