213 Miles From Shea

The Mets drafted 4 players total in the Rule 5 draft during the winter meetings, including three players in the minor league round. One of those players, Braxton Lee, should sound familiar to you if you watched the Mets last year. He made his major league debut for the Marins and played in 8 games where he got 18 PA’s and hit .176/.222/.176 including three games and 8 PA’s against the Mets where he he had 1 hit. It was his most PA’s against any one club last year.

Across three levels for the Marlins’ minor league system last year, he hit .233/.316/.294. In his minor league career he has slashed a .265/.338/.317. Important wrinkle in his stats: he is not one of those players whose stats have mostly improved or mostly recessed at each level. He hit only .209/.269/.256 in 2016 and then the next year hit .309/.395/.384.

Coming into last season, Baseball America had him ranked as the Marlins #21 best prospect with a 40 ranking, but only medium risk (only four players out of the 30 on the Mets prospect list received a risk rating that low). Baseball America notes that he focuses on contact first with with his swing, and is more valuable defensively than anywhere else (a good arm and is speedy, but also apparently can’t run the bases particularly well).

Braxton Lee makes perfect sense for the Mets because they are desperate for outfield depth but have too many outfielders of similar offensive capability to provide consistent playing time for an up can coming outfield bat. Furthermore. The Mets, especially when Cespedes comes back, don’t yell outfield defense is our cornerstone. The more frequent injuries to Juan Lagares and the Mets trying to make three corner outfielders play in a game built for two beg for someone like Braxton Lee.

The Mets missed out on Billy Hamilton to round out the outfield bench. Braxton Lee could make an excellent, value type player on the bench to tighten up the end of game defense. He is sure to get a lot of looks in Spring Training.

For the first time in a while (possibly 2014 when the the Mets picked up Sean Gilmartin) the Mets selected a player in the Rule 5 draft this week and did not trade him to another team (yet). The Mets selected Kyle Dowdy from Cleveland citing that he could provide rotation depth in the upcoming season.

Kyle Dowdy was drafted in the 12th round of the 2015 draft by the Tigers. He was traded at the deadline this year with Leonys Martin to the Indians for prospect Willi Castro, who was ranked as the Indians #7 prospect by Baseball America last year.

Over his career, the right hander has posted a 27-27 record over 78 games and 365.2 innings with a 3.99 ERA and 1.332 WHIP. His first year was his best in the minors, posting a 2.84 ERA over 107.2 innings in low-A ball where he was 1.3 years above the average age in the league. His numbers took a dip the following year, 3.83 ERA and a 4.57 RA9 over 134.0 innings in A+ ball where he was almost a year older than average.

Last year he split time between Detroit and Cleveland’s AA teams and Detroit’s AAA team posting a combined 5.15 ERA over 124.0 innings. His best stint was his 54.1 innings with the Tigers’ AAA club where he posted a 4.47 ERA over 54.1 innings. It has been reported that his velocity jumped a bit after being traded. This is a positive sign.

The Mets will now need to keep Dowdy on the roster for the entire season to keep him. While he has spent most of his time starting in the minors, barring either an unforeseen terrible event (pitcher injury), or a surprising one (somehow Vargas isn’t on the team anymore), Dowdy will be competing for a spot in the rotation. The extra velocity on his fastball last season comes into play here as he’ll mostly be competing against other hard throwers the Mets have stockpiled in sell-off’s the last few years (minus Gerson Bautista – have fun in Seattle!)

I’m not 100% sure how Dowdy fits on the club, but selecting him is a move that ultimately only costs the Mets 50k if it doesn’t work out and if it does gives them another value arm.

No suspense or click bait here – Marcos Molina is no longer on the Mets. He was released after a terrible first half of 2018 to make room for Matt den Dekker (who was a necessary signing and then immediately got injured) and then Molina got suspended for PED use.

Molina was signed by the Mets in 2012 and made it to Brooklyn at age 19 in 2014 where he was 2.4 years younger than the average player in the league. He posted a 1.77 ERA over 12 starts and 76.1 innings and blew up on everyone’s radar as a massive prospect. He then missed significant time due to Tommy John in 2015 and 2016.

When he came back in 2017, he was still able to post a 3.21 ERA over 18 games, 17 starts over two levels despite having a dip in velocity. Baseball America was still projecting him as a #4 starter since he was boasting a 60 control, he just needed to regain a few ticks on his fastball.

Then last year happened. In 16 starts between Binghamton and Las Vegas he posted a 6.94 ERA over 81.2 innings leading to his release.

Right now he is pitching for the Gigantes in the Dominican Winter League where he he has posted a 2.70 ERA over 4 relief appearances in 3.1 innings. I wouldn’t say his road to the majors is over, he’s still 23 years old. He just needs to find a team that will take a chance with him and let him serve his suspension. I do wonder if he’s candidate to go overseas to the KBO or NPB (I’m not sure if our suspension rules effect that).

The Mets signed Jeurys Familia to a 3-year, 30 million dollar deal last night that just makes too much sense. There’s a lot of relievers still on the market looking for closer jobs, longer term deals etc. Familia likes the Mets. The Mets like Familia. This deal seems incredibly fair.

Now the Mets have a closer in Diaz and a set up man in Familia. Or, if we think of leverage situations, the Mets have a former closer to go to before the 9th inning to get them through a tough spot. Before this move, Gsellman projected to be the set-up man and while he improved last year, Familia is a better option.

All of Diaz, Gsellman and Familia are right-handed pitchers. Right now on the roster Zamora is the only lefty, so the Mets should go out and get another lefty. Here are some of their options:

Zach Britton – He would be an elite option who is probably looking for a closer job. He would be an extremely expensive addition to the bullpen but a top of the pen of Diaz/Familia/Britton would be just awesome

Andrew Miller – He’s the other half of the top lefty relievers left on the market (and I think the only top two on the market to begin with). Similar story with Britton, he’s also in line to make a lot of money. His addition makes a lot sense and would be part of an amazing Diaz/Familia/Miller bullpen.

Oliver Perez – Seriously. He’s a lefty, he’s way down on the cost list and at age 36 he posted a 1.39 ERA over 32.1 innings with the Indians last year. If we are just looking for competition with Zamora, Perez is an option.

Tony Sipp – Same as Perez, if we are just looking for competition there’s Tony. He’s coming off a year where he posted a 1.86 ERA over 38.2 innings.

Luis Avilan – Non-tendered by the Phillies, he posted a combined 3.77 ERA over 45.1 innings between the White Sox and the Phillies last year. Unlike the last two pitchers on the list, he’s considerably younger (28/29) and has a 3.09 career ERA.

Jerry Blevins – A fan favorite coming off an ineffective year. This seems very Mets to sign him and while there usually is a chorus of “we’re putting the same losing team back together”, I don’t know how many people would complain about having this fantastic personality back

Baseball America’s report on Desmond Lindsay starts the same way every other report about Lindsay does – Desmond was the 2015 top draft pick for the Mets because the Mets jumped into the market early that off-season giving up their first round pick for signing Michael Cuddyer. Thus Lindsay, who has been considered somewhere between 5 and 15 in the Mets farm system for a while has been forever linked with Cuddyer.

Lindsay’s history with the Mets also has paralleled the Mets from 2016 on as he has been consistently fighting injuries that rob him of playing time. Or as Baseball America puts it “flashed impact potential in pro ball – but only in glimpses and only in between injuries”.

They ended their report on the player drafted for his hitting that a healthy season would be critical and a chance to play in a more hitter friendly place like St. Lucie would help him.

He’s considered a top prospect with these glimpses of potential because of his slash line between his first season and his second season. In 2015 he slashed .263/.364/.386 and then in 2016 he slashed .303/.433/.451.

Last year he was able to get in 90 games, his most ever in a minor league season but struggled hitting .223/.317/.325. The Mets then sent him to the Arizona Fall League to get more playing time where he did better hitting .286/.355/.643 in 8 games.

Where he has been fighting injuries in his Mets career, he will now find himself fighting time. To protect him in the Rule V draft, the Mets will have to add him to the 40-man roster after next season. If he takes a big, healthy step forward, this probably happens. While he should, based on his numbers and his age, still only 21, play in St Lucie at the start of the season, with the Mets lack of depth in the outfield in the system, he will see playing time in Binghamton at some point. Look for him getting playing time early on in Spring Training.

Happy first day of the Winter Meetings! While we anxiously wait for whatever BVW has up his sleeve in Vegas, let’s talk about a pitcher who’s season ended this year in Vegas.

Due to the injuries and trades on the 2017 Mets team, Chris Flexen got an extended look throughout the end of the season finding himself in 14 games, 9 starts pitching 48.0 innings with a 7.88 ERA. Going into the off-season, he was considered the Mets 9th best prospect by Baseball America who rated him with a 50 fastball, 55 curveball, 45 slider, 50 change-up and a 50 for control. Chris, like Nimmo also endeared himself to the fans through an appearance at the Queens Baseball Convention (and since he spoke first, he technically was the first ever current player of the Mets to do so at the QBC).

The closing words on his profile for BA is how the Mets generally see him. Right now he doesn’t have a knockout pitch so his ceiling is a 5th starter or a reliever. Unfortunately for Chris, he pitches for the Mets who used him in 4 games last year, once in May, twice in June and then once in July, which was not conducive to developing any sort of rhythm. So Chris allowed 9 earned runs, but 13 total off 14 hits in 6.1 innings.

In August he was diagnosed with torn meniscus which ended his season. While he struggled in random appearances at the major league level last year, he posted a 4.40 ERA and a 1.52 WHIP in Las Vegas, which isn’t the easiest thing to do. The WHIP speaks more towards the concerns about him, but a 4.40 ERA over 92.0 innings in Vegas isn’t bad.

Right now he projects to be in Syracuse on Opening Day. With the Mets incredibly thin at starting pitching and long relief, he looks to come up as soon as someone is injured.

Earlier in this series I discussed how Corey Oswalt was misused by management in terms of being jerked around off his pitching schedule. We also talked about Tyler Bashlor being on the roster for a while but going through long periods of not getting in a game. Well there’s one more player the Mets did this to, and it was more inexplicable, Luis Guillorme. Jeff and Fred Wilpon For some reason Jose Reyes kept getting playing time over the young defensive wiz, and it has led to serious questions as to what’s next.

Baseball America talks about the main reason why everyone knows Luis – the one handed amazing catch in the dugout during spring training where he picked a bat off in the air like it was nothing. This is his main draw – he has amazing reflexes!

“I just literally saw the bat coming at me and caught it. Didn’t think much of it.”

Luis Guillorme on his wild day: https://t.co/tDnPEd5xqw pic.twitter.com/sr2Tw1MIt2

— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) March 2, 2017

The knock on Luis is he doesn’t hit for power. This didn’t stop him from getting the MVP award in the South Atlantic League in 2015. With his great defensive skills and contact prowess, he should have been a major utility piece for the Mets last year struggling with defense. But the Mets gave him an extremely limited role. He ended up hitting only .209/.284/.239 in 35 games and 74 PA’s despite what felt like him being up in the league for a sizable chunk of the season. It’s just not fair.

Depending on what the Mets do next year, he’ll probably start the year in Syracuse. Personally, if the Mets don’t sign some infield depth for the bench, Luis should be on the major league team, regularly coming into the game after the 7th inning. Hopefully he gets an AB or 2 in the process.

The worst case scenario is the Mets call him up, either early or in the season or right away, and then don’t use him again. He needs regular playing time as well.

Essentially, dear Mets, please do not sign Jose Reyes this year to block Luis Guillorme. He was right on track where he should have been in his development until the Mets Mets’d everything up.

Spoiler Alert; Ronny Mauricio was named the #3 Prospect in the Mets farm system for 2019 last week (ahead of Kelenic and Dunn) so he must have had a good year. Let’s dive in.

Baseball America notes that Mauricio was the #3 international prospect when the Mets signed him at 16, signing him for more than Rosario back in 2012. Baseball America noted that he has a good arm and range, below average speed and projects to have plus power. There was debate about whether he ends up at short or ultimately third because of his speed.

2018 was going to be the switch-hitters first season with the Mets and he made his debut in the Gulf Coast league where he was 2.7 years below the average age. In 49 games and 212 PA’s he hit .279/.307/.421. Nineteen of his first 55 hits were for extra bases including 3 triples and 3 homers (the former being surprising because of his projected speed, the latter being expected). He earned a short promotion to Kingsport playing in 8 games getting 35 PA’s slashing .233/.286/.333 seeing a dip in power in a very small sample size.

At the same age, Amed Rosario hit .241/.278/.358 in his first pro-season and spent the next season in Brooklyn and Savannah. Andres Gimenez played at two levels in the Dominican Summer League at 17 years old. He hit a combined .350/.469/.523. Gimenez was sent directly to Columbia the following year and hit .265/.346/.349.

Using those two players as a guide, I assume that the Mets would like to have Mauricio start in Brooklyn and then go to Columbia at some point.

It’s now been a day after the Mets presser for Cano and Diaz where it became clear that the Mets were after Realmuto. Realmuto will cost the Mets one of Conforto/Nimmo/Rosario. Part of the issue is not the promise than any of these three players have but the Mets are already down an outfielder after trading Bruce and a team that is in it to win it wouldn’t count on getting Cespedes back in July.

(This seems like a good time to interrupt and undermine my own article by suggesting the true way to build a winning team – trade Nimmo to get Realmuto and then sign Harper. Or trade Rosario and sign Machado. Or just sign Grandal and Harper. If money wasn’t a limiting factor, these would be the immediate best moves for the Mets).

A day after thinking about Realmuto and Pollock as a solution, I’ve grown concerned. We’ll need two outfielders in this case and it will be difficult to sign another good outfielder after getting Pollock, if that outfielder knows his time will be significantly cut after Cespedes comes back. Pollock also has a giant injury question mark hanging over his head.

Then there’s Realmuto himself. The Marlins were fleeced on a couple of trades last year and seem hellbent on making up for it in the Realmuto trade. The last two years Realmuto has slashed a reliable .278/.332/.451 and .277/.340/.484 but that has led to only a 99 and 113 DRC+ (last year was his first DRC+ above 100) and a BWARP of 4.5 and 4.3.

Grandal on the other hand has had a DRC+ above 100 five times in his first seven seasons, averaging at 110 and has a BWARP of at least 4.6 in the last 4 seasons. He’s two years older than Realmuto, but signing Grandal doesn’t mean the Mets have to trade away their center fielder.

Which means the Mets can look beyond Pollock for the outfield. Brantley at age 31 is coming off back to back years of above 100 DRC+ hitting (108 and 124) and has had a DRC+ above 100 in 5 of the last seasons leading to a career DRC+ of 112 (his first three seasons were his lowest at 86, 82, 92). The one season where it wasn’t over 100, 2016, he played in only 11 games. He’s also had a BWARP of above 3 in three of the last five seasons.

Realmuto is a great player but trading for him means that the Mets will have to spend even more money to fill a new hole they will create in the process. If the Mets are reluctant to go after Harper/Machado due to financial reasons, creating more reasons to spend seems counter intuitive.

This week is DRC+ week at Baseball Prospectus where they debuted a nifty new stat to figure out how good a hitter really is. If you haven’t checked it out, go do it! It’s a nifty way to check out how good players are to each other. For context, here are the Mets DRC+ leaders from last year:

Any surprising names on this @Mets leaderboard? To learn more about DRC+ and read analysis from the team @BaseballPro, check out https://t.co/2O55lg1VQm #DRCWeek pic.twitter.com/gxGojqzWa8

— Baseball Prospectus (@baseballpro) December 3, 2018

In that spirit let’s talk about Realmuto. The Mets are rumored to be after Realmuto and Realmuto will cost the Mets at least one of Conforto or Nimmo. Last year:

• Nimmo DRC+ 119
• Realmuto DRC+ 113
• Conforto DRC+ 112

Which is slightly misleading because overall, Conforto is better than Nimmo and this would suggest that Nimmo/Conforto are basically Realmuto when it comes to production at the plate.

Realmuto’s value comes from him being a catcher, and that it will probably be easier for the Mets to replace Nimmo or Conforto’s on the free agent market. Let’s look at DRC+’s for free agent outfielders in 2018:

• Harper 135
• Pollock 113
• Brantley 124
• McCutchen 116
• Cruz 132

And it wouldn’t be fair to not at least address the other free agent catchers the Mets could consider:

• Grandal 115
• Ramos 109
• Maldonado 73

Let’s break this down. First, from the offensive perspective Maldonado doesn’t make sense. The current options on the Mets are better and he would really be a solution for offense.

The Grandal comparison isn’t fair either because age. Realmuto should have more years ahead of him of the same if not better DRC+ while Grandal should start to decline.

The same is true for the outfield situation. Cruz and Harper are not really that close. McCutchen had a good year last year, but the amount of good years he has left is probably a lot less than Conforto who is still in the upward arc of his career.

So the question really is do you take Grandal/Ramos through the decline while holding onto Nimmo/Conforto through their upward rise or do you lose one of Conforto/Nimmo, for several years of Realmuto in his prime and hope to replace Conforto/Nimmo with someone comparable?

The big splash move for the Mets would be to sign Harper and then Nimmo becomes expendable. While it stinks for a personality point, there’s no denying that moving from an 88 DRC in Plawecki to 113 in Realmuto will drastically improve the offense. Harper, a generational player, absorbs the loss of Nimmo several times over. It’s also unlikely the Mets do this.

Also knowing the injury history of the Mets, should they trade Nimmo/Conforto since who knows when Cespedes actually comes back?

When you look at Realmuto’s numbers, and consider his age as a sign of his trajectory, it’s hard to say no to a trade for him even if the Mets have to give up Nimmo. But then the Mets will need to make at least one, possibly two outfield signings to make up for it. Thanks to DRC+, we can see there are players available with similar production to Nimmo/Conforto, but at a much higher price.