10/12/17

Mack's Apples - 10-12-17 - Mets Top 30, Peter Flynn, D1 Baseball Change, Justin Fields, TJS Risk,



Good morning.


MLB has updated their top Mets prospect list. It is –

    1.     SP             David Peterson
    2.     SP             Justin Dunn
    3.     SS              Andres Gimenez
    4.     SP             Thomas Szapucki
    5.     OF             Desmond Lindsay
    6.     SP             Marcos Molina
    7.     1B             Peter Alonso
8.     IF               Gavin Cecchini
9.     C                Tomas Nido
10. 3B            Mark Vientos
11. SS             Luis Guillorme
12. OF            Wuilmer Becerra
13. SP            Jordan Humphreys
14. SP            Chris Flexen
15. 3B/OF    Jhoan Urena
16. SP            Anthony Kay
17. SS             Luis Carpio
18. SS             Gregory Guerrero
19. SS             Ronny Mauricio
20. C               Ali Sanchez
21. RP            Jacob Rhame
22. RP            Stephen Nogosek
23. SP            P.J. Conlon
24. 3B            David Thompson
25. C/1B       Patrick Mazeika
26. OF            Adrian Hernandez
27. SP            Corey Oswalt
28. RP            Jamie Callahan
29. OF            Quinn Brody
30. RP            Gerson Bautista

My thoughts on this list ramble… I just can’t list Lindsay (#5) and Becerra (#12) this high anymore. They’ve done nothing to prove to me yet that they are major league bound… I was surprised to see Oswalt (#27) this low. I expect him to turn some heads in 2018 in Queens… where is RP Drew Smith? Also OF Wagner Lagrange?  Lastly, there just is too much time being allotted to Cecchini (#8). He’s simply not a prospect anymore.

A lot can be said for the state of the Mets pipeline when you have Lindsay and Molina in your Top 5 and Cecchini is still lurking around in the Top 10.


Luis Carpio (#17). Really?





Mack's Mets writer Peter Flynn has been designated for assignment.





The Division I Competition Oversight Committee has approved increasing the number of seeded teams from eight to 16 in the Division I Baseball Championship, beginning with the 2018 season. The committee, which met last week in Indianapolis, believes the change will allow baseball to have the same bracketing principles as other sports that have 64 or more teams in their bracket. Baseball was the only NCAA Division I championship with 64 or more teams in its field that did not seed at least 25 percent of its bracket. Previously, the Division I Baseball Committee did not seed teams 9 through 16.  As a result, the committee could potentially pair the ninth-best team against the No. 1 seed in the super regional round.


Justin Fields


What if I told you there’s a place where the No. 1 football prospect in the country was just another face in the crowd? That place exists. It’s called a baseball diamond. And Baseball America expert Carlos Collazo was blind to the gridiron hype when he watched 5-star high-school quarterback Justin Fields play shortstop this summer. “I actually didn’t know much about him on the football field,” Collazo told SEC Country this week. “I looked him up and I was like, ‘Whoa, this guy is pretty legit.’ ”



Previous injury history began to matter less. Intuitively, this does not make sense. One would think a previous arm injury – which is going to necessarily decrease the arm’s ability to resist future injuries – should lead to possible UCL injuries. And while that still may be the case, the model could not find a consistent relationship with previous arm injuries and the specific UCL injury. Previously, I found that when I combined the injury database classifications for wrist, forearm, elbow, and shoulder injuries into a single bucket, they loosely forecast a UCL injury – but I had previously found the same injury database confusing a broken leg with a UCL injury. Since it was programmatically scraped from disabled list feeds, and not edited or reviewed after the fact, it was liable to have a number of UCL or even Tommy John events misclassified as elbow tightness or a shoulder injury – especially if a player initially hit the DL for something other than the eventual TJS.




Baseball offers the comfort of continuity against the backdrop of upheaval. “It's our game … America's game,” the poet Walt Whitman wrote in the 19th century. “It has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere; it belongs as much to our institutions; fits into them as significantly as our Constitution's laws; is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.”


11 comments:

Tom Brennan said...

Where the heck is Jeff McNeil in the Top 30??? I got your back, Jeff. Who's with me...guys? Guys? Where did everybody go?

And no Tyler Bashlor in the Top 30? I guess being indestructible the last 2 months of the season and striking out 16 guys per 9 innings is simply a mirage.

The Tommy John surgery is spot on, in terms of sometimes sparse details - I thought my # 18 prospect Matt Blackham had TJS, when in fact he had that ulnar nerve repositioning surgery and another elbow surgery in 2015, but not TJS. (P.S. Blackham was a bullpen assassin in July and August, and had a 1.42 season ERA and 13 Ks per 9 innings, but that does not get you into the Mets' impenetrable Top 30 list either).

Why Carpio and Cecchini are not #1 and #2, I'll never know.

I saw where Jeter said he would not have a problem with guys taking a knee - really? Please...keep that cancer out of my favorite sport.

Mack Ade said...

Tom -

Everybody has a different version of who is in the Mets Top 30 prospects but the one constant is there is not enough players in the pipeline to be considered as serious prospect material.

Tom Brennan said...

Mack, very true. Which leads to the Mets being in the Canyon of Zeroes, not heroes, as a rule, a topic I touch on in my 10 AM article today.

Tom Brennan said...

Make that 11 AM

Charles said...

These “minor league” experts are spread way too thin to put together a proper top 30.

I’m sure they have a team helping them but some of these rankings are a mess. At some point, if you just don’t have enough players for a legit top 30, they should simply rank 20 it even 15.

Let the and know, “Sorry, your team isn’t deep enough for a top 30. Complain to ownership of your team”.

Ranking Gavin there is just lazy to me. It’s a name Mets’ fans know and that’s why he’s there.

Mack Ade said...

Charles -

This is why my Top List ends at 18

Jack Flynn said...

*checks the lineup card*

Hey Skip, I'm still here!

nickel7168 said...

There are approx. 330 players in the Mets organization...all levels inc. MLB. If you guys can't find 30 worth being considered prospects, then you need to do more homework. There are services that are going to identify 50+ prospects in the next few months and they will tell you why each is considered a prospect. Maybe we should wait for those.

Tom Brennan said...

Nickel7168, we are a diverse group of writers (excellent, mind you) with varying opinions. I am in the midst of a prospect series that runs up thru 50, and then beyond. Feel free to read all of them. I am up to #23, and one per day is coming out.

But Baseball America has the Mets minors ranked 27th out of 30 for a reason...less than average overall talent.

Robb said...

I think we forget the methodology of a prospect which is to get mlb and then those who ahve the tools to be a 2 WAR player+.

Cecchini has a very high floor as he should have already passed his rookie status with games played if TC wasnt such a shit manager. Now do i think he should be more in the 12-15 range for a good organization, sure, but he's a mlb player. Lindsay is ranked based on tool projection. Think about aaron judge (not appropos) all tools/injuries in the minors until he put it together this year. At least the tools and potential are there.

As for the organizational rankings, if rosario and smith hadnt passed the ab limits the mets would be middle of the pack, mathematically as theyd both be top 50 prospects. But they graduated.

I agree with you mack about drew smith.

Mack Ade said...

Nick -

I make no excuse for my top 18 list. I could easily go on and on like John sickels but even he has less than 20 mets prospects with a B- rating or more.

i am doing this for over 15 years. Trust me when i say that the mets are currently prospect challenged