3-1-13 – Zack Wheeler, Sandy’s OF, Amway, Noah Syndergaard, Landon Powell

Mack Ade - ‏@JohnMackinAde

           @cam_maron - how is Erik Goeddel? Surgery?

Cam Maron‏ - @cam_maron

            he's doing all right, I'm not sure about surgery or anything

Zack Wheeler

“My fastball is pretty good. I have both a two- and a four-seamer. I think everybody does. The hitter dictates which one I throw, as does the count. I like to throw my two to the right side of the plate most of the time, but it doesn‘t really matter. They’re both hard and both move. I’d say they’re pretty equal. I’ve developed my off-speed pitches. What I’ve really concentrated on is throwing them for strikes, so I can get ahead of hitters and put them away later. I’m happy with both my curveball and slider right now. My changeup has gotten better as the season has gone on. It started out as a circle change, but then I moved my hand up on the ball a little bit to put more pressure on it. That was to make it move a little more, as well as take some speed off of it. The pressure is more on the pinky, underneath the ball. I’m trying to get that little bite. When it releases out of my hand, there is also speed taken off of it. I accept being labeled a power pitcher. It’s part of who I am. I throw hard. But I also work with it. I try to control my pitches well, and with a few little fixes, that should get better. Most of the year my walks were down — my strikeouts have been the same as usual — but that has started to break down a little bit lately. I don’t mean it to be an excuse, but late in the season you have to kind of just push through. Mechanically, you can break down a little bit, but that’s just baseball. It’s pitching. Every once in a while you can lose your mechanics and not have a good feel for your pitches. I’ll get it back. I think my mechanics are usually pretty fluid. I’ve worked hard on them the past few years. I don’t know if I’d describe my delivery as drop-and-drive, but it’s probably something like that. My arm angle is three-quarters, I guess. I don’t really pay too much attention to stuff like that. How close I am to the big leagues isn’t up to me. That’s up to the Mets. But I feel like I’m getting close. A couple more adjustments and I’ll be ready.”

                       This is some good stuff out of the mouth of Wheeler.

Wheeler debut delayed by strained oblique

This whole incident seems like a classic overreaction which, I guess, is a good thing right now. Players seem to dropping like flies this past week and the last thing the Mets want to do is to push this kid in the wrong direction. It hasn’t been the best of camps so far (I’m writing a separate post on this tonight which will lost up later today) and one of the real highlights has been Wheeler. Me? I’ll send him back to the minors side of the field and let him work out with his soon-to-be Las Vegas teammates, but, that’s just me.

Ed Marcus/ Real Dirty Mets Blog: What have you seen so far in the outfield competition, and is it still a weakness?

Sandy Alderson: The outfield is definitely a question mark, collectively. I think we’ve like what we’ve seen from Cowgill, but I don’t think Brown or Hoffman have had much of an opportunity to play at this point. Nieuwenhuis and den Dekker have some work to do offensively. Marlon Byrd is what he is. Mike Baxter is certainly in that mix, and I expect him to be on the team.The classic outfield offensive player, we don’t have. We think Lucas Duda will be fine, offensively. But his defense is a question mark, so the balance is difficult to maintain. He’ll have to really produce offensively. Center and right, we will have to see. I wouldn’t eliminate Jordany Valdespin as a candidate either. That’s how open things are.

I’m not a member of the blog elite that gets to participate in these conference calls. If I was, I too would have asked a question about the glaring omission of a decent outfield. Alderson sounded like he was fishing here which is bad for a General Manager. I’m sure this subject is a very embarrassing one for him.

Look, we will never know how close the Mets got to a deal for either Upton or Bourn, but what we do know now is that Alderson was confident that at least one of them would transpire. It didn’t and we all now have to live with the fact that the team needs three start outfielders, not the two they stil would have needed if Bourn or Upton were signed.

The Mets have not acquired any high-priced free agents in the off-season, but they have a new tenant at Citi Field: Amway   . Amway is something of a strange partner for a baseball team. It is a multi-billion dollar direct seller, which deploys millions of independent sales agents worldwide to sell mostly vitamins, dietary supplements, energy drinks and home cleaning products. The Amway Business Center opened Saturday on the 126th Street side of Citi Field, near the ballpark’s bullpen gate. The opening of the outlet was first reported by www.CapitalNewYork.com

                        There’s nothing legally or ethically wrong about this, but it does have that “John’s Bargain Store” feel to it. Maybe the owners of two companies are good friends, but it seems to me that this space could have been leased out to a more high-end tenant. And selling “vitamins, dietary supplements, energy drinks” from a storefront at a baseball stadium… doesn’t this have a little Balco-ish odor to it? I’m just saying…

                        (BTW… kudos to Howard Megdal for the WSJ link)

Noah Syndergaard

Noah Syndergaard is one of my very favorite prospects. A supplemental first round pick in 2010 from high school in Texas, he’s thrived thus far in pro ball, generating very enthusiastic scouting reports to go along with excellent statistics. Syndergaard has a 92-98 MPH sinking fastball that gets on top of hitters quickly. He picks up a lot of grounders (2.16 GO/AO), while maintaining a strong strikeout rate (122/31 K/BB in 104 innings in Low-A, just 81 hits). He’s developed a very good changeup, and I think his curveball is underrated. He commands all three pitches well, shows positive mound presence, and seems like he will be durable. The Blue Jays have managed his workload well. Assuming no injuries or weird command slippages, Syndergaard can develop into a number two starter. I really like him. He was traded to the Mets in the R.A. Dickey deal. Grade A-.

There’s a fair amount of debate going around where Syndergaard will start the 2013 season. Remember, this was a system that was chock full of lower level pitching talent before he joined the organization.

In 2012 the pitching staffs of Brooklyn, Savannah, and St. Lucie, all had the lowest ERA and WHIP in their league. That’s close to a one time stat ever.

Syndergaard pitched A-ball in 2012 (27-games, 19-starts) and others have skipped A+ before, but he will be only 20-years old and teams tend to take their time with their best arms. His slot in St. Lucie has a lot to do with whether or not Luis Mateo makes the jump from Brooklyn. We’ll just have to wait and see.

NY Mets catcher Landon Powell reveals how rare disease, Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis   , or HLH, led to death of infant daughter Izzy

The important thing here is not the player. It’s the awareness of the disease that could easily knock on your door someday. Please read this one.

Landon Powell, Brandon Nimmo, Tyler Vanderheiden, The War Room

I like to sit in the living room with my laptop while watching television. I read in MLBTR that C Landon Powell was a first round draft pick and I couldn’t help but go to the Cube and check it out. I got there and damn, there it was… he was the 24^th pick overall in 2004 by the Oakland A’s, out of one of my home schools, South Carolina. He played four years there, hitting .328/.423/.612/1035 in his senior year. He also OPS’d 1000 in 2003. Everything went as planned through 2007 where he hit .292/.391/.502/.893 for AA-Midland. Then, everything went to shit and it simply has never been the same since. .230 in 2008… .229 in 2009 for the parent club… .214 in 2010… .171 in 2011… Powell did wind up back in AAA last season and had 239-AB for Oklahoma City, the Astros affiliate. His stat line was a respectable .251/.353/.377/.729 which sort of confirms the limits of his baseball ability. Folks, you’re just never guaranteed of being successful in this game. You simply can’t be judged wrong when you draft a catcher who has produced a four figure OPS for two consecutive years. You’re off the hook and you’ve made a good pick… on  paper. But never, never think you’ve got this whole game figured out.

The Mets picked OF Brandon Nimmo as the 13^th overall pick in the 2011 draft. How’s that pick going vs. the next 10 picks that were made in that draft:

            #13      Brandon Nimmo         A-        .248     6-HR    40-RBI

            #14      Jose Fernandez            A+        14-1     1.75     134.0IP/158K

            #15      Jed Bradley                 A+        5-10     5.53     107.1IP/60-K

            #16      Chris Reed                   AA       0-4       4.84     35.1-IP/29-K

            #17      C.J. Cron                      A+        .293     27-HR  123-RBI

            #18      Sonny Gray                 AAA     6-9       4.26     152.0-IP/99-K

            #19      Matt Barnes               A+        7-5       2.86     119.2-IP/133-K

            #20      Tyler Anderson           A          12-3     2.47     120.1-IP/81-K

            #21      Tyler Beede                did not sign

            #22      Kolten Wong               AA       .287     9-HR    52-RBI

            #23      Alex Meyer                 A+        10-6     2.86     129.0-IP/139-K

The one thing you walk away with here is the fact that none of the next 10 picks finished the year still in rookie ball. This is a fact owned solely by the Mets and their choice of Nimmo. There’s some pretty impressive stats here with some of these guys… imagine Fernandez with the B-Mets in between Wheeler in Vegas and Synder at Lucy… but, beating the same drum slowly… and with respect to Mr. Nimmo… you don’t pick an obsure high school senior who didn’t even have a team in his school with the 13^th overall pick in the whole friggin draft. This is not the time to be cute. Save that for the next pick (Nimmo was projected to be a sup-1 pick and available when the Mets picked Michael Fulmer with the 44^th pick overall). This was the 13^th overall pick. And, the absolutely last thing you do is pick someone who only has played travel and American Legion ball.           

Lastly on this… why isn’t there more heat for this pick from the Mets press? I’m not talking about writing something bad about the player. I’m talking about the choice this early in the draft. I never see anything written bad about this. Am I missing something?

Here’s another strange name we’re going to have to remember… RP/CL Tyler Vanderheiden, the 19^th round draft pick out Samford University in 2012. He’s a classic submarine pitcher with limited velo who is another of those Sandy and Company picks that we knew very little about. I remember Alex Nelson’s breakout on this pick on AA, stating:

His command is pretty lousy. His walk rates were way too high throughout his college career, and he's pretty incapable of throwing his breaking ball for a strike. He'll need to work on this, otherwise he'll stall in the high minors.

At this point, I really didn’t think I should spend any time trying to spell this guy’s name correctly and I thought he’d get lost with a lot of the other guys they send to fill in a rookie ball roster tem.

College boy… pitching 29 appearances in his senior year… 1-1, 3.34, 29.2-IP, 30-K but 16-BB, only one save… so, what does he do? He hops the train to Coney Island, makes 25 appearances, throws 22.0-IP vs. 22-K (10-BB) and turns in a 0.83-ERA, and 12-SV in with 22-K in 20-IP.

Vanderheiden appreciated the words: 

                     “I was just thankful to have the opportunity to keep playing the game I love, regardless of where I was placed. I've really enjoyed my first off season and being able to focus on rest, eating healthy, and exercise.”

My guess is I just talked to Savannah’s next closer.

And lastly, we really don't need a specific question for today's 'War Room'... we can just begin a general thread at the end of this posting and refer back to it throughout the day.  I am going to have some cut and past prospect lists that will also come up on the site throughout the day. There is one thing I'd like to ask to get things started this morning. Adam Rubin wrote yesterday that the current Mets 2013 payroll was around $95mil. Then, Michael Baron over on MetsBlog reminded all of us that this amount included what is being paid to Johan Santana, John Buck, Frank Francisco, and Jason Bay, all monies that will go away come 2014. So, what are talking here... $55mil and change? Baron then reminded us that a 2014 team using the same $100mil plan is going to look quite different and you might now understand why Sandy Alderson is reluctant in giving out multiple year contracts to platoon players. He's going to be able to do so much better come 2014. So, my first question of the day is...  forget 2013...  you now have $55mil to spend in 2014...  what do you do?

Metstradamus, Landon Powell, Ike Davis, Daniel Murphy

3B Nick Giarraputo signs with the Chicago White Sox.

John Coppinger has always been one of my favorite Mets writers. He’s been around since the beginning of blogdom and I consider him a real time writer, not just some loudmouth with a laptop. Here’s an example of what he posted today http://www.metstradamusblog.com/2013-articles/january/who-s-source-out-source.html:

Why the hell didn't I figure this out before? The Mets are going to outsource right field so that Andrew Brown can watch cat videos on youtube! All this while some guy from an eastern hemisphere company will come in, hit .340, and nobody will notice because ... well hell, the media has shown that they can't figure out that a fake dead girlfriend doesn't really exist. It'll take at least until August to figure out that Mike Baxter is platooning with some guy making $50,000, who will get impeccable performance reviews from every mid-season report card column and blog in the land!

Make sure you read this guy once a week. He doesn’t post as often as most of us and he sure as hell isn’t trying to make any money doing this shit. He’s just a good person, a great writer, and worth every minute spent with him.

I saw that the Mets added AAAA catcher Landon Powell to their minor league camp. I can only guess, but it seems to me that they have conceded that Travis d’Arnaud will begin the 2013 season in Las Vegas. This would leave John Buck and Anthony Recker to hold the fort down in Queens until d’Arnaud is ready. That being, d’Arnaud would overnight become the starter in Las Vegas and the Mets must feel there would be no reason to promote a read Juan Centeno to a team he would not have a chance to play for. I still find as additional catcher a stretch, since there are also two other catchers (Blake Forsythe and Kai Gronauer) that could easily play a backup role in Vegas.

Either way, the two guys you want to play every day… somewhere… is d’Arnaud and Centeno. This is your potential superstar and potential trade bait. A great team has depth at most of their position and can do what the Nats are doing right now when they pull off a three-team deal for the return of A.J. Cole. The Mets will never solve their lack of a decent outfield until they have too many great players at another position. That’s how you balance off your talent and get to the playoffs.

The arbitration numbers came out on 1B Ike Davis. Davis filed $3.7mil while the Mets countered with $2.825. What’s with the “25”? You couldn’t round that off to $2.9? I can’t think of a better time to work out a 3-5 year deal with Davis a la Jon Niese. That is, if Davis would fall for it. You build great teams by contracting the nucleus of your core players. The problem with the Mets is the fact that they don’t have that many great players and, the ones they do have, are just beginning the arbitration process. Bobby Parnell has already signed a one year deal, and Daniel Murphy is filing with Davis. Next up, a year from now, are Dillon Gee, Ruben Tejada, Justin Turner, and Mike Baxter. As I said, this might be a good time to reevaluate at least the long term plans for Tejada.

Arbitration figures also came out for Daniel Murphy. He wants $3.4mil while the Mets countered with $2.55. I basically have no problems with Murphy playing second because I think that are bigger fish to fry over the next couple of years. I also think the Mets organization is deep right now in potential middle infielders To start with, recent draft picks Phillip Evans and Gavin Cecchini will both ETA around 2015 and there’s a good chance at least one of them has the chance of moving over to second. In addition, Latin hotshot Ahmed Rosario will be right behind them, probably at short. (I’m doing my everything I can to not bring up the name of Reese Havens). And lastly, Ruben Tejada may actually play a better second than short. The point I’m trying to make is, other than SPs, the one area in this organization that has depth is the middle infield. If there’s a better version of a Daniel Murphy out there, it just might already be wearing a Mets uniform.