Mack Ade – AM Report – 9-16-13 – Protected Pick, Ulnar Collateral Ligament , Jeurys Familia, Noah Syndergaard, Tim Lincecum, Wally Backman

It’s far too early to speculate who the Mets might choose in the 2014 draft if they had one of the protected picks, but, for those of you doing the research and trying to learn more about who is going to be out there for the taking, forget these names…  NC State LHSP Carlos Rodon… NC State SS Trae Turner… East Carolina RHSP Jeff Hoffman… Rancho Bernardo (CA) HS catcher Alex Jackson… and Clovis (CA) HS SS Jacob Gatewood. These five will be long gone when the Mets get to pick their projected 7^th-9^th overall pick.

What this does do is leave a handful of very talented high school pitchers… Conway (SC) HS RHP Grant Holmes… Milton (GA) HS RHP Dylan Cease, Hilo (HI) HS LHP Kodi Medeiros, and Shepard (TX) HS RHP Tyler Kolek, two great college righties, Florida State RHP Luke Weaver and Vanderbilt RHP Tyler Beede and there is a good chance that no outfielder will be picked until the Mets are on the board. Right now, that would translate as either Virginia’s Derek Fisher or Gainsville (GA) HS Michael Gettys.

This will be an extremely talented first round and it’s going to be close to impossible to miss this high up the chain.

Long shot… the best college bat in the draft:  Notre Dame 3B Jack Flaherty.

 

Dr. Marcus Elliott, a Harvard-trained physician specializing in sports science -

"I'm certain we're going to look back on what we did here in 2012, 2013 and not too far into the future and think that it was really primitive. There are reasons guys end up tearing their ulnar collateral ligament or end up with repetitive trauma to a rotator cuff. There are mechanical explanations for all these things. And we haven't spent a whole lot of time trying to understand what those reasons are. Some of them had inadequate shoulder mobility or not enough trunk stability or hip stability, so it affected their release point. We took anywhere from three weeks to six weeks to keep working on these performance metrics so that they didn't have the pressure of going out to perform while they were huge injury risks. To people in the medical community, the right approach is to be about building systems, understanding the system of the athlete in front of you when you're exposing him to the risks of the game." http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130913&content_id=60455388&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

 

RP Jeurys Familia has rejoined the Mets and will pitch for Indios del Cibao in the Dominican Winter League.

Familia is still only 23 years old, even though it seems like he’s been around for decades. Nobody has ever questioned his talent, just his command and accuracy with the sickness he throws. His limited 2013 included eight games in the minors (2-starts) for three teams (9.0-IP, 1.00) and eight appearances in the Mets pen (10.1-IP, 7-K, 7-BB, 3.48). He wasn’t supposed to be ready at this point of the 2013 season, but he is so why not start him back on the road to success. I’m sure the winter league time will be used to build up arm strength, but, in my book, any chance of a successful 2014 has to include a talented pen and the 6-4 righty would make the perfect 8^th inning ROOGY if he gets his shit together (note to readers… don’t be surprised that Bobby Parnell isn’t ready by opening day. I’ve had that surgery and it’s tricky for a person that doesn’t throw the rock every day at 95mph).

 

Baseball Prospectus on Noah Syndergaard -

Syndergaard’s fastball is an elite offering with premier velocity and life. His curveball plays well off of his fastball and has sharp break with bat-missing ability. Overall, Syndergaard is a future top-of-the-rotation pitcher with a near elite arsenal. He also has the ideal physical frame for a pitcher. The arsenal is complete with no major weaknesses, and secondary offerings still have room for projection moving forward.”

Mack – Thor represents the last of the ‘Big 3’ that we’ve been waiting to form. He should graduate to Queens around the same time Matt Harvey’s arm heals, but, for safety sake, let’s just say that it will be opening day 2015 when the Mets rotation features Harvey, Zack Wheeler, and Syndergaard.

I’d like to think that the Mets will invest some of that available 2014 money into another starter like Tim Lincecum. Can you imagine the effectiveness of him being the SP4 in 2015?

 

Mets bloggers like Joe D at Metsmerized and Mark Healey on some satellite radio show have to stop pontificating about Wally Backman not rising to the role of Mets manager someday. It’s not going to happen and it’s simply not their decision. We writers are supposed to report on what is decided by the Mets, not spend useless time pontification our personal feelings based on how many times we have had dinner with someone. I come from an era where reporting was first waiting for the decision to go down rather than trash the possibility of something that hasn’t happened yet. Guys, you’re looking bad on this one, especially you Healey. Do you really think this guy would have any chance at this job if he didn’t play for this team once? Let it go, old friend, though you no longer consider me a current one (note: Healey paid me my first  fee for an online story… $50 for his site at Gotham).

 

2-16-13 – Lucas Duda, Newspapers, Bobby Parnell, Tim Lincecum

Dave Hudgens  on Lucas Duda:

That’s the next step. Every step of the way, there’s going to be more anxiety, more tension that comes into it. So what we’ve been concentrating, more than anything, is relax his mind. Try to slow down his heart beat and his mind, deep breath. Trying to get him to relax. Even trying to put him into those situations where there’s 40,000 people in the stands in his mind, and trying to understand what he has to feel like. He’s making some physical adjustments, but it comes down to a mental adjustment. Because the reason for all of that pre-pitch movement is because his mind is racing so much. In the cage, it’s easy. No one is screaming at you, no pressure. As the game builds up and the pressure builds, that’s where he’s got to handle it mentally and develop a routine to where he can calm himself down It’s going to be a process, but, so far, I’m happy with the way it’s going.

Are the Mets seriously still trying to get this guy to deal with the ‘pressure’ of playing baseball?

I remember Jason Bay saying around a month after Duda came up for the first time that he still hadn’t spoken a word to him because the kid was that inward.

I have never met Duda, but anyone I know that has would confirm what Hudgens is saying here. They would also confirm the talent he has and the incredible power potential he brings to the game. Now, all the Mets have to do is get this kid some confidence.

It did get better last year, and, in my opinion, it will get even better this year. I think Duda will have an outstanding year because he knows going in he’s the left fielder and there is no one that’s going to take that job away from him. Outstanding for me here translates as 25-HR, 75-RBI, .270.

I also expect the Mets to bat their catcher, be it John Buck or Travis d’Arnaud, ahead of him in the lineup, taking even more pressure off of him.

My guess at a typical lineup… Baxter, Tejada, Wright, Davis, Buck, Duda, Murphy, Nieuwenhuis, pitcher.

Duda will not have to worry about 2013.

Marty Noble  wrote:

Hope for the newspaper business lives after all. Newspapers have reappeared in the Mets' clubhouse. Beginning with the opening of Citi Field in 2009, the New York dailies and USA Today had been absent from their clubhouses here and in Queens. Some were smuggled in from time to time, but the Mets' library was sadly thin and woefully outdated. But now Kevin Kierst, the second-year clubhouse/equipment manager, has resumed the practice of providing reading material for the players. The sports sections usually are removed quickly and the sections or pages that include the crossword puzzles disappear almost instantly.

Only someone as seasoned as Noble would turn this into a story.

He’s right. I remember the newspapers being in the press room when I arrived the first year (2007) I was allowed in the inner circle. They were next to the ‘official’ Mets press release that came out each day, 

highlighting what went on the day before and what was coming up next.

What I remembered the most about them were the headlines. I hadn’t lived in New York since 1980 and I had forgot what the Daily News and New York Post had turned itself into.

I found it amazing that reporters would walk into the clubhouse, approach a ballplayer in a professional manner, conduct their interview, and then, the next morning, the newspaper would lead off the story with some horrendous, negative headline.

My wife still writes a syndicated weekly column (food) for a major newspaper chain, and she has no control of the headline. Luckily, she’s writing about linguini rather than the fielding ability of Daniel Murphy in left field.

Nice touch, Marty. 

Anthony DiComo on Bobby Parnell - 

Bobby Parnell credits much of his recent success -- and the resulting ninth-inning duties that he is on track to obtain -- to the knuckle-curve Jason Isringhausen taught him back in 2011. Initially fooling with the pitch late that year, Parnell committed to it during Spring Training 2012 as he scrapped his slider altogether. It's a valuable pitch, yet advanced metrics reveal that Parnell's slider was actually a more effective offering than his knuckle-curve. That Parnell improved his overall numbers in 2012 was thanks in large part to some much-improved control, and also to a better fastball.

By the way, Isringhausen has been hired to be the pitching coach at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, but his agent is quick to remind everyone that he still is looking to sign on with a major league team.

You can talk ‘advanced metrics’ all day but, Parnell will not be an effective closer unless he can get some movement on his fastball, the least of which would be its ability to give the impression of rising.

The rest of the pitchers are vegetables. Closers throw fastballs.

I think that Parnell has learned to mix in his other pitches much more effectively as he matures both as a player and as a person, but, I really am not a fan of him being a closer.

I don’t see anyone else on the Mets that could take his place.

IMO, this is going to be a real mess in 2013.

Thom Tsang on Tim Lincecum - 

If Lincecum continues on his path towards free agency without any significant hiccups as he did in 2012, he stands to have a very good chance of earning the largest contract among his peers in the 2013-2014 off-season. Sure, the San Francisco Giants will be in play, as will the usual suspects. But no team will arguably want – or need – a name like Lincecum’s more than the Mets, and the Yankees may not be far behind. The subway series might not have the meaning it used to these days, but the New York teams could have a significant clash as free agent suitors soon enough, that could have a lasting effect on their respective futures.

This article amazes me.

Click on it and you will see that the author says that one of the weakest areas on the Mets is their starting rotation. Has this guy done any research on this team before writing this?

Then, he predicts the largest contract ever for a pitcher after giving up the highest BB/9 (4.35), highest HR/9 (0.62 to 1.11) and highest BB/SO (0.47) in his career.

Lincecum is a very talented pitcher and he’s going to command a lot of bucks when he becomes a free agent, but he first needs to concentrate on producing the kind of stats he needs in 2013 to warrant the kind of money Tsang is talking about here.

Regarding his chance of becoming a Met…

This would be one of those Johan Santana moments that elevate a team into a new level of excellence. I can’t think of a better target in 2015.

Harvey, Wheeler, Lincecum, Niese, Syndergaard.

Wow.

Baseball: Brandon Morrow, Dylan Bundy, Tim Lincecum, Gaylord Perry

The Toronto Blue Jays announced on Tuesday that they have signed a three-year, $21 million contract extension with starting pitcher Brandon Morrow. The deal covers Morrow's final two arbitration seasons and at least one year of free agency, depending on whether the Jays exercise an option that they hold for the 2015 season. According to Mike Wilner of Sportsnet Radio FAN 590 in Toronto, Morrow will make $4 million in 2012, $8 million in 2013 and $8 million in 2014, and Toronto holds a $10 million club option for 2015 with a $1 million buyout attached. The deal guarantees Morrow at least $21 million over the next three years, with a possible payout of $30 million over four years if the option is exercised. http://www.mlbdailydish.com/2012/1/24/2730332/toronto-blue-jays-brandon-morrow-contract-extension-mlb-rumors-2012

When the Baltimore Orioles plucked him out of Northeastern Oklahoma's Sperry High School in the 2008 Draft's eighth round, Bobby Bundy heard the hype. Everyone within earshot told him he was a great pitcher.  But all the talk about Dylan Bundy is much, much louder. Bobby, 22, has taken a backseat to his 100-mph-capable, 19-year-old younger brother, the fourth overall draftee in 2011, and as of this month, MLB.com's fifth-best righty pitching prospect in the game. He is well aware that his little bro beat him to Baltimore's 40-man roster -- the result of signing a Major League contract -- and isn't surprised to learn that Dylan has his own Wikipedia page http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120111&content_id=26316230&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_milb#&tcid=tw_share

Hank Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Giants have reached agreement on a two-year, $40.5 million contract with right-hander Tim Lincecum. The Giants were hoping to secure Lincecum to a long-term contract this offseason, but the 27-year-old had a higher asking price than the club could reach. This deal buys out his remaining arbitration years, and allows him to test the open market in 2014. Lincecum registered a sparkling 2.74 ERA and 220/86 K/BB ratio in 217 innings last year for San Francisco and should remain a bonafide ace over the course of his new two-year deal. http://www.rotoworld.com/headlines/mlb/348284/baseball-headlines?r=1

This year is the 40th anniversary of the last time human beings set foot on the moon.  Why haven’t we been back since?  Maybe we should blame Gaylord Perry. One of baseball’s great urban legends is that Perry, a Hall of Fame pitcher from 1962 to 1983, once said a man would walk on the moon before he hit a home run.  Or perhaps the legend is that Alvin Dark, Perry’s manager with the San Francisco Giants, is the one who made that disparaging but humorous remark about Perry’s lack of knack to hit the longball. The confusion and dispute over who said it or if anyone actually said it at all are so well known that the Internet investigators at Snopes have even sniffed it out and can’t find the answer.  What makes the dispute relevant is the second big fact of the story, which is indisputable.  Perry hit his first career home run on July 20, 1969 the day that Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man” on the moon. http://networkedblogs.com/t8LMM

Baseball: Manny Ramirez, Bryan Stow, Gary Brown, Tim Lincecum, Juan Carlos Oviedo

Manny Ramirez is hoping to be reinstated to the major leagues, telling ESPN Deportes he would serve his 100-game suspension after refusing to do so in April and opting for retirement. "I would comply with my pending sanction and I would be available for any major league team," Ramirez said. "I already informed [agent] Scott Boras of my decision to return and begin the process.  Ramirez tested positive in a drug test earlier this season as part of baseball's drug program that bands steroids, amphetamines and other performance enhancers. It was his second failed test, as he was linked to a female fertility drug in 2009 used to conceal steroid use. He served a 50-game ban that season with the Dodgers, later moving to the White Sox at the end of 2010 before signing a contract with the Rays in the offseason. When caught in April, he told baseball that he would rather retire than serve the ban. Clearly, he's changed his mind now that he's had time to reflect. - http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22297882/32184166

Family members of a San Francisco Giants fan who was brutally beaten outside Dodger Stadium said he is speaking and more responsive than ever since his attack nearly six months ago. The family of Bryan Stow posted the update Wednesday on its website, saying his latest improvements came a week after he received a shunt to relieve pressure on his brain.  During a speech therapy session, Stow was able to say his full name and the names of his daughter and son. "We are blown away with all of this," the family said. "Literally one day we got some facial responses and the next, he's talking. His voice is gravelly and you have to be close to hear him, but he is talking. Right now, Bryan is more awake and more responsive then (sic) ever." - http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/44625698/ns/sports-baseball

LF – Gary Brown (Giants) -  Brown, who starred at Cal State Fullerton prior to being the Giants' first-round pick in 2010, spent the entire year with San Jose in the California League. He posted numbers similar to Trout's, with a .336/.407/.519 slash line in a league that favors offense. Brown showed there is more to his game than his electrifying speed, hitting 34 doubles, 13 triples and 14 home runs to go along with his 53 swipes. After seeing other former first-round picks of the Giants such as Tim Lincecum, Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner fast-tracked to the big-leagues, it was a little surprising that Brown spent the entire year at high-A. Next year may prove differently. - http://www.perfectgame.org/Articles/View.aspx?article=6250

It seems like he’s been playing forever, but Tim Lincecum still has two more go-arounds in arbitration. Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle reports, however, that unlike most pitchers, Lincecum doesn’t want a long term deal: “It’s just easier for me mentally not to have to put that kind of pressure on yourself,” he said. ”Not that you don’t want to succeed, but when you’re signed to a long-term deal, it’s like saying, ‘I’m going to live up to every expectation.’ That’s why I like going year to year, so I can improve on it and not sit on what I’ve done.” - http://bleacherreport.com/tb/bbk78

Leo Nunez is apparently not who we thought he was. The Associated Press reports that the Florida Marlins closer and Dominican native has been playing under an assumed name for all seven of his years in Major League Baseball and is actually older than the age that's listed by the team. The news came to light on Thursday as Nunez returned to the Dominican Republic to sort the issue out and was placed on the Marlins' restricted list. It probably goes without saying that he is not expected to pitch for the Marlins the last week of the season. Nunez's real name is Juan Carlos Oviedo and he's 29, a year older than listed in the team media guide.