213 Miles From Shea

The Rockies have become a haven for Mets players. While I wish there were more Mets players in the Rockies organization due to a Tulo trade, we’ll have to settle for reviewing the four current former Mets.

First is LaTroy Hawkins played for the Mets in 2013 at the age of 40. He pitched in 72 games, 70.2 innings and a 2.93 ERA (oh and 13 saves). After leaving the Mets he signed as free agent for the Rockies posting good numbers with 23 saves.

Next is John Lannan. The longtime National and one time Phillie joined the Mets last year and pitched in parts of 5 games for the Mets with an abysmal 15.75 ERA. He signed a contract with the Rockies in mid-November.

Hopefully you don’t remember Aaron Laffey’s time with the Mets. In 2013 he pitched in 4 games for the Mets with a 7.20 ERA. The long time Indian spent time with Seattle, the Yankees and Toronto before coming to the Mets. He then went back to the Blue Jays, spent sometime in the Minors with the Dodgers, Brewers, Orioles and Nationals from 2013 to 2014. He has now landed himself in the Rockies organization.

Finally, there’s Omar Quintanilla. He broke into the majors with the Rockies and played with them from 2005 to 2009, after a year with the Rangers, he joined the Mets in 2012 and put up solid back up numbers. They sent him to the Orioles and then he came back to the Mets for 2013, 2014 and put up pretty poor numbers for a back up, but was better than nothing at short. He’s now back with the Rockies.

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!

Yesterday we looked at the Mets in the top 100 MLB.com Prospects list which included Noah Syndergaard (#10), Kevin Plawecki (#63), Steven Matz (#66), Brandon Nimmo (#73) and Michael Conforto (#82). Today we’ll look at the Baseball Prospectus version:

9. Noah Syndergaard
33. Steven Matz
69. Brandon Nimmo
78. Ahmed Rosario
80. Kevin Plawecki
82. Dilson Herrera

So Baseball Prospectus ranked Noah a little higher, Matz considerably higher, Nimmo higher and actually ranked Rosario and Herrera. They didn’t rank Michael Conforto. The obvious comparison is while MLB.com had 5 prospects, Baseball Prospectus had 6, so they seem to be a bit higher on the Mets farm system.

I want to win now. I know prospects break your heart, but I’m so excited about seeing Syndergaard and Matz mature, what happens when Rosario makes it (because I’m losing hope in ever getting a short stop) and seeing what the Mets end up doing with both d’Arnaud and Plawecki.

There are two Mets in the Arizona organization, with diverging, lingering lore in Mets fandom. First is Oliver Perez. Perez joined the Mets in 2006 as part of the trade that brought Roberto Hernandez to the Mets and Xavier Nady to the Pirates. The Mets then signed Perez to a fairly massive contract. You probably remember, whether you want to or not, the contract being a failure and Perez was released. He then joined the Nationals organization (didn’t make it to the majors that year), had two successful seasons of relief pitching for the Mariners and had a solid year of relief with Diamondbacks. So he has now had a second career in the bullpen (often it is easy to forget that he had a really promising rookie year).

Next is Nick Evans. (Who? Hopefully you remember this joke.) Evans came up out of the Mets organization in 2008 back when the Mets had several players that seemed almost identical to Evans (Jacobs, Murphy). While Murphy was the only one that was successful long term, Evans had a few good seasons for the Mets. They just didn’t have a position for him and he didn’t have enough offense to push him in the conversation. After leaving the Mets in 2011, he signed with the Pirates, then the Dodgers, and finally the Diamondbacks, where he put up solid numbers 20+ AB’s in 2014.

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!

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!