Coca Cola Park has a lot more red seats than I’d envisioned.

Just had a chat with Jon Niese who admitted that much of his recent success has come about because he’s throwing his secondary offerings more.  Josh preciently argued this point, that Niese needed to throw his offspeed pitches more in this fine pitch fx article here.

By the time you read this, I should be safely aboard a Greyhound bus, headed roughly west, towards Buffalo New York for my first visit to Coca-Cola Field.  Tobi Stoner is scheduled to throw tonight with Jon Niese on Tuesday.

Many more updates to come.

Friday, in his chat at Baseball America, Matt Eddy took a few Mets related questions:

richard (brooklyn): do you think jerry mejia,brad holt, and josh thole will be in the top 100 and if so where?

Matthew Eddy: Holt and Mejia have a bead on the Top 100 if they keep up the pace. Though Holt’s ankle injury has sidelined him since his first Double-A start. Thole shows an impressive feel for hitting (he leads the EL in average), but without another standout tool, he’s probably not a Top 100 prospect.

Just to review, the traditional five tools are: hitting, hitting for power, catching, running and throwing.  Thole’s hit tool is just fine, his power is below average, and his arm is average.  That leaves the big question: his defense.  I’m hoping to catch him in person by the end of this week and get some other perspectives on his development.

Brian (Brooklyn NY): As a Mets fan am I being overly optimistic by liking their system? Niese and F-Mart ceem to profile as being contributor and Meija and Davis have both had excellent seasons while Holt and Havens have showns flashes when healthy. Throw in Flores and Marte and it would seem to me like they have a top 10-12 system. Am I being incredibly biased?

Matthew Eddy: Yes and no. The Mets brought on a lot of premium talent in the past two years, especially through the ’08 draft (Davis, Havens, Holt) and the ’07 international class (Flores, Marte), but in terms of depth at the upper levels, they’ve come up short this season. Consider that Triple-A Buffalo and Double-A Binghamton are two of the worst teams in the minors and that the Mets have had all sorts of trouble plugging holes at the big league level as injuries have decimated their starting unit. (And the one player who has exceeded expectations, Omir Sanots, was brought on as a minor league free agent, so you can credit their pro scouting effort there — not their amateur scouting.)

Eddy nails this point about the farm system’s relative inability to help so far this year.  Jon Niese is in AAA and pitching much better, as are Eddie Kunz and Adam Bostick in the Bisons ‘pen.  However, the lack of upper level bats in the system has been badly exposed.

On the show formerly known as Mike and the Mad Dog last week, Omar Minaya specifically credited Tony Bernazard for finding and signing Omir Santos.  So any suggestion that Omar signed Omir because he liked his name was totally specious.  That, and the Mets don’t employ an Omer, Omur or an Omor that I know about.

On a beautiful late afternoon in Coney Island, Oliver Perez took the mound for his rehab start with the Brooklyn Cyclones for the national anthem and found himself surrounded by a gaggle of admiring little leaguers and girl scouts. The big leaguer looked confused, or perhaps amused. Either way, once the game started, he looked much more comfortable after an early trial.

After missing with his first fastball of the game, an early theme, Perez ran the count to 1-2 on the Hudson Valley Renegades (Tampa Bay’s NYP League affiliate) leadoff hitter, Chris Murrill. Perez offered his first slider of the game that induced a weak grounder to second, so weak in fact, that the Cyclones’ Matt Gaski’s failure to charge the ball turned the play into a hit. After Perez struck out the next batter, Burt Reynolds with a slider, he induced a flyball near the rightfield line that fell in front of the Cyclones Luis Rivera. It was a ball that most major league rightfielders would catch. So, one out into the game, Perez found himself with runners at the corners. He responded by striking out the next two hitters, putting the first away on a filthy slider and the second, a lefty, on a fastball looking on the outside corner. That sequence represented what made Perez happiest about his rehab in Queens. “I was using my fastball and my slider was the way I want to throw it,” he said after departing with five scoreless innings to his credit.

After the first inning, Perez gave up just one more baserunner, via a two out walk in the third. Moreover, the hardest hit balls the Renegades managed against Perez were fouled off. Perez’s fastball sat at 91 mph all day. The lefthander emotion was genuine when he said, “I’m excited by the way I threw, and it’s a really good step for me.”

Perez brushed off any concerns about his physical health. “My knee is 100%,” he said, “Sometimes it gets sore, but that’s part of the game.” In fact, other than a little sweat, Perez looked as though he wanted to get right back on the mound and keep throwing. “I’m a little tired right now because I just finished, but I was ready for 100 pitches. It was a big step. I’m ready for the next start.” All told, Perez threw 72 pitches, 46 for strikes, a rate of 64%. He threw first-pitch strikes, one of his main goals, to eight out of 17 Renegades batters.

His next start is unlikely to come for Jerry Manuel’s slumping Mets: “I have one more start and then I’ll be ready to go,” Perez said. That start will likely come this week for the Buffalo Bisons who are home through Friday night.

After watching Perez pitch, Mets Vice President for Player Development Tony Bernazard saw the media waiting for Perez and declared, “He looked great,” before dashing off for Citi Field.

As Perez himself acknowledged, a great outing for him would be wearing the Mets’ blue and orange instead of the Cyclones’ blue and red.

Photo of Perez courtesy of the Brooklyn Cyclones/George Napolitano

MLB

Ugh.  “Most ball games are lost, not won.” Casey Stengel

AAA

Lance Broadway (1-5, 6.80) gave up seven runs on eight hits in five innings in the Bisons 7-3 loss to Charlotte.  It’s not too early to wonder exactly what the Mets were thinking at the time of that trade.  Adam Bostick tossed two more scoreless innings for the Herd to keep his AAA ERA at zero this year, although he’s given up one unearned run in 11.1 innings.

AA

The B-Mets scored three times in the seventh inning to beat Akron 6-4.  Aeros pitchers walked 13 B-Mets.  See above for Casey Stengel’s thoughts on the matter.  CF Jon Malo was 2-2 with three walks and two RBI

Michael Antonini gave up one hit and a walk in three scoreless innings of relief to snag his fifth win.  Edgar Ramirez (0-1, 6.87) started.  I’m missing the logic as to starting Ramirez to have Antonini come out of the ‘pen.

A+

In St. Lucie’s 5-4 win in game one, only Jake Eigsti’s error catching a ball at first base kept Jeff Kaplan from the complete game win.  All four runs Kaplan allowed were unearned.  RF Carlos Guzman was 3-4 with two runs scored.  SS Reese Havens was 1-3 with a double and 0-2 with a walk and a double in the nightcap and is down to .225/.338/.414.  He is 5-for-21 since returning from his strained quad.

The Mets were held to three hits in a 3-0 game two loss.

A

SS Wilmer Flores and 3B Jefry Marte each had two hits in the Gnats 9-2 loss to Charleston.  Flores is hitting .314/.341/.430 in June with seven extra-base hits, the most in any month this year.  Marte is hitting .300 (12-for-40)  in his last ten games and is hitting .277/.304/.362 in the month as June comes to a close.

I’ll write more about Oliver Perez’s outing in Brooklyn Sunday night later, but he left after five very good innings and 72 pitches. His final line: 5 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 6 K.

After leaving the game, he said, “I’m excited by the way I threw, and it’s a really good step for me.  I have one more start, and then I’ll be ready to go.”

Brooklyn leads 11-3, so I’m going to go watch the final few innings.

1. Tim Redding was merely Reddingish, but hardly the biggest problem in the Mets 5-0 loss Friday night. Redding has been a 5.00 ERA pitcher in June and over the duration of his career. He’s got two more starts before the All-Star Break. From here, it certainly looks like he’ll make his next scheduled start vs. Pittsburgh on Thursday. However, if Oliver Perez gets his act together, I could see him slotting in vs. LAD in Redding’s final pre-ASB start. Keep in mind as well, Jon Niese just finished up a 24.1 inning scoreless streak in Buffalo. With another strong start or two, I could easily see Niese getting the call post ASB, especially if Perez isn’t ready to go.

2. The Cardinals acquired Mark DeRosa (.270/.342/.457 seaon and .278/.347/.425 career) from the Cleveland Indians for RHP Chris Perez (1-1, 4.18) and a player to be named later. The PTNL will help, in large part, determine the value of the package the Indians received for 3 month of DeRosa, whose contract is up at the end of this year. Perez, like the Mets Bobby Parnell, debuted during the 2008 season. They’re both relievers who rely on a fastball and slider, except that Perez has been better. This year, by Baseball Prospectus’s WXRL (Wins above Replacement) Perez has been worth .559 while Parnell sits just below replacement level at -092. Compare their career stats below:

I didn’t really want the Mets to trade for DeRosa because I didn’t think he provided enough pop. My feeling about this season is that if the Mets don’t want to trade Holt, Mejia, Martinez or Flores they’ll only have one opportunity to add an impact player. Frankly, if it’s really going to be an impact player, they might have to part with either Holt or Mejia. On the other hand, given the news on Reyes (not close) had the Mets thought DeRosa could play SS, he could well have been worth the investment. And on the third hand, the last time DeRosa played as many as 20 games at SS was in 2003 with Atlanta.

3. I think Keith Hernandez got it backwards near the end of SNY’s telecast Saturday night when discussing the Mets and the trade market. I don’t have a transcript in front of me, but Hernandez explained that he thought that the reason the Mets haven’t made a deal is that the Phillies have played so poorly, so the Mets thought they could just ride out this period without their stars. Had the Phillies played .500 ball, and the Mets found themselves 6 or 7 games back, Hernandez thought that a deal would be forthcoming.

It is precisely because of the failings of the Phillies, who lead the Mets by only 1.5 games, and the mediocrity in the wildcard hunt, where the Mets are also 2.5 games back, that the Mets must find a way to improve via trade. Both the division and the wild card are within reach for this team. This is the exact time when adding a player makes a big difference. Were the Mets six or seven games out of a playoff spot, they would be much longer shots for a postseason berth, so mortagaging a piece of the future for a present that barely exists would make very little sense. (The Giants trail the Dodgers by eight games and BP’s Playoff Odds report gives them less than a 2% chace of winning the division.) In year one in a new ballpark, having missed the playoffs barely the last two years, the playoffs would be especially valuable for the Mets this year.

4. As much as the standard starter’s arsenal includes three pitches, AJ Burnett owned the Mets with two pitches: a bigtime fastball and a nasty slider. He was able to locate the heater early to get ahead, and use his slider as an out pitch. I didn’t see a whole lot of changeups, like – any. Did you?