213 Miles From Shea

With every draft and year comes another set of minor leaguers that are ready to make noise in all of the prospect magazines, forums and scouting reports everywhere. For this report, I am focusing on both of the Mets single A teams that are playing right now (St. Lucie and Savannah) where players like Ike Davis and Brad Holt, who we have heard a lot about before (being first round picks) are heating up and how other players you might not know about yet are doing well. First off, some non 2008 draftees:
       Jenrry Mejia 4-1, 9 G, 50.1 IP, 1.97 ERA, 16 BB, 44 K
       Brant Rustich 1-1, 9 G, 0 GS, 31.1 IP, 2.03 ERA, 10 BB, 28 K
And now 2008 draftees that are doing well so far this season:
       Ike Davis .282 BA (50-177), 19 R, 16 2B, 2 3B, 3 HR, 17 RBI
       Brad Holt 4-1, 8 G, 41.1 IP, 3.05 ERA, 10 BB, 50 K, 1.04 WHIP
       Joshua Satin .320 BA (55-172), 13 2B, 2 HR, 27 RBI
       Sean Ratliff .312 BA (62-199), 15 2B, 4 3B, 5 HR, 27 RBI, 5 SB
       Kaplan 4-1, 1.05 ERA, 8 GS, 9 G, 51.2 IP, 13 BB, 42 K
I feel its important to note first that Satin is a second basement and Ratliff is a centerfielder. I can't remember the last time the Mets have had a secondbasemen in the system putting the numbers that Satin is putting up right now. He got off to a slow start last year in Brooklyn but if he keeps hitting like he is hitting, I wonder if he will be moved to St. Lucie later in the season. The test for all of these players is not only do they need these numbers for the rest of this year, they need to do it next spring, next season and they need to show the raw talents, the non-number stuff that scouts see that allows these players to move up to the majors.

As we all know, the Mets do not have a first round pick this year, a year after they had two first round picks and one supplemental first round pick last year. The last time the Mets didn't have a first round pick was in 2006 and the time before that was 1999. Surprisingly, the 2006 draft was one of the better ones for the Mets in recent years. For those of you who are slightly unfamilar with MLB Drafts, unlike football, where you probably need at least 3 good players from your 7 rounds to be considered a good draft, 1 or 2 players in baseball that make it to the majors and perform well equals a fantastic, amazing draft. There are now 50 rounds which goes on to show how hard it is to go from the minors to the majors. Anyway here are some notable picks from the 2006 draft (followed by the round when they were selected):
     Mulvey (2)
     Smith (3)
     Murphy (13)
     Stoner (16)
Mulvey ended up being a critical piece in the Santana deal, and Smith the same for the Putz deal. Murphy is self explanatory and Stoner is a prospect that is starting to be noticed. Here are some notables from the 1999 draft:
     Pagan (4)
     Redman (10)
     Jacobs (38)
We all know that first place picks don't always pan out, and if they do they are not always the best prize in the draft for a given team. Here are some other drafts where the Mets had notable or not notable first round picks followed by some notable later round picks. 2005 in my opinion has panned out as one of the best drafts for the Mets in a while where they selected Pelfrey in the first round and then these players:
     Niese (7)
     Parnell (9)
     Thole (13)
     Brown (18)
Parnell and Niese are focus in this bunch that if the pan out as they are on the road to do now, they can really make this a great draft for the Mets (and overall 2005 ended up being a good draft year for many Mets). The 2005 draft is also in the stage where the stars start to emerge because it has been a few years since the draft and now many of the players are starting to surface. In 2003 the first pick of the Mets was Milledge and 2004 was Humber, both have been traded here are some other notable selections:
2003:
     Bannister (7)
     Muniz (13)
2004:
     Evans (5)
     Carp (9)
And finally, some notables from the 2007 draft:
      Moviel (2)
      Rustich (2)
      Duda (7)
      Gee (21)
It is also a little too early to make judgments on the 2007 draft, and way early to make judgements on the 08 draft.

Whats the best way to rebound from a loss like last night? Play again and this time with the ace Johan Santana. The Mets and the Pirates will play the second game of a three game set where Santana will take on Duke. The Mets will be looking to go back to some fundamentals tonight like fielding a ball cleanly and getting the run over and in.

Santana is coming off of his most enigmatic start to date where he pitched 120 pitches in 6 innings where he also had a ton of strikeouts. This season he is 7-2 with a 1.77 ERA over 66.0 innings where he has only 20 BB on the season and has an amazing 86 K's. His last three games have included the roughest for him on the season where he still has won all three games where he has pitched 20.0 IP, a human 4.05 ERA, 7 BB and 26 K. Last year he pitched against the Pirates twice to a 1-0 record, 14.2 IP, 1.23 ERA, 3 BB, 14 K. Here are some Pirates stats against the Mets:
      Monroe 8-38, 3 2B, 2 HR, 12 K
      Sanchez 2-10, 2B
      McLouth 1-6, HR
      Wilson 2-7
      Adam LaRoche 0-5
      Hinske 0-5
The Pirates do not have much power. That being said defense is needed against them because they play scrappy, they manufacture runs and can build these strange rallies.Yesterday for example they scored their runs in bunches. The Mets have to prevent that from happening. Also, they need to not only score a bunch of runs at the start, but continunely do it the entire game.

To do that the Mets will have to battle Duke who is the duke of the Pirates pitching staff this year (that was a terrible attempt at a joke, I am so sorry). Anyway he is 5-4 on the season with a 2.75 ERA, pitched 72.0 IP. In his last three games he was 1-2, pitched 22.0 innings, 3.27 ERA, 6 BB and 14 K. He faced the Mets twice last year where he had a 0-1 record with 12.0 IP, 9 ER, BB and 5 K. Here are some stats the Mets have on the Duke of the Pirates:
     Beltran 2-15, 2B
     Wright 5-15, 2B, HR
     Tatis 3-6
     Castillo 1-1
The Mets have to score often and then with Santana and a healthy and effective bullpen, should be in a position to try to get the W in this game. Lets go Mets! Beat the Pirates!

Tonight was one the first nights that I felt frustrated and I really feel a large portion is due to the injuries on the squad. First off all, something just looks wrong with Putz, and I hope he is being honest with the training staff because he isn't throwing like how he used to. He could really be injured. And going back to the injuries, the Mets did a good job scoring runs in the beginning, but by the end of the game they were having a hard time and we have to start realizing that the injuries are now catching up.

Think about, no Reyes, Beltran, Delgado, Cora, Pagan, and Church, our lineup looks completely different. Beltran and Delgado our are sources of power and we don't have them now. We have been able to win without them, but with these types of injuries these nights are probable. So we have to put this night behind us and hope that Cora, Beltran and Reyes all return soon this week because our lineup really needs them not only for the offense, but also for the defense (Valdez didn't really look good tonight, and Reyes out there probably could have saved a lot of runs).

Not the way to start off the month but hopefully the Mets will come back tomorrow and play strong.

The Mets travel to Pittsburgh to start a four game set tonight. Last time they played, the Mets swept the Pirates at Citi in a series that helped them get a 7 game winning streak and a very strong month of May. Now they return looking a little different thanks to injuries but also very confident after finishing a 19-9 month. The Pirates tonight will call on Ian Snell who is enigmatic in he has the stuff but the last two years he has struggled and the Mets will send out Livan, the unexpected complete game pitcher in his last outing.

Livan is 4-1 on the season with a 4.28 ERA over 54.2 innings and in his last four games he has pitched 27.0 IP where he has a 2-0 record and a 3.00 ERA. He really helped out the Mets with a strong outing his last time up and continues to surprise as a key part of this rotation this year. He already pitched against Pittsburgh in the sweep earlier where he went 6.0 IP allowed 2 ER, with 4 BB and 5 K. Here are some stats the Pirates have on him:
     Adam LaRoche 7-29, 4 2B, HR
     Hinske 6-22, 2B, HR
     Vazquez 3-19, 2 2B, HR
     McLouth 4-5, 2B, 3B
     Wilson, 4-19, 2B
Hernandez has done well against the Players he has seen a lot, and pretty well against the guys he hasn't except Nate McLouth who is the big bat in this lineup. The pitched has to get by him, and if they get run support, then they can take this game.

Snell is struggling again with a 1-6 record, 5.43 ERA over 53.0 IP. In his last three games he has pitched 13.0 IP, allowed 12 ER, 6 BB and 13 K. Against the Mets this year he pitched in a losing effort where pitched 6.0 IP where he allowed 3 ER, walked one and struck out 5.Despite his struggles, a lof the Mets he could possibly face today have not been stellar against Snell over his carear:
     Beltran 2-12, HR
     Wright 2-12
     Castillo 2-12
     Schnieder 2-9
     Santos 1-3
The Mets have knock Snell out early and have to make sure he doesn't settle in. If they can do that, they can get to the Pirates bullpen, which they have been able to beat up on so far this year and get into the win column and start off this month right. Lets Go Mets!

Right now the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 is going on and
it was announced that there will be a new Rock Band out this year which
will focus on the Beatles.

If you are unfamiliar with the series, Rock Band is very similar to
Guitar Hero where the game plays a song and the players have to match
up generally the rhythms with guitar, drums and microphone controllers.

This game features the Beatles so the characters on the screen are a
virtual recreation of the Beatles and shows some famous places they
played and some computer generated backgrounds that match the visuals
of the music.

That means one of the places you can play the game at will be, of
course, Shea Stadium, one of the famous concerts that took place on the
field of our old home. (As a little disclaimer, it has not been
officially released that you can play in Shea Stadium, but when they
were showing screen shots of the game, it looked like they were playing
at Shea Stadium).

So Shea Stadium lives again!

Update:
Jim left a great link in the comment section from the Mets Merized Online version of this post that confirms Shea Stadium:
Thanks Jim!

The Mets, who have been battling injuries for basically the last month, had another foe besides the Marlins out their yesterday which was a stomach bug (or Virus, not really a germ but whatever) which sidelined Beltran to start the game and then would later take out Maine in the game. Maine was incredible. When he left before 7th inning he had pitched 6 scoreless innings, 2 walks and 5 K's and he as really effective. Citi Field is treating him well because his fly ball outs are staying in the ball park. More importantly, his pitches looked excellent yesterday as he contiued a really good stretch that he is in. Another player really deserving of praise in Maine's outing would be Feliciano who had really no warning that he was going to be in the game and he just kept the Marlins bats out of the topic for at least the 7th inning.

Welcome to the bigs Fmart! In the bottom of the seventh, Manuel had Murphy bunt the runner over so Fmart can try to get him in and thats a lot of faith for a player who has had all of 5 days in the bigs. Well he got in there and rocketted a double to bring in the run. Next, the very popular and very awesome Omir Santos hit a double and brought in Fmart. Thanks to the top of the 8th those two runs becacme very important and very decisive. Overall in the bottom of the seventh, the Mets played very sound offense fundalmentals which is nice to see considering the Mets are in a power drought for a lexicon of reasons. Playing basics well keeps the team balanced and winning.

Krod also had a great 9th. He struck out the first two batters, who were both very frustrated with their K's. Then he walked the tieing run on base to make the game interesting. And then he got Paulino to strikeout to finish off the game with a joyous arm pump from Santos with Krod pointing to the sky. That energy is great to see on the field. A very nice 5-1 homestand. Lets go Mets!

The Mets and the Marlins play the rubber game in this series as yesterday's game pretty much went how it would according to paper. The Mets will face Volstad for the first time this year as Maine will make his third start against the fish this year. With yesterday's loss the Mets are back in second place by a half game, but at this point in the season, just winning remains the ultimate goal. Sheff, Wright and Castillo return today as well from their day of rest.

Maine is 4-3 on the season with a 4.18 ERA over 9 G and 57.2 innings. In his last three games he has pitched 18.2 IP with a 2-1 record and a 3.50 ERA. So far against the Marlins this year he is 1-0 in two games and 11.0 IP with a 1.64 ERA, 4 BB and 9 K. He is still building steam and is what this team needs with a rotation spot (Perez, Niese, Redding, whatever) still very much in flux. Here are some stats the Marlins have put on him over the years:
     Uggla  4-20, 2B, HR
     Ramierez 4-10, 2 HR
     Hermida 5-12
     Cantu 3-9
     Bonifacio 0-6
     Ross 0-6
The promising sign for Maine is that yesterday when the bullpen stepped in for Redding they put the Marlins on lock down and they also did that on Friday too. So for Maine, he knows that if he does his part, than more than likely the pen will do their part. Some offense of course would help as well.

Volstad is also 4-3 on year with a 3.69 ERA over 61.0 IP. In his last three startes he has pitched 18.2 IP with a 5.30 ERA, 3 BB and 18 K. He has not pithced against the Mets this year but last year, his rookie year, he made two starts against the Mets and he was 1-0 with a .73 ERA over 12.1 IP, 6 BB and 9 K. It will be interesting to see how the Mets address him one year later now that their are scouting reports out on him and in recent games he has been hit. Here are some numbers the Mets put on him last year:
     Beltran 2-4
     Murphy 1-6
     Wright 2-5
     Castillo 1-3
Hopefully the day off renegerized Wright and Castillo. Also, there are a large amount of current Mets who havn't seen Volstad pitch but they aren't the Mets that historically do bad against new pitchers (in other words just havn't been with the team over the last three years for any large amounts of time) and these are players like Pagan and Sheff. Lets Go Mets! Fry the Fish!

The Mets and the Marlins play the second game of the three game set this afternoon as the Mets face another day of historical challenges. Very similar to last night, the Mets will face a pitcher that they have had very little recent success on, Josh Johnson, and the Mets will send a pitcher to mound who struggled against the Marlins last year, Tim Redding. Other story lines include that the Mets still have a half game lead over the Phils in the division and have 4 game winning streak.

Redding has had two starts so far this year and one has been good while the other one not so much. His totals are 0-1 over 10.2 innings where he has allowed 10 hits, 8 ER, 8 BB and 8 K. Last year he pitched 6 games against the Marlins and lasted a total of 29.0 innings where he gave up 25 ER, 14 BB and 31 K. He will have to emulate Mike Pelfrey as he must get over his demons as well and beat the fish. Here are some stats the Marlins have against him:
     Helms 6-23, 2 HR
     Ramierez 7-13, 3 2B, 3 HR
     Hermida 7-14, 3 2B
     Uggla 1-12, 7 K
     Cantu 4-12, 2B, HR
     Ross 2-9
Short story: A lot of Marlins have good numbers against Redding. Its going to come down to control with Redding. His walks have to go down so when he makes mistakes, they don't hurt him, in other words that BB to K ratio right now has to change. His WHIP is also killing him. Keep those runners off the bags!

The Mets bats will to deal with Johnson again. He had a great game against the Mets when the Marlins beat the Mets 2-1 and then he pitched an alright game against the Mets where he allowed 3 runs over 6 innings, but the Marlins won 4-3. Anyway he is 3-1 on the season over 67.1 IP and a 2.67 ERA. In his last three games he is 0-1 over 17.1 IP and has a 3.63 ERA. This year against the Mets he is 1-0 over two games with 15.0 IP and 4 ER (2.40 ERA) with 2 BB and 10 K. The Mets were able to score runs on him last time and they need to rememebr that they can do that. Here are some stats the Mets have on him:
     Beltran 3-18
     Wright 3-18
     Murphy 2-9, 2B
     Castillo 2-5
     Tatis 4-6, HR
The Mets are goign to have to score runs on Johnson to back up Redding and also to give the bullpen some breathing room. If they can do that, then they have a good chance of extending this streak to 5 games. Lets go Mets! Beat the Marlins!

The Mets beat the Marlins by the score of 2-1 in the 11th inning which means that they remain in first place and now have a four game winning streak. They also move to 3 wins and 4 losses so far against the Marlins this season. The reason this win is so remarkable for the Mets is because they not only “beat” a new pitcher (ok, West had their number the entire night except for the solo homer by Santos, so in reality this part wasn't a win for the Mets) but Pelfrey, who was terrible against the fish last year lasted 7.2 innings and allowed only one run, dropping his season ERA to 3.88,  and he only walked one while striking out 6. He has really been good as of late.

Now Pelfrey got his demons but the Mets still needed to win and that was thanks to Omir Santos who seems to only hit when this team needs him the most, but hey, thats what we need on this ball club. His homer in the 3rd provided one run and then he knocked in the winning run in the 11th, and in doing so, he raised his batting average to .276. The Mets really need this guy to stay around because he is a good hitter as well as a good catcher and the Mets made that happen today as they traded away Ramon Castro. I will be slightly sad to see Castro go as he has knocked in a surprising amount of homers for his AB but he has always been an injury risk and when it comes down to it, the Mets need Omir Santos more, a young catcher who not only calls a good game but frames pitches, runs, and gets key hits.

In other notes, Beltran made his return tonight going 0-4 at the plate and Wright also had a o-for day with and 0-5 performance. THe winnign run was scored by who else but Sheffield who has been in the middle of everything good for the Mets this month. With a win tomorrow, the Mets will take a series from the fish for the first time this season, which would be a very nice thing to do.