AAA: Buffalo Bisons (53-81) @ Rochester Red Wings (67-68) – 7:05
RHP Tobi Stoner (5-7, 4.25) vs. RHP Philip Humber (7-7, 5.28)

The last time Tobi Stoner lost a decision was August 11th to Kevin Mulvey and the Red Wings who touched him up for six runs in four innings.
Tonight’s game will be broadcast on SNY. 

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Red Wings Roster | Bisons Roster

AA: Binghamton Mets (51-81) @ Akron Aeros (81-53)
LHP Mike Antonini (7-3, 4.84) vs. RHP Jeanmar Gomez (10-4, 3.09)

The big news here is the roster movement: 3B Zach Lutz and CF Kirk Nieuwenhuis were transferred to Binghamton from St. Lucie today.  To make room, 3B Shawn Bowman and Util Jonathan Malo were placed on the restricted list.  The timing of the move is a little odd, but with Ike Davis leaving for team USA and C Josh Thole leaving for the big leagues, the B-Mets lineup will badly need some pop if the team is going to avoid the worst record in team history.  Moreover, the moves have AFL implications.  Teams will have two exemptions for a-ball players this year.  Now, although the team has not announced that Nieuwenhuis will go, if he does he won’t use up one of the exemptions.  After the OF slot, the Mets are supposed to send four pitchers, and have said that Brad Holt is not going to go.  Would they pull pitchers out of A-ball?  Would they send Mike Antonini and Eric Niesen?  Would the team dare pull Jeurys Familia, the most talented Mets pitcher below AA, straight from Savannah. 

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B-Mets Roster | Aeros Roster

A+:  St. Lucie Mets – OFF 

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St. Lucie Roster | Miracle Roster

A: Savannah Sand Gnats (64-65) vs. Augusta Greenjackets (70-61)  
LHP Robert Carson (8-9, 2.93) vs. LHP Ari Ronick (6-5, 2.63)
The Gnats finish up the season with and eight-game roadie, a rough way to end a minor league season for a non-playoff team.
Ronick owns a 0.67 ERA in four August starts with 27 strikeouts and just six walks in 27 IP.   

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GreenJackets Roster | Gnats Roster

SSA: Brooklyn Cyclones (43-25) @ Lowell Spinners (39-28) – 7:05
LHP Darrin Gorski (3-3, 4.70) vs. RHP Yeiper Castillo (5-1, 3.02)
I remain baffled that the Mets drafted Gorski in the seventh round. 

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Cyclones Roster | Spinners Roster

Rookie (APP): Danville Braves (46-20) @ Kingsport Mets (29-34) 
The K-Mets lead the league in batting .286 and OBP .360.
Braves Roster| K-Mets Roster

For those of us who follow the Mets Minor League organization everyday, we lost a valuable resource when Brian Moritz, the excellent B-Mets beat writer for the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin announced late last week, that he was leaving his position to return to school at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.  I’d like first to congratulate my friend, and recommend his goodbye note, which is fittingly thoughtful.

As thrilled as I am for Briant to move on with his career, I will miss his reporting from NYSEG Stadium.  He was an insightful, hardworking and conscientious reporter who wrote cleanly and clearly.

I’d like to wish Brian nothing but success in his future endeavors.

Josh Thole is going to join the Mets when rosters expand in September.  The question, then is how the Mets will use the 22-year old left-handed hitting catcher coming off his fine year at AA Binghamton.

Sunday, via his twitter account, the New York Post’s Bart Hubbach reported, “Jerry Manuel says Josh Thole probably won’t play against lefties. “I want him in spots where he can have success and build on that.”

This is a tricky statement to parse in the sense that there is no reasonable argument against the quoted piece from Manuel: it’s a good idea to put Thole in a position where he can have success.  However, at least in that quote, Manuel did not directly say that Thole would not play against lefties.  The second problem is that to succeed, Thole should only hit against righties, when in fact, Thole has a fine record against left-handed pitchers as well, and might benefit more from playing everyday rather than a more irregular schedule.

Thole has hit righties better than he’s hit lefties this year, going .328/.396/.437 against righties and .328/.391/.388 against southpaws in 116 AB.  Note that his batting average and on-base-percentage are nearly identical, but he hits with more power against righties.  Even in 2008, when he OPSed 13 points higher against lefties, he hit for a little more power against righties.  That year, he hit  .333/.386/.432 against lefties (.818 OPS) in 81 AB in St. Lucie while hitting .289/.380/.425 in 266 AB against righties (.805 OPS).

If the Mets believe that Thole is a piece of their future behind the plate, he should play regularly.  In the minors in the last two years, Thole has shown that he hits righties with a little more authority, but handles left-handed pitching very well.  If the issue is really Thole’s development, then this is the time where he should learn to hit left-handed pitching at the MLB level.  The 2009 Mets are done.  It’s all about 2010.  Any extra experience Thole adds only helps the team moving forward, especially when the alternative is 28-year old Omir Santos.

Santos, the right-handed half of the Mets catching platoon with Brian Schneider has hit a meager .234/.268/.377 against lefties in 2009 while hitting better against righties (.283/.324/.410).

Could Thole approximate Santos’ 645 OPS against lefties?  I think so.  More importantly, could he do better in 2010?  I also think so?  What’s the downside to letting him learn on the job, fulltime in 2009?

Friday, Baseball America dropped Kirk Nieuwenhuis in at #2 on their weekly prospect hot sheet.  What’s really notable is how much BA’s assessment has become more optimistic and precise in a few weeks.

From August 21:

Don’t be fooled by that age; the physical, lefty-swinging Nieuwenhuis celebrated a birthday two weeks ago and actually spent most of the season as a 21-year-old.

From August 28:

…the Mets’ 6-foot-3 center field prospect has been just short of unstoppable in August… Not much has gone right for the Mets this season, but the development of Nieuwenhuis, who projects to be an average center fielder, has been a pleasant surprise.

Just so we’re all clear, the average NL centerfielder is hitting .272/.342/.429.  Nieuwenhuis is hitting .274/.357/.467 for the year and .345/.406/.647 in August.

On Wednesday last week, I first heard word that the Mets instructional league season might be in jeopardy.

First, a definition.  The fall instructional league is like a mini-spring training for teams and players beginning in mid-September.  Teams use this opportunity to teach their young players, many of whom were just drafted in June, how to play the game in style of the team.  Moreover, prospects play games against players of a similar skill level from other teams.

Now, a problem.  As of last week, there were no other teams on the east coast of Florida, where the Mets complex in Port St. Lucie is located, who were planning on holding instructs.  The Marlins, Cardinals and Nationals had all decided to cut instructs from the budget.  The nearest potential opponents for the Mets were the Braves, 2 hours away in Lake Buena Vista, FL and the Tigers almost 3 hours away in Lakeland, FL.  In the past, those trips were considered too long a distance for instructs.  Six hours of busing in a day is no way to play baseball or develop skills.

The Mets were faced with three choices: skip instructs, move it to the west coast of Florida, or move it to the Dominican Republic.

Earlier this decade, during a busy Hurricane Season on the east coast of Florida, the Mets shared a complex with the Baltimore Orioles in St. Petersburg on the west coast of Florida.  In the intervening years, the Orioles have moved to Fort Lauderdale, two hours south of St. Lucie, just north of Miami.  The process of moving instructs to the west coast went remarkably smoothly.  I believe the Mets at least made initial contact with teams on the west coast of Florida in search of a new home to hold instructs.  How far those conversations went, I really don’t know, and I don’t  think they were all that advanced.

Then, Sunday, on Sirius XM Radio’s Home Plate Channel, Jim Duquette claimed the team had canceled the fall instructional league, as quoted by Adam Rubin:

Now the rumors within the scouting circles are that they can’t afford – which it roughly costs about 300 grand to staff and to invite and fly down all the players, to having meals throughout for about, it’s like a 4 to 5 week program.

Was the story Duquette reported accurate?  Not quite, say the Mets.  The team announced that it would hold its fall instructional league in the Dominican Republic this year.  The Mets statement reads:

“In a reevaluation of the Mets minor league operations, the club made the decision to move our Fall Instructional League to our new Dominican Academy in Boca Chica from Port St. Lucie, Fla.,” the Mets said in a statement. “We believe that by housing our minor league players in the Dominican, we will have more opportunities to have competition against opposing teams that have training facilities nearby. Over the past few years in Port St. Lucie, the competition has predominately been among our own players as a result of other teams leaving the area. This year’s approach will bring approximately 75 prospects to train and compete at our Academy and against players affiliated with other Major League clubs.”

The press release is a clear attempt at damage control, raising more issues than answers:

1. The 75-players number is a nice red herring.  After all, over 30 players will already be on site from the DSL team.  The question is really how many of the players from the GCL, Kingsport, Brooklyn, Savannah and St. Lucie teams will be attending instructs in the DSL.  The guess here is that the number will be many fewer than if instructs was being held in Florida.

2. The competition problem on the east coast of Florida was very real. What will the level of competition look like in the DR?

3. How many other teams are moving to the Dominican?

In New York Post Blog, Bart Hubbach emphasized the financial savings the Mets will realize:

Adding to the questions about their post-Madoff financial health, the Mets have quietly shifted their fall instructional league in a reported cost-saving maneuver. ….

According to insiders, the Mets will save about $250,000 by moving the instructional league to the Dominican because of much cheaper living expenses on the island.

Major League teams like the Mets do not pay their minor leaguers salary to attend instructs.  Instead, the teams provide housing and meals.  The team’s coaches and minor league development staff is not paid extra to run instructs, it’s considered part of the job responsibilities.  The team’s expenses largely come from feeding the collected athletes for five weeks and for paying for travel expenses.

Conclusion

1. In the last weeks, it became clear that holding an instructional league based in St. Lucie was not a viable option.

2.From a developmental standpoint, it might have been preferable to find a team on the west side of Florida who was willing and had the space, to let the Mets share a facility.  However, it is not clear whether the Mets had such a partner.

3. Given 1 and 2, the DR might really have been the Mets best option.

It’s too easy a storyline given what else has happened to the Mets this summer to paint the decision not to hold instructs in St. Lucie as driven by the desire to save $200,000, without regard for the team’s longterm interests in developing prospects.  Such reporting dovetails nicely with the general premise repeated over and over in the papers, that the Mets hierarchy is short-sighted, but misses a large part of the story: there was no one to play on Florida’s east coast.

Thus far, the reporting surrounding this story has been sensationalistic and tied more to a larger narrative arc than the specific facts of the case.  Rightfully, the media is in no mood to cut the Mets any slack of any kind in any area of player operations and development, but as readers and fans, I encourage you to read any reporting on this issue very carefully.

SSA: @ Lowell Spinners 3, Brooklyn Cyclones 1

RHP Brandon Moore (6-2, 2.10) followed up his no-hitter by giving up one run on nine hits in six innings.  He struck out five and didn’t walk a batter.

It was an up-and-down day for Brooklyn’s infield prospects.  An eighth-inning error by 3B Richard Lucas helped the Spinners score the go-ahead run.  SS Robbie Shields was ejected immediately after Lowell grabbed the 2-1.  Jordany Valdespin flipped across the second-base bag to play shortstop and committed a throwing error on his first chance that allowed an insurance run to score to make it 3-1.

On the offenisve side, Valdespin was 2-5, but was thrown out trying to steal second and third.  Lucas (.342/.372/.579) was held hitless, snapping his nine-game hitting streak that began his Cyclones career, but he did walk twice.

Rookie (APP): @ Kingsport Mets 4, Danville Braves 1

Jhonathan Torres threw well, giving up one run on two hits over 5.2 innings.  He struck out six and issued three free passes.

18-year-old RF Cesar Puello (.285/.364/.419) had one hit, his fifth HR of the year.  21-year-old 3B Joe Bonfe and 23-year-old 1B Jeffrey Flagg were each 2-4 with a double.

Rookie (GCL): @ GCL Nationals 8, GCL Mets 5

3B Aderlin Rodriguez was 1-5, drove home three and committed his 12th error of the year.

AAA: @ Rochester Red Wings 5, Buffalo Bisons 4

Former Met Justin Huber led off the bottom of the tenth with a game-winning HR off RHP Eddie Kunz (4-5, 4.99).  It was the second HR of  the game for Huber, who hit a three-run bomb off RHP Chris Mason in the sixth which started the Red Wings comeback.  Mason was ok, but didn’t miss a lot of bats: 5.2 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 1 K.

AA: Binghamton Mets 5, @ Akron Aeros 3

In the most important performance for the nearish-term Mets, RF Ike Davis was 3-4 with a double and a homerun, both of which came against LHP Bobby Livingston. Davis is now hitting .271/.346/.471 against lefties in 70.  In his first 25 AB against lefties in AA, he hit .200/.310/.240 against southpaws, so his performance in his last 45 AB against lefties has been very productive indeed.  Davis’ lefty “problem” was not unique to AA; he began the year by hitting .197/.231/.279 against lefties in 61 AB in the FSL.

Davis also played RF on Saturday and Sunday.  Any increase in his versatility is simply and unequivocally a good thing.  The timing of the move to the outfield seems a little odd in that Davis will leave for the national team after Monday’s game, but in part it’s dictated by Binghamton’s depleted roster which has seen the team start Salvador Paniagua at first in the last two games.

A+: @ Palm Beach Cardinals 4, St. Lucie Mets 3

SS Reese Havens (pictured) was 2-5 with a HR, his 14th of the year.  He’s sixth in the league in HR and has played only 91 games, the fewest of anyone in the top seven in the league.  He’s up to .282/.386/.473 in August and has stolen his only three bases of the year in the month.

DH Zach Lutz was 2-5.

Scott Moviel hung in through six innings, giving up three runs, one earned on just three hits and two walks, while fanning two.  In August, Moviel is now 3-1 with a 2.53 ERA and 32 strikeouts against 15 walks in 32 innings.  Moviel is allowing fewer HR than he did a year before in Savannah, but I have trouble getting excited about a guy striking out fewer than seven batters per nine innings in advanced A.

A: @ Savannah Sand Gnats 2, @ Rome Braves 0

Jeurys Familia (10-6, 2.69) won his tenth game by shutting out the Braves on six hits and three walks in five innings.  He fanned five.