The Mets and Mejia
Let’s just get this part out of the way: The Mets have issues. Lots of issues. But, as if Jose Reyes’ thyroid, repeated late-season meltdowns, questionable ownership finances, and an assistant general manager turning into Hulk Hogan weren’t bad enough, now this appears:
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – If Jenrry Mejia is assigned to the Mets’ Double-A team, he’s not going to be stretched out enough to immediately contribute in the Binghamton rotation. Jerry Manuel is determined to begin using Mejia in short and frequent relief spurts, to gauge how he reacts to pitching in that capacity, the Daily News has learned. The expectation is Mejia will remain in big-league camp through the final week working as a reliever.
The scariest part of this is not that Jerry Manuel is evidently making decisions on prospects. It’s that Omar Minaya is either in complete agreement or is totally indifferent to the situation at hand. Minaya’s job is to handle the team’s present and future assets with care and diligence. Manuel’s job is to manage the players assembled by Minaya and provide input on the margins, not to decide in autonomous fashion what capacity the team’s best pitching prospect should be used during spring. Neither is doing their job.
This becomes less of a possibility and more of a certainty once you realize who we’re talking about. Save the comparisons to Neftali Feliz and David Price. Neither began the season in their respective Major League team’s bullpen and both had more experience starting. Those two situations were of special circumstance (that circumstance being a heated playoff run). The Mets aren’t doing this to limit Mejia’s innings or propel them towards the playoffs. Well, they might actually be doing it for the latter, but more on that in a moment.
This is all tempting because Mejia is a great arm. Keith Law had his fastball sitting in the 93-96 range with cutting action and noted his overall repertoire as “top-of-the-rotation stuff” – big praise for a 20-year-old with a little over 150 innings of experience outside of short-season ball. Baseball America ranked Mejia as the Mets’ top prospect and quoted catcher Josh Thole as saying that the movement on Mejia’s heater convinced batters that it was a slider. They also note that Manuel watched Mejia during Arizona Fall League action to gauge whether he could be of relief help in 2010.
Could Mejia jump to the Majors in three weeks and succeed? Probably. He’d probably pitch quite well out of the bullpen. He has a fastball so hot that it removes the wrinkles from opposing hitters’ shirts. He could really dial that baby up even more in limited action. He might just be the best set-up man in the National League. Heck, maybe the next Mariano Rivera. And then what?
Well, then the Mets enter 2011, which happens to be the final year that Francisco Rodriguez is guaranteed a paycheck. It’s also the final year that Oliver Perez, Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, and Luis Castillo are under contract. It’s a big year. It could be the final year they have this nucleus to really go for it before drastically altering the look of the roster. So, maybe they move Mejia to the rotation. Maybe he hits the ground running and never looks back. Or maybe, like Joba Chamberlain, he has a few hiccups moving to the rotation permanently, and rather than sending him down, they send him to the bullpen where he once again turns the eighth inning into Hades for opposing hitters. And then what?
Well, then the Mets enter 2012 and Mejia is their closer. And then what?
Well, then the Mets enter 2013 and Mejia is still their closer. And so on.
Yes, that entire scenario is derived from a lack of confidence in the Mets and their ability to properly handle the situation. Did it fall down a slippery slope and is it a bit melodramatic? Yes, most likely. But at the same time, if they place Mejia in the pen it will open Pandora’s Box moving forward. More concisely: It sets the table for confirmation bias when Mejia is moved back to the rotation.
This isn’t Earl Weaver with Dennis Martinez, Wayne Garland, or Scott McGregor. Those guys had hundreds of minor league innings before Weaver broke them in as a long reliever. This is reckless handling of a long-term asset in order to save Manuel and Minaya’s jobs. Maybe that’s too harsh, but these guys have not earned the benefit of the doubt.
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R.J., I agree with you, but how do you know what kind of relationship Minaya and Manuel have? You don’t. Perhaps Manuel does indeed have autonomy over how and when and why he uses certain players in certain situations and in which roles they are used.
Jerry Manuel is, hands down, the worst manager in MLB.
Worse than Dusty Baker
Worse than Bruce Bochy
WAY worse than Joe Torre on even his craziest days
One year on the job and he already has a track record in NY of screwing w/ his player’s games, bad in game managerial decisions, and throwing players under the bus. That’s tough to accomplish in one swoop.
Bruce Bochy isn’t the worst manager in MLB by any means. In his managers book, Chris Jaffe argues that Bochy has been one of the more successful managers in recent years, considering the decent results he got out of subpar talent in San Diego. (Remember when his biggest stars were Ryan Klesko and Phil Nevin, and the Padres were perennial contenders?)
I’m going to resist the temptation to indent this behind Joe R.’s post to tell him he is full of crap about Jerry Manuel.
Instead, I simply note some teams are “cursed” to not be able to rebuild. The Mets fall into that trap. Some of it is their own doing, of course (see the Oliver Perez contract, as Exhibit A). But they aren’t the Knicks, where you can tank one season to try to rebuild. In baseball, it’s an extended process. Recall the Rays tanked year after year to stockpile draftpicks, living on the welfare payments from the Mets and other big-market teams.
Your basic point is correct, in a vacuum, if it is that you never convert a starter to a reliever without having kicked the tires quite a bit. But the bit about saving jobs is a curse on whomever runs the Mets, not just these two guys.
Oppo-field drill: check
Ryan Church nonsense: check
Love of sac hits: check
And now nonsense like this. He’s the best pitching prospect in your system, why do you want to screw with him in AA? Just let your guys play, Jerry.
It’s not a curse, they’re just really bad at their jobs. The Mets don’t have to rebuild, they have (when healthy) 3 of the top 15 position players in baseball and one of the elite starters in the game. It’s the stupid decisions Minaya has made assembling the team, and the horrific in game managing of Manuel (and Willie before him).
You said some of it is their own doing, when in fact most of it is. How much better would this team look, again assuming health, if you swap out Castillo’s and Ollie’s contract with Felipe Lopez or Orlando Hudson and Joel Pineiro? Let’s say instead of making Murphy your starting first baseman, you use some of the money saved by signing Lopez and Pineiro over Castillo and Ollie, and go and get LaRoche or Nick Johnson. Those three changes probably add 5 wins to the Mets and would make them a 90 win team this year.
There are other little things that Omar has done this off season that hurt this team. For $200,000 more, they could have signed Lopez over Cora and have an adequate back up shortstop, and a player better than their current second baseman. This isn’t a team that needs rebuilding, it’s a team that needs competent managing, both in the dugout and in the front office.
I’m not trying to vigorously defend Minaya here, who almost certainly should and will be fired. But this whole Jerry Manuel bit here seems bogus- there seems to be no real meat to the story. The manager tells the GM what he wants and the GM either goes along or tells him “no.” There’s no real evidence anything else is going on here.
And it seems kind of racist. If Joe Girardi said he would use Phil Highes in the bullpen and Brian Cashman said he wanted him to start, then the media would assume they would eventually settle their disagreements. The same thing will happen here.
Aside: they traded for Castillo in a pennant race. It’s the kind of dumb thing high payroll teams do, very often. The Red Sox traded Jeff Bagwell for Larry Anderson, remember.
Oliver Perez is gutless. He has no character. Minaya can be blamed for not seeing that, I suppose.
And it seems kind of racist. If Joe Girardi said he would use Phil Highes in the bullpen and Brian Cashman said he wanted him to start, then the media would assume they would eventually settle their disagreements. The same thing will happen here.
Wait, how is this “racist”?
I am trying to imagine the racial angle here, but I just can’t.
Having seen almost every game Manuel has managed for the Mets, I can tell you he is terrible. Just to show you the type of person he is, when Church had his concussions in 2008, the Mets did further damage by putting on a plane cross country. Fast forward to 2009, Manuel never allowed Church consistent playing time. When they finally traded him, Manuel kept talking about how much of a pussy Church was. When Wright got hit by Cain, Jerry even said something along the lines of Church not being as tough as Wright. Meanwhile, had Church received proper care, he’d probably been fine.
Regarding Mejia, Jerry wants him in the bullpen, both Omar and Jerry are on thin ice. If the Mets are 10 games out come June, they’re both gone. If they think Mejia in the bullpen can be an exciting player for fans to watch, and maybe help win a few games, they’ll do it and take credit for using a young phenom. These are desperate men trying to hold on to their jobs. This has nothing to do with race, the one criticism of Omar I hate, is when people say he only signs Latino players, which is complete bullshit.
Regarding, Castillo and Ollie, yes he traded for Castillo, then after the 2007 season, he gave him a 4 year $24 million contract, which was ridiculous. And if by “gutless” and “has no character” you mean he’s bad at baseball, then yes, I agree. Those words by them self have no meaning to his on field performance. Omar gave him a 3 year, $36 million contract, he hasn’t been worth $12 million since 2004, Omar should have seen that Perez is an average pitcher at best.
Not to mention the two guys sent to Minnesota for Castillo (Butera and Martin), have not, and likely will not, ever make the majors. At least not at a serious level.
Evan-
Perez’ problem isn’t (simply) that he can’t pitch. He’s one of the rare birds who, when he got his huge contract, realized it was completely guaranteed so he didn’t have to ever work again and would still get paid. He shows up, goes thru the motions, sucks balls, then refuses to even go to the minors. He’s the Mets’ version of Carl Pavano. He’s a very, very bad guy.
“Evan-
Perez’ problem isn’t (simply) that he can’t pitch. He’s one of the rare birds who, when he got his huge contract, realized it was completely guaranteed so he didn’t have to ever work again and would still get paid. He shows up, goes thru the motions, sucks balls, then refuses to even go to the minors. He’s the Mets’ version of Carl Pavano. He’s a very, very bad guy.”
I assume you are personally acquainted with Oliver Perez and you know this from your many conversations with him, yes? I don’t recall the Mets ever trying to send him to the minors either, so should he ask to be sent? This is a ridiculous comment and you have no evidence to back up these claims. I hate when people make personal comments regarding players without any proof whatsoever. Furthermore, Pavano was injured all those year, what was he supposed to do, magically heal himself? Saying they are bad people is even more insane. Did Pavano steal money from little children? Did Ollie run over some old lady just cause he wanted to and then set a school on fire? “Very, very, bad guy?” All because he’s played bad baseball after getting a big contract? Really?
Evan-
If you are not aware of Perez refusing to go down to the Minors last year when asked, then you are not worth wasting any time over, and you’re certainly not worth pretending to know anything about the Mets.
Okay JayCee
If you can find an article that says the Mets asked him, please post it. I remember the fans and media speculating that the Mets did or should ask him to accept an assignment to the minors, but I don’t remember the Mets officially stating they asked him. Perhaps I am incorrect, I don’t remember everything that happened last season. Now even if they did and he said he wouldn’t, how does that make him a bad person? Some people have too much pride to admit they need help, it doesn’t make them bad people, it’s a flaw many of us have.
Everything you said about his character is your opinion, not fact. Ollie being a bad pitcher can be proven, him being a bad person is subjective. And even if he is a bad person, it doesn’t effect his on field performance. Brian Giles is a bad person, (beating his girlfriend in public and accused of beating her while she was pregnant with his kid causing a miscarriage), but he was still a very good ball player.
Oh, and you say I don’t know anything about the Mets? You clearly thought the Mets inherited Castillo’s contract from the trade with the Twins when you made that comment after I mentioned him along with Perez as examples of bad contracts Minaya handed out.
Bad management is not a “curse”. It’s bad management.
Omar doesn’t control action on the field. And I’m not sure he has the full autonomy to fire Manuel based on insubordination in using a player.
Minaya has said Meija is slated for AA as recently as middle last week, and Manuel came out later and reiterated the 8th inning thing. If Manuel is true to his word (something that’s rare), and uses his player against organizational design, then he should be fired. But he wasn’t when he mistreated players last year, so why would he be this year? He’s a terrible disaster of af manager, and there is zero upside to keeping him around. It’s Omar’s worst mistake of the offseason.
Also, stop with the doom and gloom. Even if Meija isn’t stretched out to begin the season in AA, taht’s not a big deal. no one cares about AA pennants. As a young pitcher, Meija will be restricted in total pitch counts, and if that means starting slower/less in April because he’s not stretched out? It has zero affect on his development for the future. If he sticks in the bigs and pitches the 8th? No saying he couldn’t be stretched out in the Spring for starting.
If he pitches the 8th, he’s going to be throwing a whole lot of fastballs and not much of anything else. That would have a pretty serious “affect” on his development as a starting pitcher.
I am going the other way here.. I totally agree with RJ.. The Mets are a mess!!
Does JayCee make a good point? Yes.. NY demands you at least look like you are trying to win. There is money there to spend so they cant gripe about being a small market team when it goes bad. Expectations are high and the media is demanding not to mention NY fans in general… I also realize that injuries have forced the hand for the last 2 years..When your 3-4 best players all go down at the same time, its tough to make the any choice that is satisfactory..
But Mets management is a total mess…From Minaya all the way down. There seems to be ZERO communication, ZERO concern about anything more than the next day and I get the feeling there is ZERO excitement from the players.
They have been making questionable roster decisions and I suspect that the training and medical staff isnt the best in the league. They cant even get on the same page as there own doctors and medical staff as evidenced by the Beltran and recent Reyes messes…
I cant comment much about Manuel as manager because I dont know how much leadership Minaya is providing. I can say this, Minaya has quickly become the worst GM in baseball. Worse than Sabean, worse than Dayton Moore, worse than Dombrowski… This team is a HOT MESS going into the year and I have no faith that they handle this kid Mejia properly.. Its pretty sad given the resources they have actually..
There’s no doubt that the Mets are a bit front office challenged, but this is not the right horse to flog, IMHO. Is there any empirical evidence that developing a pitcher as a starter in the minors is preferable to developing them as a reliever in the majors? If this was one of the favored stathead front offices, this would be herladed as a noble experiment on how best to develop young plus arms.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that Minaya, Manuel and company will find some way to screw this up, but it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a bad idea in a vaccuum. It’s not like Mejia is going to be the 5th starter on a Dusty Baker – managed team or anything.
First off I know almost nothing about Mejia, and I know very little about developing pitchers.
That said, what I’ve heard in terms of developing a young pitcher as a reliever is that a reliever on a “contending” team will be sticking almost exclusively to his 2 strongest pitches (unless his other pitches are already plus pitches). A starter in the minors would be working on his secondary offerings, which he couldn’t/wouldn’t do in high leverage MLB relief innings. To become a good starter in the majors, 2 strong pitches are rarely enough. Thus, developing a kid in the MLB bullpen can a) stunt the development of his secondary pitches, b) stunt the development of his stamina/workload (a la Verducci effect, though that has its critics), and c) create an unrealistic benchmark of success against which his early starting efforts will be compared, since almost all pitchers will be more effective in relief than as starters. Nothing that can’t be overcome, but it can certainly get in the way, and switching from a light relief load one year to a heavy starting load the next year could be an issue. Of course, a wise front office would watch his workload in that next year and would understand small sample sizes and the difference between starting ERA and relieving ERA.
I’ll reiterate that I know nothing about the state of Mejia’s different pitches. But if his secondary stuff is ready, why wouldn’t they look at him to start?
On the other hand, he could probably be working on his secondary stuff with the MLB pitching coach in the bullpen. And there are MLB role models who would help him out. So it would certainly be possible to develop pitches that way, though I’m sure it wouldn’t be considered ideal.
And working with the major league nutrionist, trainers etc. Tasting success at the big-league level against big league hitters has a value. Pitching in front of a big-league defense has a value (counter: Jason Bay). Blah, blah, blah.
As you indicated by arguing with yourself, there are advantages and disadvantages to each approach, certainly. I’m just not sure there’s a cut-and-dried answer as to which way is the best way to develop a pitcher with plus stuff. Granted, the Mets are probably not the ideal petri dish for such an experiment.
I just don’t think that the answer is as automatic as RJ’s article makes it out to be.
newcomer, yeah, not ideal, but I don’t think it dooms him. I know everyone says the other guys who did this were more advanced. Feliz hadn’t piched all that many more innings than Mejia has now when he was converted in the minors last year (which may be temporaray). Mejia isn’t as far along as Wainwright was or Schilling was when they were used in relief in the majors.
Scherzer didn’t have all that many minor league innings when the diamondbacks used him as a reliever. They were also in a race. hey, early season games count. Scherzer had also pitached in college. when he was Mejia’s age last year he was a college reliever.
So, this isn’t the best idea. Still, I don’t think it ruins Mejia’s chances or necessarily would even set him that far back, but why even bother. manuel and Minaya want to keep their jobs, and it is ownership’s fault for having lame ducks like these 2 making these decisions.
To newcomer, you have way more faith in the Mets coaches/trainers than any Mets fan. Most of us expect that Jerry/Warthen’s entire focus will be on results not development and his secondary pitches will be lucky to see the light of day if he ends up in the bullpen. Jerry’s focus seems to be on winning now, likely because he and Omar both know they’re on the hot seat which is the problem with keeping lame duck managers/gms around while simultaneously allowing them to continue dictating organization philosophies. Meija’s secondary stuff isn’t good enough to get major league hitters out yet and I’d say there’s a pretty good chance he’ll end up almost exclusively working off his fastball if he ends up in the bullpen.
Also to Jay Wells, remember you’re talking about a big league defense that will have Jason Bay in left, some combination of Pagan/and God help us GMjr in center and the two black holes that are Alex Cora and Luis Castillo up the middle, for at least the first month or so of the season while Reyes and Beltran are out. Add in some possible playing time of Mike Jacobs at first and I’m not sure that’s good enough be a A ball defense.
Gina, actually I don’t have that faith in the Mets’ staff. However, I was also trying to address Jay Wells’s idea about “in a vacuum.” With a competent front office and coaching staff, I agree with him, it isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Circumstances mean a lot. However, I don’t think it’s a good idea with Mejia and the Mets.
Jay Wells, I do agree with your point. What I was trying to say was that there are indeed legitimate reasons to work a young pitcher as a starter in the minors. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t reasons not to. I think we’re on the same page.
Empirical evidence? No. But I’ll leave you with at least one anecdote: Brandon Morrow. In a similar situation, the Bavasi head office in Seattle converted Morrow to a reliever in order to save their jobs.
Morrow “learned” that the best way to deal with adversity was to throw harder. this was great for a relief prospect, but terrible advice for a starter. He spent a year in the major league bullpen, and then another year getting yanked back and forth between the rotation and the bullpen. It messed up his development and harmed his value.
On the surface, it sounds like the same thing the Mets are doing to Mejia.
Morrow was always viewed by many scouts as a reliever due to his durability issues (diabetes I think, something like that).
Sorry, but even that anecdotal evidence isn’t particularly convincing. Morrow’s not a finished product, and he still put up a 99 ERA+ last season in 26 apperances, 10 of which were starts, as a 24 year old. Maybe he’ll wash out or maybe he’ll become a league-average or better starter, but it’s too early to tell whether, at the end of the day, the Mariners stunted his development.
Joba Chamberlain is the other current abject lesson, and again, he’s not yet a finished product, so it’s a bit too early judge whether the Yankees’ plan for him stunted his development.
FWIW, Mejia has more minor league innings than either of those two guys. Granted, both Chamberlain and Morrow were college products.
One more thing, Jay Wells. I certainly agree that neither Morrow nor Chamberlain is a finished product, and they still have time to develop. However, one could certainly argue that they would be a little further along if handled differently. With Chamberlain, I don’t think it’s as much of a controversy that he was used in the bullpen, seeing as it limited his innings and he was also allowed to start. People are more up in arms with taking him out of the bullpen. With Morrow, a stronger argument could be made that he’d be a better starter right now if he hadn’t pitched in the bullpen. No one knows for sure, though, and I wouldn’t accept that conclusion as a given.
From the team’s perspective, does it make sense to slow down the pitcher’s development and start the arbitration clock when they can delay the clock while increasing the level of production they’ll get during their team-controlled window? Again, it’s no guarantee, so we’re dealing in probabilities.
I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to parse the data on this. With PITCHf/x, we can start to look at the development of pitches empirically, and we can also look at the success of those pitches. It will be more difficult to identify pitchers who are appropriate matches for talent/development level, as one pitches in the minors and the other in the bullpen. Prospect rankings, scouting reports identifying secondary pitch strength, age, and college/minor league experience would probably be a good route for that. It is certainly a worthy research goal, and I agree with you that until there is a clear study on the matter (I don’t know that there isn’t), we can’t take collective wisdom as verified fact. But collective wisdom does have a modicum of value.
Good response, Newcomer. I didn’t mean to jump all over you, certainly, as I appreciate the points you have made.
FWIW, I generally agree with you that while we can’t trust “collective wisdom” as much as we should verifiable fact, we should value it. I would probably even go so far as to say that “collective wisdom” should be a rebuttable presumption. For instance, it is interesting to me that the sabremetric world seems to be just recently coming back around to the idea of the importance of defense. That’s probably painting with too broad a brush, but one thing that always bothered me about the sabremetric revolution of the last decade was that it tended to undervalue (or even not value) defense because it couldn’t yet measure it.
Back to the pitching question, though, I guess I wonder whether the old collective wisdom of letting young pitchers learn the ropes in major league bullpens before giving them a shot at the rotation should be given more value than the (relatively) new collective wisdom of developing starters in the minors and then bringing them up as starters.
I don’t know the answer to that question, and I don’t even know how applicable the quetion is to Jenrry Mejia. I suspect that most starters groomed as relievers at the major league level had quite a bit more minor league experience as a starter than Mejia has had.
Morrow/pen made a LOT more sense than Mejia/pen, and Morrow/pen was pretty stupid initially.
1) Morrow was a reliever when drafted.
2) Morrow had diabetes issues which affected his durability.
Neither of these are pertinent to Mejia.
When a Bavasi move makes more sense than any active GM’s move, you know something’s really wrong.
Q. What will contribute to the best possible record for the Mets this year – a) Mejia in their bullpen or b) Mejia in the rotation for their AA or AAA farm teams?
Q. What will happen to Minaya and Manuel each if the Mets do not have a solid winning season this season?
Q. How concerned are Minaya and Manuel about the long term future for the Mets versus whatever may help the team’s record this year?
Exactly the problem isn’t Manuel/Minaya, it’s that they’re allowed to make these decisions in the first place when the entire world know they’re likely on their way out. It makes absolutely no sense, but of course that’s the life of the mets fans.
This is not right! Minaya and Manuel want to keep their jobs? wow, what a pity. What a silly point of view.
To think people project like robots is just the reason why some guys are just better with numbers than they are with people.
Mejia should play this season in the bullpen if that is what is best for the team. The goal is a championship not one guys career. Joba was quite nasty when he came up and you know what he may be having a little trouble making the transition but he is doing it with a World Series Ring on his finger. I would be happy to wish the same fate on Mejia.
If Mejia is major league ready and he gives the team the best chance to win, the capacity in which he plays does not matter. There are no small parts in a championship. If the team later decides he is ready for the rotation, that is when a good plan of stretching him out or waiting until the next year is in order.
If he gets hurt and never makes it up to the majors, that scenario is never discussed in this article either.
I think Mejia gets sent down to keep control of him for an extra year and is the first call up during the year. I think Kiko Calero controls Mejia’s fate though. If he is nasty and holds down the eight with Igarashi, Mejia will have plenty of time to develop as a starter. But to complain that the GM and manager identified talent that they think can help us win is ludicrous.
So, the entire basis of your argument is…
It’s okay to risk messing up our best pitching prospect’s development if it means a marginally better chance of winning in 2010.
The Mets are projected to go 79-83. All aboard title town.
If the goal is wins then it would make more sense to keep Meija in the minors. The team Omar and Jerry have constructed is full of holes and question marks. It’s almost certain that Meija isn’t going to make much of a difference in wins this season at best he’ll just sell some more tickets. And w/e they gained this season wouldn’t come close to what they’d lose in the future by taking a pitcher with top end of the rotation talent and limiting his career.
You really are completely missing the point. Sure, having Mejia in the bullpen may help the Mets win a couple extra games. Will it get them to the playoffs? Probably not. But that isn’t what’s important, because in all likelihood, the Mets will be duking it out with the Nationals for the cellar of the NL East.
Putting Mejia in the bullpen will, as everyone else in this thread has already stated, stunt his development as a top-tier starting pitcher. He’ll focus on throwing only two pitches rather than developing a four-pitch repertoire, and very rarely, if ever, do you see successful starting pitchers in the majors who throw only two effective pitches.
The Mets need to develop Mejia as a starter because, while they have a lot of needs on their team, starting pitching is an obvious weak point. They can’t afford to screw this kid up and let him toil in the bullpen.
Man, this article encapsulates everything that is wrong with 90% of the blogs and talk radio callers out there.
Jenrry Mejia looks like a great prospect. I’m excited about him and I would hate to see his development screwed up, too. But how the hell do you get from “that kid looks really promising” to “that kid could’ve been the next Doc Gooden, but look at how the Mets have totally ruined him by 2013. What a moron Jerry Manuel was for wanting to see him perform in a bullpen-like role during spring training.”
Seriously, you’re assuming that he is definitely a superstar-in-waiting. You’re assuming that he is more suited to a starter role than a bullpen role or closer role. And, you’re assuming that the Mets are guaranteed to make a series of horrible decisions with him for the next four years. (After last year, I might be inclined to agree with you on that last one, but why get so panicked about Manuel wanting to give the kid a different look during Spring Training? If anything, if the kid doesn’t make the team, it will give him the confidence of knowing that he definitely got everyone’s attention this year and he’s in the team’s future plans.)
Every season where Mejia is kept in the pen without being given a chance will be another consecutive dumb decision
It’s one thing if he has health issues that keep him from starting.
It’s one thing if he ACTUALLY TRIES as a starter in the bigs and fails.
Neither of those situations are true. Until one becomes true, keeping him in the pen is a dumb idea.
By the way, I’ll throw this comment in edgewise, since it reflects what I see as lame “piling on” the Mets: Ike Davis has a beautiful game, and it’s amazing how lowly rated he is on prospect-centric sites. The guy has a gorgeous, smooth stroke. He’s absolutely going to be quite a player.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/new-york-mets-top-10-prospects
“Davis also showed a willingness to take a walk (11.2 BB%) but his strikeouts started to get out of hand (29.0 K%”
“has some work to do against lefties, as seen by his OPS split: .672 against left-handers”
“He’s a slow-footed player that posted a BABIP of .350 at high-A and .381 in double-A, so we’re likely to see his batting average come down in 2010, especially if the strikeout rate remains high.”
less cut-and-paste, more watch the guy play, OK?
You asked why Ike Davis wasnt rated higher, I gave you a link and quotes of flaws about Ike Davis.
I’ll put it in my own words: He strikes out too much, he fails against LHP, and was extremely lucky last year.
Saying he has a beautiful stroke and whatelse doesnt mean he’s a good hitter. Just like saying a guy throws 95mph so he must be a stud.
Davis actually was as good or better against lefties than Smoak, Alonso and Morrison last year. He also improved significantly against them in AA, which continued over to the AFL.
Smoak, cumulative line against lefties (just because he switch-hits doesn’t mean he has solved pro lefties yet): .214/.301/.325.
Alonso cumulative: .222/.329/.317
Morrison: .228/.336/.326.
Slow feet doesn’t necessarily mean a low babip. Sure, speed can help babip, but so do line-drives and hitting the snot out of the ball. Jesus Montero is pretty damn slow.
So Ike’s ops is actually superior against lefties compare3d to all 3 of these more highly rated 1B prospects.
Ike’s line against lefties, albeit small sample, in Binghamton, AA ball?
.269/.347/.433.
Along with what Zach said he also plays a non premium position and isn’t projected to hit nearly what he’d need to to be a WELL above average player.
Prospect lists seem to love guys with tremendous upsides but aren’t as enthusiastic about guys whose best is “major league regular” I don’t see Davis as an All-Star but he’s got an excellent chance of being a starting 1bman for about a decade. Martinez has a much better chance of being an All-Star but also a much better chance of winding up as a backup.
I like the indigant pundits who claim these fools [Minaya/Manuel] shouldn’t be able to make decisions in the first place or that a higher power should take their jobs away from them or the idea the Mets are a sinking ship anyway, so let the idiots run the asylum.
I guess that is what you get when you don’t have a 27-year old Harvard guy as a GM or a manager that is going to follow lock-and-step in the GM’s footsteps.
When the guy in charge signs guys to bad contracts and/or not filling openings on the team, misses the playoffs for 3 straight years with the NL’s highest payroll, and is talking about making a short-sighted move with a 20 year old kid to save his own job instead of building the team like you should- then yes he should lose his job. (And when a GM gets fired, manager usually goes with him so the new guy can bring in his own guy)
I guess that is what you get when you don’t have a 27-year old Harvard guy as a GM or a manager that is going to follow lock-and-step in the GM’s footsteps.
NERDS!!!!
This is nothing more than a result of NY’s fascination with the whole stupid Joba debate and how suddenly the 8th inning is the most important inning in baseball. Mets are not a playoff team this year unless many things go right for them and things go wrong for other teams, there is no reason to rush him and turn him into a reliever.
I agree about not rushing him, but Santana was a reliever for the Twins before he became an MLB starter. He looked good, but they saw he could be better, and sent him back to AAA to work on his changeup before promoting him.
What’s better for a 20 year old’s development? Give him some experience in an 8th inning role, have him hang out with your other starters and major league coaches, and then send him down to learn a new pitch? Or keep him in the minors for an indeterminate time? It probably varies by player, and if I knew those answers with any sort of certainty, I would probably be employed by a Major League team.
Seriously, though, people shouldn’t get worked up over this. Manuel is basically telling the kid he’s got a legitimate shot to make the team this year. Obviously must be excited about that. What else is spring training for?
Santana was also a rule 5 draft pick, so he had like 4, or maybe 5 I’m not sure if it’s more or less for IFA players, years in the minors before he was in the bullpen. And he was in it because they had to keep him with the major league team to keep him, per the rule 5 rules. And the problem isn’t putting a starting prospect in the bullpen, it’s putting a starting prospect who’s secondary pitches aren’t major league ready yet in the bullpen. If you put someone like Joba who already had a well developed arsenal in the bullpen it makes sense because his pitches were major league ready he just had too many injury/conditioning/durability concerns to be ready for a spot in the major league rotation.
Meija on the other hand has a plus fastball and off-speed pitches that he struggles to command and struggles to throw against minor leaguers. So if he’s put in the bullpen under a team with a win now attitude he’s not going to end up throwing his secondary pitches enough for them to progress which will likely result in stunted growth, basically throwing away a year of development for a team that’s not going anywhere anyway. It makes more sense to stay in the minors where he can work on his other pitches without the big league pressure, because if he’s in the bullpen with a bunch of coaches, and apparently a gm, who need to win to keep their jobs they’re not going to care about his future of his development. They’re going to care about winning games which means Meija only throwing his fastball because his other pitches will get torched.
Pretty much agree with what Gina said, plus the fact they’d be wasting both development time AND service time if they bring him up so soon.
(yes, the mets have a huge payroll, but screwing up service time can add up)
Plus even with the huge payroll they have HUGE amounts of money owed to a small amount of players, a lot of which will likely be drastic overpays. Just for next year we’ll be paying K-rod and Perez 25 or so million combined, and we’ll have 129 million committed to only 11 players, 3 of those players who aren’t likely to combine for more than 5-6 WAR make up about 42 million of that.
If the Mets plan to keep Mejia in the pen (even temporarily, since we all know how that works), they would be MUCH better off just trading him to a team that does see him as an SP. They’ll get more value that way and fulfill their “win now” mentality more effectively.
The Mets problem is much bigger than Minaya, Manuel, or Meija. The Wilpon’s run that team through and through, micromanaging all the way. I mean the Wilpon’s didn’t even give Minaya a budget this offseason, they went over each free agent on a case by case basis, how can you possibly do that? No wonder why they missed out on so many players.
The problem with the Mets is not the Wilpon(s). It’s one WIlpon. I’ll let you guess the first name on that one.
Whoever might be in charge it seems that the Mets haven’t learn from the mistake that made with Kazmir. Instead of taking a chance with him they decided to trade him.