213 Miles From Shea

It’s prospect list season!

Five Mets made the MLB.com Top 100 prospects. While our prospects have been hyped for a while, some may feel that 5 isn’t a lot. There are a few ways to think about this though. All things equal, each team should have 3 prospects in the top 100, so if you have 5 you’re significantly better than the average club. Another way to think about this if everyone has 20 players in the minors they really like, that’s 600 players across the league. Only the top 18.3% of them are on this list then. However, if the Mets have 5 of their 20 in the top 100, that means their top 25% are in the Nation’s top 18.3%.

Anyway the players with their rankings are below:

10. Noah Syndergaard
63. Kevin Plawecki
66. Steven Matz
72. Brandon Nimmo
82. Michael Conforto

It is worth pointing out that Mets prospects recognized by other MLB.com lists this week, Dominic Smith and Dilson Herrera, are not on this list while Nimmo and Conforto who didn’t land on the top 10 OF list are on this list. This makes sense because there are more OF prospects in general. There are now 7 Mets prospects that have been spotlighted on MLBPipeline this year, 5 of whom are position players, which is the big deviation from previous years. Tomorrow we’ll look at Baseball Prospectus Top 101 list.

There is only one current Met in the Seattle Mariners organization, the legendary Endy Chavez.

Endy Chavez, the former 4th outfielder for the Mets was already a fan favorite before the fateful playoff game in 2006. He entered Mets lore though towards the end of the 2006 NLCS Game 7 where he jumped over the wall, turned a two-run homer into an out and then threw out the runner at second. If you’re not sure what this looks like, you can see it immortalized on one of the gates at Citi Field.

He was part of a three team trade in 2009 that brought JJ Putz to the Mets and that year he had 182 AB’s for the Mariners. He returned to the majors in 2011 with the Rangers for 256 AB’s, 2012 for the Orioles batting 150+ times and has played the last two seasons with the Mariners with at least 230+ AB’s both seasons.

He continues to be a solid 4th outfielder, and fondly remembered in Queens.

This series of articles will take us across every organization in baseball and look for former Mets in the majors and minors to see how they are doing, leading up to a “Former Mets Team” to see how the current Mets stack up with pieces we have all over the place. I am still looking for Mets team members on the Pirates, Rangers, White Sox and Tigers. If you any, please let me know!

Back in December I went into the 42nd Street Mets store, took some pictures, and then forgot to write this article. Oops.

Anyway, back the store was having a buy one get one half off sale, so I figured, there’s probably some “good” things here and I was not disappointed:

First off if you wanted Johan Santana shirts or jerseys, or Justin Turner shirts, this was the sale for you as they were everywhere.

Second, the New York Swag shirt will make me forever grateful that The 7 Line exists, thus making shirts like this practically not marketable to Mets fans.

Finally the majority of the jerseys had drop shadow. Seriously. If you ever wondered where they went, they are at 42nd Street.

It was an odd day.

Oakland! An organization that four former Mets call home.

First is Scott Kazmir. Kazmir is coming off of his first strong season in quite some time. Most Mets fans know the story of Kazmir. The top prospect was traded essentially for Victor Zambrano which made very little sense at the time and still makes very little sense. Kazmir had a good start of his career in Tampa, stumbled towards the end of his time there, stumbled more with the Angels but is seeing a resurgence in Oakland.

Second is our recent friend Ike Davis, who was traded last season. After a interesting start to last season, where there were strong Ike supporters and dissenters (and his Dad also making a fuss about trade rumors), the Mets sent him to Pittsburgh. Duda ended up having a breakout year with the Mets and the Mets got Thorton/Taylor for the first basemen. Davis was DFA’d at the end of the season and Oakland picked him up. With their roster in a bit of flux, maybe he can squeeze himself in.

Third is Jason Pridie. The 31 year-old OF was a 5th/6th OF for the Mets when then got him off waivers from the Twins back in 2010. In 2011 the Mets ended up relying on Jason for 101 games with his .231/.309/.370 slash line. He has played in 15 major league games since then (9 for Philly, 4 for Baltimore, 2 for Colorado). He was signed as a free agent to the Athletics organization this off-season.

Finally there is Jefry Marte, a 23 year-old third basemen, who hasn’t broken into the majors yet. He was with the Mets from 2008 to 2012, starting at the age of 17. He ended up in Oakland as part of the Collin Cowgill trade that brought Collin to Queens.

This series of articles will take us across every organization in baseball and look for former Mets in the majors and minors to see how they are doing, leading up to a “Former Mets Team” to see how the current Mets stack up with pieces we have all over the place. I am still looking for Mets team members on the Pirates, Rangers, White Sox and Tigers. If you any, please let me know!

The Angels currently have two former Mets on their roster: Joe Smith and Collin Cowgill.

Joe Smith made his major league debut with the Mets in 2007 and played two seasons with the Amazin’s. Back in Queens he had a 3.51 ERA over 107.2 innings and 97 strikeouts. Overall in his career he has recorded a 2.78 ERA and he is coming off of a season where he had a 1.81 ERA over 74.2 innings. The Mets traded him in December 2008 as part of a three team trade that brought JJ Putz, Jeremy Reed and Sean Green to the Mets. He’s gone off and has had a great career.

Collin Cowgill was essentially a starting outfielder for the Mets at the beginning of 2007, but his Mets career lasted 23 games with a .180 BA, .206 OBP. He did hit an Opening Day Grand Slam. He’s been fairly successful with the Angels since then, last year getting 260 AB’s and batting .250, .330 OBP and a .354 SLG. The Mets acquired Collin for Jefry Marte and traded him to the Angels for Kyle Johnson.

This series of articles will take us across every organization in baseball and look for former Mets in the majors and minors to see how they are doing, leading up to a “Former Mets Team” to see how the current Mets stack up with pieces we have all over the place. I am still looking for Mets team members on the Pirates, Rangers, White Sox and Tigers. If you any, please let me know!