The Long-Awaited Arrival of F-Mart
Half a game out of first place in the National League East division, the New York Mets club is struggling to field a competitive lineup with its infirmary overflowing. Everyday players Brian Schneider, Carlos Delgado, Jose Reyes, and Ryan Church are all on the disabled list – as is back-up infielder Alex Cora.
One of the beneficiaries of this unfortunate situation is the club’s top offensive prospect Fernando Martinez. Signed out of the Dominican Republic as a 16 year old, Martinez’ big-league arrival has been highly anticipated by many. The expectations have probably been a little unreasonable, which is to be expected when someone plays for a New York sports team. Martinez has received some flak for being inconsistent to this point in his career, but he started playing professional baseball at 17, he reached double-A as a teenager and he’s still just 20 years old. Patience, as they say, is a virtue.
Throughout his inconsistent play, Martinez has shown flashes of brilliance. He does a lot of things well and he’s loaded with raw talent. Prior to 2009, Martinez had never hit more than eight home runs in a season and that came at double-A in 2008 in 352 at-bats. This year in triple-A, he hit eight homers in just 165 at-bats and posted an ISO rate of .261. As well, he had a batting average of .291, which is impressive considering he had a slow start to the year and hit .233/.287/.411 in April.
The negatives in Martinez’ offensive game continue to be his lack of patience (6.4 BB% in 2009) and his lack of stolen bases. He’s considered (incorrectly) by some to be a five-tool talent, but he lacks first-step quickness with his average speed, which means he’ll never be a good base stealer. As well, he’s an OK-but-not-great center-fielder and will likely end up at an outfield corner for the majority of his career.
Despite the negatives in his game, there are more than enough positives to get excited about Martinez’ future with the Mets. Because of his age, there will likely be plenty of growing pains along the way, but he should develop into a 15-20 home run hitter with the ability to hit between .270-.300, especially if he develops a more patient approach at the plate with experience. Expect him to struggle against southpaws early in his career (.236/.308/.391 vs LHP in his minor-league career), which could result in a platoon situation.
The positives definitely out-weigh the negatives with Fernando Martinez.
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Develop into a 15-20 hr hitter? really? that’s it? He was already on pace for 24 in 495 ABs as a 20 year old in AAA. How can you project him to DEVELOP INTO a 15-20 hr hitter?
Josh, this is the first time that F-Mart has shown any power; furthermore, the statement means a 15-20 HR hitter in the majors. There’s a world of difference between hitting 8 HRs in AAA (again, the first time he’s showed power) and hitting 15-20 HRs in MLB. Come on now.
KG-
He is 20 at AAA– his power isn’t going to develop any earlier than right now. Looking at past performance of a 20 year old to dictate a ceiling for power isn’t a good idea.
This isn’t really the first time he showed power. A 19 year old slugging .432 in AA is power. It isn’t like he is 26 years old in AAA doing this, in which case it would mean very little, a 20 year old doing this is pretty exciting. Now if he could just walk a little…
Agreed. A .280 hitter with 20 HR? There are plenty of borderline guys doing that in the majors. Is this another case of the Mets over-hyping a prospect?
Would love to see a piece on Wieters, who may be the most hyped prospect of the last ten years (Felix maybe?). One thing never analyzed is how top prospects compare to one another on potential alone. For instance, how would Longoria, Bruce, D. Young, and Wieters rank against each if they were all to hit the scene at the same team. That would be an interesting discussion. How does the Strasburg potential compare to Felix before he came up?
His potential is probably closer to a 40 HR hitter than a 20 HR hitter. You can’t just look at his stats considering he’s been hurt a lot, and he’s always been one of the youngest players in every league he’s been in. Scouts LOVE his swing and bat speed, and he has great ability to hit to all fields with incredible power.
Saying that he should develop into a 15-20 HR hitter is pretty ignorant. You obviously just looked at his stats without looking at scouting reports or anything else.
Martinez did not start off the season slow. He had a bad week in late April. After his first 13 games, he was batting .291 with 10 of his 16 hits going for extra-bases. From 4/24 to 4/29 Martinez went 1-for-18. Since then he hit .337 in May before the promotion.
This is clearly not an over-hyped prospect. Holding his own at advanced levels at his age is the exact mark of an impact prospect. When guys can do what Martinez did this year at Triple-A or what Justin Upton did last year at the majors (.818 OPS as a 20-year old) – that’s cause for celebration.
Any year where Martinez plays 150 games in the majors and doesn’t hit 30 HR, I’ll be surprised.
That is high praise – as a Mets Fan – I would love that
The only reason anyone would say Martinez “could develop into a 15-20 hr hitter” is to sound like they are too smart to buy into his prospect hype. Well…Baseball America wouldn’t rate the guy in their top 20 prospects if they thought he had the chance of becoming the next Juan Rivera.
I think he’s overhyped from a fantasy prespective.
His problems? Well for one, he seems fragile. He was hurt in ST this year as well, and there were some speculation that he may have needed surgery on his elbow.
Two. He gets to play half his games in PETCO West. Citi Field is huge, and is playing like an extreme pitchers park at this point. According to ESPN, its the 23rd best park to hit in this year.
Three. While he’s been young for his leagues, he hasn’t been dominating. In 2007, he didn’t show much power or hit a high average, even with a healthy BABIP. In 2008, He improved his BA, but the power wasn’t there either. Again, healthy BABIP. This was the first year that he’s shown pretty good power. I’m not sure I’m ready to buy that as legitimate.
Also, prospects in BAs top 20 that have failed recently?
2005: Non Repeated Names. Joel Guzman (5), Casey Kotchman (6), Dallas McPherson (12), Jeff Francouer (14), Jason Kubel (17), Jeff Niemann (20)
2006: Non repeated names. Delmon Young (1), Brandon Wood (3), Jeremy Hermida (4), Lastings Milledge (9), Alex Gordon (13), Andy Marte (14), Andy LaRoche (19)
2007: Non repeated names, Homer Bailey (5), Cameron Maybin (6), Andrew Miller (10), Reid Brigniac (17), Carlos Gonzalez (18)
And there would be plenty of repeat offenders in this case as well. Making it high doesn’t guarantee success.
I see him as a 18-23 HR, .280 BA, .330 OBP type guy. Now if he qualifies at CF, thats pretty good value, but for a corner OF that is borderline value. I don’t think he’s going to be a Justin Upton type player. But thats just my opinion.
markspark,
It is way to early to call a lot of the guys on the BA list busts. A lot of them have not received adequate playing time, others have suffered from a lack of luck (see andrew miller last year), and others need more seasoning.
Dear Lord, Sweet Baby Jesus! Maybe you can start to say that guys from the 2005 have failed to live up to the hype, but by no means has anyone from 2006 or 2007 flat-out failed.
Seriously, you’re listing early 20 year old players as failures…Players can’t do squat about the ‘hype’ that’s put on them, so failure to live up to such hype is silly..
Any service that projections the development of 18-21 year old KIDS, isn’t going to be perfect. If I recall correctly, BA pegged Delmon Young to perfection by saying, “Young can be whatever he wants to be.”
Annnyways, I thought we were smart people here. What’s the most important thing to look at when evaluating minor league talent? Oh, it’s not the stats? It’s the players AGE & LEVEL? Good God! You mean to tell me that a .800 OPS as a 20 year old is better than an .900 OPS as a 28 year old? GOOD GOD!
Justin Upton is the best of the outfielders to come out in a long freakin’ time! I have him above Braun, Sizemore, pretty much everyone if I was doing a full-out dynasty league today. To say that Fernando Martinez isn’t in his class isn’t saying much at all.
This just leaves me scratching my head and wondering what’s to be accomplished by these comments, because there’s also some WTFs on the other side of the spectrum too. Expecting Martinez to hit 30HR next year given full-time AB is just as goofy as saying he’ll only develop 15 HR power over the course of his career.
Obviously, we’re all just making projections and predictions and no one’s more or less right than anyone else, but I’d figure we’d have people in the middle rather than just on the extremes.
In the end, Martinez is over-valued mainly because of his base-stealing ability which was addressed in the main article. People in New York think he’s Teh Jesus! (along with Austin Jackson,) but the only way I see him fulfilling his unwarranted 25SB potential is if he attempts damn near 40 SB.
There’s a lot of room for TEH FAIL, but it seems to me that the most likely outcome would have Martinez being an across the board, above average, corner infielder from age 25 onward, with the exception of BB% and OBP.
25 HR, 10-15 SB, .275-.285.. Yah, that’ll play.
If he’s just going to develop into a .270 hitter with about 20 HRs, and play average defense in the outfield with not much speed, what is the hype about?
I’m not saying I totally disagree with the stat community and agree with the overblown NY hype, but watching this kid, the first thing I noticed was tremendous batspeed and an ability to hit the ball HARD to the opposite field. Not “fighting the ball off,” but actually driving it the other way. I think that should be seen as evidence of a solid hitter. 20 years old, in the major leagues, driving the ball to the opposite field? I’ll take that.
Obviously, the hardest thing to do with prospects is to predict their career path. This is because there are so many uncertainties in baseball (career-altering injuries, playing under the right manager/coach, etc.). When a writer predicts a player to develop one way or another, it’s really just an educated guess. Who knows what a player will be like in 5 or 10 years? Who knows what ANY of us will be like in ten years? Take Ben Zobrist for example: a slap hitter with little power changed his approach and at age 27 began hitting at a 30 home run pace. Nobody could have predicted that, and that’s the beauty of baseball.