213 Miles From Shea

Jamie Callahan was the most league ready player the Mets got in the 2017 Addison Reed trade with the Red Sox. That trade brought the Mets young and untested Stephen Nogosek (who represented the Mets in the AFL this year), flamethrower Gerson Bautista (who made his debut this year in the majors and also played in the AFL this fall) and Jamie Callahan who made his major league debut in 2017 at the age of 22.

Last week the Mets outrighted Callahan off the 40-man roster and Jamie elected for free agency instead. How did we get here?

Jamie had a long trip up the minors after being drafted in 2012 by the Red Sox. He struggled as a starter and eventually the Red Sox switched him to be a reliever in 2016. That year he posted a 3.29 ERA over 36 games and 66 innings while posting a 1.39 WHIP and holding batters to a .218 average.

The next year, before being traded, he posted a 1.38 ERA in AA with the Red Sox over 10 games and 13 innings earning a promotion where he posted a 4.03 ERA over 22 games and 29.0 innings. Unlike most players, he was successful in Vegas posting a 1.80 ERA over 9 games and 10 innings getting a call up to the majors where he posted a respectable 4.05 ERA over 6.2 innings in 9 games. It looked like Callahan was going to have a future with the Mets, mainly because his velocity over the last 3 years increased. BA reports it went from 92-95 to 95-97 and sometimes touched 99.

He struggled early in Vegas this year, posting a 9.72 ERA over 7 game sand 8.1 innings and eventually elected season ending shoulder surgery.

It is not known yet if he will be ready for spring training, which led to the Mets outrighting him. Now he’s a free agent with no definitive sign when he’ll be ready.

My gut says the Mets will try to sign him to a new deal. They’ll have to hope that no one else wants to roll the dice with him.

Late last week MLB Trade Rumors published their highly anticipated, yearly article where they try to predict the contracts and teams for the top 50 Free Agents. Lets take a look at how they think the Mets will deal with the 2018-2019 Free Agent class, one of the most star studded classes of all time:

Craig Kimbrel (Cardinals 4/70)
MLBTR has the Mets listed as outside possibility to land Kimbrel, who in the past has shut down the Mets (when he was with the Braves).

Yasmani Grandal (Nationals 4/64)
Interestingly, this is the only catcher MLBTR attaches the Mets to, despite not ultimately signing him. The Qualifying Offer makes him a more difficult sign. I’m not sure why the Mets are not associated with Ramos. This deserves its own article later as the Mets look to navigate tendering d’Arnaud a contract, Plawecki, Nido and minor league playing time for Ali Sanchez.

Zach Britton (Astros 3/33)
MLBTR lists Britton right under Familia, and does not have the Mets associated with their old closer at all (given the Mets history of signing their old players again for reunions, this feels like an oversight). Britton only feels like an upgrade over Familia because he’s not Familia and outside of Frazier, the Mets have not signed players who never wore the orange or blue in the off-season. (Well, there was Swarzak but that didn’t work out well).

David Robertson (Mets 3/33)
This is the first of two players MLBTR feels the Mets will sign in the top 50. He’s similar-ish to the relievers listed above except he’s slightly older already at 34. He’s representing himself. Ultimately, his best quality to the Wilpons might be having success with the Yankees. He already played in NY and the Mets would be “taking him” from across town (but of course, if the Yankees really wanted him, they would have him).

Joakim Soria (Mets 2/18)
Soria is not the same as he used to be so this signing makes sense for the Mets who sign players at the end of the career who used to have name recognition. That being said, the Mets need as many arms as they can get in their bullpen and as long as they can cut ties with free agent signings if they don’t work (ie. the opposite of what they did with Reyes last year) than a Soria signing is great.

Not surprisingly, MLBTR has the Mets linked almost exclusively to relievers. The Mets need a ton of arms coming into the next season. The Mets would also benefit though from one more starter and third basemen. A certain third basemen who plays short stop and is the #2 free agent on their list.

Stop me if you have heard this one before: the Mets have a player in the system that doesn’t really fit any position in the field particularly well, but they shown strike zone knowledge, they hit the ball well and have the promise for pop. Coming into 2018 that’s where Patrick Mazeika, a catcher and firstbasemen found himself.

BA was down on his defensive mechanics at both positions and that he must grow defensively in order to continue to move up.

The Mets drafted Patrick in the 8th round of the 2015 draft after he hit .348 for three years at Stetson University. He started his minor league career at Kingsport and he dominated hitting .354/.451/.540 – eyepopping numbers really spreading the ball all over the place. The next season, he was 22 at this point, he continued, hitting .305/.414/.402 in Columbia. Two years in a row like this you start to turn heads (except for the defense stuff). In 2017 he mostly played in St Lucie but had a week or so in Binghamton. He combined for a .290/.389/.416 line.

Patrick came into 2018 needing to continue his production at Binghamton. Over 87 games that just didn’t happen the same way. He hit .231/.328/.363. Not bad for a catcher, but a large drop off from previous years. These numbers could be a combination of a couple of things. First off, he’s getting better defensively. Second, as John Sheridan at MMO found, he had a .216 BABIP, so super unlucky and in August for a period of time he was hitting .381/.480/.524. The article also talked about his decrease in playing time.

That latter part is what I personally believed led to Mazeika’s down year offensively. The Mets have really messed with Nido’s development behind the plate keeping him all over the country thus cutting into everyone else’s time. For Patrick, his playing time next year and his level will completely depend on what the Mets do this year in the off-season. If they don’t sign any catchers, Nido will have to be with the club breaking camp so Mazeika will be in Syracuse. If the Mets sign a back up catcher or a starting catcher, Nido goes to Syracuse and then the Mets have a tough choice with Mazeika. Do they send him to Syracuse to split time with Nido? The Mets already have a logjam at first base their too. Or do they send him to Binghamton to get the lion’s share of playing time?

It’s an open secret, maybe not even a secret anymore, that the Marlins are looking to change their uniforms in a major way for the upcoming season. Over the last two weeks or so, several designs have found themselves on twitter awaiting league approval.

@UniWatch @PhilHecken Reported alternate logo and home uni @Marlins (via @MarlinsNetwork) pic.twitter.com/ULTx4byNiR

— Dan Ducasse (@ducasse37) October 25, 2018

New Marlins logo on an official hat. is this it? #Marlins pic.twitter.com/gyVO2EC10I

— A Marlins Fan (@MarlinsNetwork) October 18, 2018

@MarlinsNetwork reports @Marlins waiting for approval to change their logo to this in 2019. Looks fresh to me! @MiamiSportsWave #Marlins pic.twitter.com/de5RCg5k5k

— Matt Sheehan TV (@TheMatt_Sheehan) October 18, 2018

The vibe is that the Marlins will officially reveal their new uniforms in November which is around when major rebrands happen anyway (sometime around the holiday season, after the official end of the current year, etc).

Depending on how you count, this will be the 3rd or the 4th Marlins overhaul of their logo (see it all here). There’s the original fish and the teal/green color from 1993-2011. Then, when they signed Jose Reyes no less along with a bunch of players, they rebranded completely from the Florida Marlins to the Miami Marlins rendering the F in their logo useless. They took on a more Miami palette of colors as well. They did change their logo again slightly in 2017, removing the black from the inner part of the Marlins M. If you feel strongly about it, you could call it their 3rd generation of jerseys, otherwise it’s their second generation of jerseys part 2.

If the above leaks pan out, the Marlins will look quite different next year. I’m saving judgment right now until we see the whole set.

The #19 prospect on BA’s list is a player you probably heard of since he was on the major league roster for a large chunk of time (although went through periods of limited use) – Tyler Bashlor.

The Mets drafted Bashlor in 2013 and have been anxiously awaiting his debut which happened this past year (at age 25). After playing rookie ball in Kingsport putting up a 5.74 ERA over 15.2 innings, Tyler had Tommy John surgery and missed all of the 2014 and 2015 season.

Bashlor returned in 2016 cruising through the South Atlantic league posting a 2.50 ERA over 50.1 innings (and spent some time with St. Lucie as well) but he didn’t make the jump to “on people’s radars” until 2017. He posted a 4.89 ERA in St. Lucie over 35 innings followed by not allowing any runs over 14.2 innings in Binghamton. BA notes that when he made the jump, his fastball jumped in velocity and he ended up leading the minor leagues with 15.2 K/9.

That last stat is what made him intriguing coming into the 2018 season. He was missing bats and throwing around 100 mph. He picked up right where he left off with Binghamton posting a low 2.63 ERA over 24.0 innings and getting the call to the majors.

He wasn’t lights out, dominate, right away in the majors but showed enough to give us a sign that he is developing (especially considering he never went to Las Vegas and was facing a jump in hitter quality). He ended the season pitching 32.0 innings with a 4.22 ERA, 5.44 FIP, 1.188 WHIP and 88 ERA+. The WHIP is the standout stat for him as his control was a problem in the minors. If he can keep striking players out while limiting his WHIP, the rest of his stats will come around.

Earlier in the article it was hinted that he had several points of time of “major rest”. Bashlor pitched in his second game on June 29th, then didn’t come back to the mound until July 8th, this happened again on July 15th through the 27th. From August 29th to the end of the season, he was pitching about every three days, got into 9 games logging 8.1 innings. He struck out 12 batters and posted a 2.16 ERA. It’s the end of the season, with Tyler on regular rest which makes me believe he’s a key part of the bullpen next year, especially if the Wilpons are frugal this off-season.

As we continue to work our way through the prospect list we reach another player who made it to the majors last year, Drew Smith (joining Jacob Rhame, PJ Conlon, and Gerson Bautista, earlier entries in this series). Drew Smith was traded to the Mets from the Rays in the trade that sent Lucas Duda away in 2017. Like pretty much everyone else the Mets got in the 2017 sell off, Drew Smith throws some serious heat.

Before we get into how he did in 2018, lets review his 2017. He was traded multiple times (the first time occurring in April between the Tigers and the Rays) thus he played for 5 different minor league teams across three levels of ball including the Lakeland Tigers (High A), Charlotte Intimidators (High A), Montgomery Biscuits (AA), Durham Bulls (AAA), and the Binghamton Mets (now Rumble Ponies) (AA). I don’t nearly have the amount of time necessary to figure this out but being on 5 different teams plus minor league promotion nights, I would assume Smith wore a record or near record amount of different uniforms in 2017.

Overall in 20176 he posted a 1.65 ERA across 42 games and 60.0 innings. With those numbers he was a lock to play in Las Vegas at some point in 2018 with a high chance of being called to the majors and an outside chance of starting the season in the majors with a strong spring training (which didn’t happen).

Across Binghamton and Las Vegas this season Smith performed well posting a 3.16 ERA in 25 games and 37.0 innings including a 3.31 ERA over 32.2 innings in Las Vegas where it felt like Mets pitchers struggled more at than usual last season (probably a combination of normal pitching problems in Vegas and players being jerked around all over the system).

Smith got the call up this year and handled it well. In his rookie year he pitched in 27 games with the Mets, 28.0 innings posting a 3.54 ERA, 3.66 FIP, 1.429 WHIP and 105 ERA+. The WHIP speaks mostly to how you probably remember watching him play in 2018, with runners always on base, but he didn’t let it effect him too much.

This was a great step for Smith. I’m excited to see what he brings to the team next year especially with how much help the Mets need in the bullpen vs how much they end up getting this off-season. If the Mets wise up and overhaul the bullpen, there is a chance Drew starts in the minors this year or is competing for a spot on the roster in Spring. If the Mets only sign 1-2 players for the pen, he’ll “compete” for a spot but will almost will definitely get it.

Adonis Uceta. Sounds familiar right? Like sounds like a player you may have spent a lot of time, for a short time, talking about and then slipped from your memory and you’re not completely sure why? That was my experience at least writing this article. Adonis Uceta landed himself at the #21 spot on BA’s Top 30 Mets prospects because in 2017 in Columbia he absolutely dominated pitching 43 innings in 29 games as a reliever posting a 1.26 ERA, 0.91 WHIP.

For Uceta, it was his first sustained run at success since signing with the Mets and playing with rookie level teams from 2013 thru 2016. He was above the average age, just slightly when he played in the DOSL at age 19 (by 0.2 years) and his amazing year in Columbia, he was 1.1 years above average (he ended the season as a younger player in Binghamton).

What happened? Why did his stock suddenly rise up? The Mets converted him into a reliever in 2017 and it just clicked for him. BA even notes that his velocity went up throughout the season going from 92-94 to 96-99 at the end. He even earned a non-roster invite to major league camp.

But then he strained his hamstring at camp and was assigned to minor league camp. And then after struggling at the beginning of the season for Binghamton he got injured again and didn’t come back for a while. Overall he posted a 6.04 ERA over 16 games and 25.1 innings in Binghamton last year. He was never an elite prospect so he just slipped to the back of our collective mind about young Mets arms.

Uceta will most likely start the season again at Binghamton. But there is another wrinkle. Uceta is eligible for the Rule V draft this year, again. He wasn’t selected last year  and his play this year didn’t help his stock but it is still a possibility.

The Mets drafted Brodey in the third round of 2017 as an outfielder (he was a two-way player in college). Coming into 2017 Brodey needed to develop, something. “If Brodey fails to develop a plus tool, as some scouts project, he could be an outfield tweener who doesn’t defend well enough for center or produce enough power for a corner.” (Baseball America) The Mets already have plenty in the latter category and don’t have enough that can stay healthy in the former.

Despite struggling to show power in Brooklyn in 2017 (.257/.303/.348) over 210 AB’s he took a minor step up in the power department in Columbia over 35 AB’s to close the season (.229/.300/.400).

Last season he split time between Columbia and St Lucie. In Columbia he was 0.7 years above the average age and in 314 ABs he hit .217/.287/.387, a slight step back but then he played 102 AB’s at St Lucie, where he was below the average age for the league and hit a better .245/.313/.382.

Ultimately Brodey hasn’t taken that significant step yet as he heads into 2019 where he will be 23 years old. He will most likely start the year at St Lucie where he will be slightly above the average age. If something clicks, if he finds some power, or develops a better instinct to the ball, maybe he finds himself in double A and being discussed more prospect blogs. He still has “unlocked, solid-average power” (Baseball America), maybe it finally comes out!

At the start of the Mets off-season we made a list of things to look forward to before Opening Day 2019. While most were Mets team released (GM/free agent signings/internal decisions as to who is playing what) on our list was “what will the Mets AAA Syracuse Club be named?”

Yesterday we found out that the Mets went with the safe choice and revealed the Syracuse Mets:

Meet the Mets! The Syracuse Mets, that is. The International League club unveils its new name and logos: https://t.co/f4MxLEZZu6 pic.twitter.com/0SZf7pyoHK

— Minor League Baseball (@MiLB) October 16, 2018

This is a lot better than the Syracuse Chiefs / Sky Chiefs and definitely fits the mold of branding upstate as Mets country too. Albeit a little boring. Binghamton recently went through the process of changing their name from the Mets (25 years) to the Rumble Ponies and in the process relaunched excitement about minor league baseball in the Southern Tier. Renaming the team was just part of that, the new owners, who demanded the name change, invested quite a bit in the stadium, the promotions got considerably better and then there was Tim Tebow:

Speaking of Tebow, other regional Triple A teams are anticipating a Tebow, Syracuse reunion:

The @SyracuseMets bring a new moniker and a new team to Coca-Cola Park next season.

See 10 of their contests against the IronPigs with a special Mets Plan. https://t.co/KMpf161PY6

— IronPigs (@IronPigs) October 16, 2018

Overall I don’t hate the rebranding, I just think it’s a little bland. If the Mets didn’t change their double A team this would have the last four stops of development on a player’s journey:

• St Lucie Mets
• Binghamton Mets
• Syracuse Mets
• New York Mets

The Mets also have the Kingsport Mets, which essentially use same logo for their hat (at least St Lucie changed theirs a bit). On the positive side, with so many teams calling themselves the Mets it will give us an opportunity to see some crazy Mets promotional jerseys throughout the season.

Players ranked 23-25 are all familiar to Mets fans as they all have made their major league debut’s either this season or last. At #25 was Gerson Bautista, acquired in the Addison Reed trade in 2017, then at #24 was PJ Conlon and now at #23 is Jacob Rhame who the Dodgers sent to the Mets for Curtis Granderson. Rhame made his debut in September 2017 and one outing dominate his entire pitching for the season. The ledger says he pitched 9.0 innings in 9 games with a 9.00 ERA. However in one game he allowed 5 runs over 0.1 innings. He still had more outings allowing a run (5) than clean sheets (4). The hope was Rhame would move up to the next level at some point in 2018.

BA talks about how when the Dodgers drafted Rhame, his only reliable pitch was a fastball, so they turned him into a reliever. This should ring a bell for Mets fans because pretty much every pitcher traded for in 2017 threw serious heat and the hope was 1-2 of them would end up developing into a dominate reliever. He has developed a change-up with the Mets and an average to below average slider, neither of which are an out pitch yet.

Rhame got his chance last year due to injuries on the Mets but it wasn’t a great season for him at first. Over 30 games he pitched 32.1 innings posting a 5.85 ERA, 5.48 FIP, 1.423 WHIP and 64 ERA+. He ended the season on a 6.2 inning scoreless streak over 6 games and had only a 3.14 ERA in his last 12 games (which was every game after he allowed 6 runs over 2.0 innings against the Nationals in a game the Mets lost 25-4, so take that for what its worth). It is also worth noting he was one of the few pitchers who did not struggle in Las Vegas this year posting a 3.06 ERA over 25 games and 32.1 innings.

Out of other young relievers trying to push into the bullpen next year, Rhame has a leg up due to a higher volume of work last year at the major league level, his improvement over the last couple of months and the velocity of his fastball. If he impresses at camp, he will have an inside track to the active roster, otherwise he’ll be on the short list for injury replacement call-up at Syracuse.