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Mike Newman, of scoutingthesally.com, has a very interesting post on Mets RHP prospects Kyle Allen and Jeurys Familia. Newman compares the two by age, physical projection, mound presence, and overall stuff. As Newman says, it is impressive “how close these two prospects really are.”  Newman also believes that he would have both Allen and Familia in his Mets Top 10, and that they would be no more than one slot apart.

This is a very encouraging for Mets fans. Two young, big, strong, hard throwing RHPs with a lot of potential is definitely a good thing. They are under the radar as far as prospect status, but with continued development, they will both start to earn national prospect recognition.

TH: It comes down to the following line in Newman’s report for me: “Familia’s fastball had the best combination of velocity and movement I saw this season.”

- Newman sees a ton of SAL baseball, so that’s really high praise.

-The fastball is the first thing I look at in evaluating a RHP prospect, and it’s the reason I have Familia ahead of Allen in my Top 41 which will start after the New Year.

Understandably, most of the Mets fans’ attention this off-season has been on the team’s pursuit of major league free agents.  However, has the team’s most important acquisition thus far been new field coordinator, Terry Collins?  Collins has managed in the major leagues and in Japan, and run the Dodgers farm system for two years.  And what exactly is a Field Coordinator?

The Mets Director of Minor League Operations, Adam Wogan explained what the team thinks of Collins in a recent phone conversation with MMiLB:

There were a lot of things that were very attractive about Terry, and especially in this role.  I think we’re very fortunate as an organization to have Terry onboard period, but especially in this role.  The Field Coordinator job can vary a little bit by organization, but for many, and certainly here for the Mets, the field coordinator is really the General on the field in the minor leagues.  Terry will be … responsible for our staff and lead all of our day-to-day activities from spring training, instructional leagues, mini-camps and really ensures that things are running appropriately on the field for the other instructors over the course of the season.   He’s involved daily with me as far as making any adjustments with our players or our staff.   …… I know when we drew up the qualifications for the positions, we were hopeful just to get a few boxes checked, and Terry seemed to check off every box.   He’s someone who’s played the game a long time, coached in the big leagues, actually managed in the big leagues, has been a field coordinator before, actually has been a farm director before, has international experience , most recently in Japan, but also with team China [for the World Baseball Classic].   Also, the traits he brings with his leadership, his attention to detail,  his knowledge of the game, his consistency, his work ethic will be a perfect addition for us this year, we think.

The Eastern League announced their realignment for 2010 on Friday.  The move was prompted by the purchase and move of the old Connecticut Defenders franchise, located in Norwich, CT to Richmond Virginia, to become the Richmond Flying Squirrels.  The Defenders played in the Northern Division in 2009, and Richmond is now the southernmost team in the league.

In 2009, the Eastern League divided its teams into a Northern and Southern division.  Those divisions have been renamed Eastern and Western.  Five of the old Northern Division teams moved to the new Eastern, with the Reading Phillies joining the East from the old Southern Division.  It’s somewhat ironic that the league is renaming their divisions East & West at a time when it has just made a large North-South expansion.  All the same, East-West appears more geographically accurate, but really, who cares?

As far as the B-Mets are concerned, this doesn’t mean much.  They’ll play the AA Phillies more after playing them nine times last year.  They’ll play fewer games against young Giants, who will head head to Richmond after 17 games in 2009.  That slate of division games will now be played against the phuture phils.

The blocks indicate the Eastern League’s new Eastern and Western Divisions.  Markers in yellow represent teams that played in the Northern Division in 2009, while those markers in green indicate membership in the old Southern Division.  The red is the dead franchise from Norwich, while the blue is the new franchise in Richmond.

View Eastern League Realignment in a larger map

Now that the names are out and aren’t moving, I wanted to reexamine the prospects who moved around when the Phillies acquired Roy Halladay from the Blue Jays and then sent the Mariners Cliff Lee.  Note that this is actually really three separate deals: one between the Phillies and Jays for Halladay, one between the Phillies and Mariners for Lee and a third in which the Jays and A’s exchanged prospects.  My original point stands, the Phillies made a very small improvement in 2010.  However, now that Halladay has signed a below market extension of $20 million annually for three years with an option on a fourth, we can add that they improved the front of their rotation for 2011-14 assuming Halladay is the same guy he’s been for years, but did so at a significant cost to the depth and impact ability of their farm system.

To the Jays
First, the Blue Jays acquired three very good prospects, and three of four of Philadelphia’s top prospects: RHP Kyle Drabek (pictured0, LF/RF Michael Taylor and C Travis d’Arnaud from the Phillies for Halladay.

The 22-year old Drabeck is the prize here, as Baseball America wrote: “He’s come as far the last two years as any prospect … Drabek could be a No. 2 starter on a championship team, with athletic ability, improving command and three average-to-plus pitches.”  Keith Law at ESPN also calls Drabek a “potential no. 2.”  It’s not just that Drabek’s fastball sits 91-95, but is not what makes him special, that says Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin Goldstein is “his signature pitch, a plus-plus power curveball.”  After dominating the FSL (74 K, 19 BB, 0 HR, 62 IP) Drabek came back to earth in AA (76 K, 31 BB, 9 HR, 96 IP) to finish the year.  Note that AA hitters were able to turn his mistakes into homeruns.  Although Drabek is a superior prospect, a similar problem was part of Brad Holt’s struggles at AA for the Mets in 2009.  Even at AA, Drabek’s K/BB ratio was a more than solid 2.45 and he’s one of the better pitching prospects in the minors.

I really like Taylor, perhaps a touch more than is analytically justifiable.  Taylor, who will turn 24 on Saturday, is a Stanford product who has totally rebuilt his swing since leaving college.  He hit .320/.395/.549 between AA and AAA in 2009 culminating in a .282/.359/.491 performance in Lehigh Valley.  Baseball America called his power “short,”  and Keith Law wrote that “the main question on Taylor is whether is new swing is going to generate the power his frame implies” yet he ripped 28 doubles and 20 HR in 2009.  He’s 6’6″ and 250 lbs of muscle.  As the owner of a 14% k/rate, he doesn’t swing and much.  Given his size and ability to make contact, I think he’ll be a very good corner outfielder, and sooner, rather than later.  The Jays then traded Taylor to the A’s for Brett Wallace, a deal I liked a lot more from the A’s perspective than Toronto’s, and more on that in a moment.

The third player the Jays picked up was C Travis d’Arnaud who hit .255/.319/.419 as a 20-year old in the SAL with Lakewood.  While BA praises his “plus raw power” he’s further away than the other two players.  However, d’Arnaud, after hitting .207/.269/.363 in the first half picked it up with a .302/.366/.473 second half.  The prospect watchers, like Goldstein, appreciate d’Arnaud’s “size, athleticism and … projectable talent,” or his “plus raw power” says BA, but pick on his throwing mechanics.  As Law puts it, he’s an “unpolished, but moderate-to-high-upside catching prospect.”

To the Phillies
As you read about the prospects the Phillies acquired ask yourself, would you rather have these three guys, or a rotation fronted by Halladay, Lee and Hamels who would make your team a significant World Series favorite?

RHP Phillippe Aumont was a first round draft pick in 2007, has a nice sinker, but walked 11 guys in 18 innings to finish up 2009 in AA.  He’ll be 21 in 2010, but with his size, 6’7″ and 220 lbs, and his Baseball America scouting report, “throws across his body,” “lack of command in the zone,” reminds me a little bit of Eddie Kunz.  Aumont, on the other hand, does not have Kunz’s persistent L/R splits and started his professional career at a younger age.  Also, he possesses what Project Prospect called a “devastating” breaking ball, which you can see on film here at the 24 second mark.  Law points to “makeup questions” prompted by his lack of control of his emotions.  Aumont’s ceiling is as a bullpen ace.  At the very least, he looks like he’ll be a major league bullpen piece soon enough.

CF Tyson Gillies is a 21-year old speedster who hit .341/.430/.486 for advanced-A High Desert, just about the best offensive environment in baseball.  The former draft-and-follow pick was 44 for 63 stealing bases- a 70% success rate.  He hit well enough away from High Desert, batting .335/.416/.429, but the power disappeared.  He draws walks (60 in 124 games in 2009) and runs, so he just might grow up to be the classic centerfielder/leadoff hitter that others wanted Juan Pierre to be.  Project Prospect has video and a lengthy analysis of Gillies’ swing and potential.  Law noted that unless he becomes a “plus-plus defender…he’s going to end up a fourth outfielder.”  BA says that his “speed translates into above-average range in center field, where he boasts plus arm strength.”  I want to see what happens to Gillies’ offensive game at AA and AAA where he faces not just more advanced pitching, but far superior defenses which could cut his babip back down from the .381 mark he had in High Desert.

As Kevin Goldstein wrote of JC Ramirez entering the season, that “high-ceiling arm continued to show more in the way of projection than in actual numbers” when he ranked him as the Mariners’ 5th best prospect.  The same is still true.  On the plus side, notes Goldstein, he owns a “nearly perfect power-pitching frame and mechanics, and he effortlessly throws 92-94 mph fastballs that can touch 96.”  Law called Ramirez’s stuff “electric,” but differs from Goldstein in claiming that “his ultra-skinny build has raised long-term durability questions.”  BA wrote that he “can spin a quality high-70s slider,” which sounds like a joke to me.  MLB average sliders are in the 80mph range, so his “quality” second offering has below average velocity?  Oy.  I see the bullpen in Ramirez’s future.

Jay-A’s: Prospect for Prospect
The Blue Jays acquired 3B Brett Wallace from the A’s for Michael Taylor.  Wallace was the key piece for Oakland in their Matt Holiday deal with the Cardinals last summer and Law called him “one of the best pure bats in the minors.”  Despite the hype about Wallace’s stick, to my eyes, Taylor had a better 2009 season, and has more potential for growth than the polished Wallace.  Playing 32 games in AA and then 106 games for two different AAA affiliates, Wallace hit .293/.367/.455 with 26 doubles and 20 HR.  Wallace strikes out a little more than Taylor (19% to Taylor’s 14%), while producing the same amount of in-game power in 2009.  There have been questions about Wallace’s range at third since he was drafted, with BA, BP and ESPN all suggesting he will move to first.

There’s some circularity at work here for Oakland.  Just last winter, the A’s traded an athletic young outfielder, Carlos Gonzalez, to the Rockies to acquire Matt Holliday.  Then this summer, they flipped Holliday to the Cardinals for Wallace, who eventually returned another athletic young OF in Taylor, who’s just two months younger than Gonzalez.  Given that Gonzalez just hit .284/.353/.525 in 89 games in his age 23 season for Colorado, perhaps the A’s would have been better off sitting still and letting Gonzalez develop in the Coliseum.

In Conclusion
It’s easy to be impressed by:
1. by the Mariners snagging Cliff Lee for two power arms who look like they belong in the bullpen, and an outfielder with a limited ceiling.
2. by the Blue Jays grabbing three of Philadelphia’s best prospects
3. the A’s getting involved and picking up the athletic outfielder in Taylor, they wish they still had in Gonzalez, or could afford in Holiday
4. the Phillies willingness to gamble

I put the teams in that order because that’s the order in which I think it’s most clear the teams improved.  The Mariners have to be the favorite to win the AL West in 2010, no?  The Jays did well picking up some high-ceiling players for the Doc, although I don’t love the Wallace-Taylor swap tacked on at the end.  As for the Phillies, there are so many moving parts, and so much money now invested in an aging, although brilliant pitcher that it’s hard to call it a pure win.

Sometimes in the baseball offseason, there’s big news, like the Hallday-Lee trade extravaganza that deserves to be covered completely thoroughly.  And then there are the Mets, who haven’t made any major moves yet, but as Ted Berg points out, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  And yet, even absent real news, writers need to write columns and fill space in their newspapers.  So I think that’s largely how you end up with this bizarre John Harper piece about how the Mets “miss Tony Bernazard.”

Harper begins the meat of his argument:

Please don’t misunderstand this; Bernazard deserved to get fired last summer for his various displays of temper and outrageous conduct, and I’m not advocating that he be re-hired.

Well, then lets move on and write another article.  The Mets fired a guy no one liked, who did not seem to be doing a very good job with the minor leagues.  He was however, one of Omar Minaya’s trusted lieutenants.  Don’t forget that Minaya has lost many of the people he chose to surround himself with.

But look what Bernazard brought, says Harper:

We know now that Bernazard was a pit bull in all the wrong ways as well, from intimidating co-workers to challenging minor-leaguers to fight him, but the Mets need that pit-bull mentality right now.

The Mets don’t need a “mentality.” They need players.  Hopefully, they have already done the analysis to find the right players.

Maybe his hands are tied financially, but he has let Lackey and Chone Figgins sign elsewhere without any kind of fight.

Fight?  Maybe these were actually good baseball decisions by the Mets.

Maybe the Mets simply decided that Lackey was not worth the $82.5 million over five years he is due to earn from the Red Sox.  If you examine the numbers one way, you could easily surmise that Lackey was worth the contract, but lets try to do the reverse and take the Mets position here.  By WAR, John Lackey was worth 3.9 wins in 2009, making him the 21st most valuable pitcher, not player, in baseball.  There were 47 postion players who were worth more in 2009 than Lackey.  To be fair, he was almost a 6 WAR player from ’05-07 (5.9, 6.0, 5.6) before injuries began tugging away at his innings pitched from over 200 in each of those seasons to under 180 each of the last two.  Moreover, his strikeout rate has continually ticked downward, from a k/9 high of 8.57 in 2005 to 7.09 in 2009.  His linedrive, groundball and flyball rates have held steady since 2005, but in the last three years, he’s given up homers on flyballs at his highest rate since 2004.  Maybe the Mets simply thought that the 31-year old Lackey was not going to be the durable, effective innings eater he was in his 3-year prime from ’05-07.  Eric Simon at Amazin Avenue makes very similar arguments against signing Lackey this morning as well.

Signing Figgins would have made little sense for the Mets.  Figgins’ best position is thirdbase, where the Mets plan on playing some guy named Wright.  Figgins has played 31 games at second since 2005 and of course, the Mets still have to pay Luis Castillo again in 2010.  Although the sample sizes are dangerously small, UZR did not like Figgins work at second back in 2005, when he played 42 games at the position. Figgins derived much of his value in 2009 from his defense, and the replacement level adjustment for thirdbase.  Moving him to second would have risked much of that defensive value.  He just doesn’t hit with enough power to be a superior everyday leftfielder, especially on a team like the Mets that was last in the league in longballs in 2009.

So what does Harper think about the Mets leftfield?

And while the Mets have put the word out that Jason Bay is a better fit at Citi Field than Matt Holliday, there is a feeling among baseball people that they simply weren’t willing to meet Holliday’s price, as dictated by Boras.

The numbers say Holliday is better than Bay.  Holiday’s WAR the last three years: 8, 6.3, 5.7.  Bay’s: 0.0, 2.9, 3.5.  But the thing about Boras negotiations is that their timing is unpredictable.  Mark Texeira signed on December 23rd of last year, for example.  The Mets signed Carlos Beltran on January 13th, 2005. And what does this have to do with Bernazard?  Oh, Harper recalls that he and Minaya combined to call Scott Boras for 31 straight days before signing Carlos Beltan?  Surely, there are other people with cell phones.

Harper concludes:

Or is Minaya not quite the big-game hunter he was when he had a pit bull at his side?

Generally, when I go hunting, I take a hunting dog, like a retriever or a pointer.  I leave the fighting dogs at home.

I got the following email on Tuesday:

considering the mets arent going to significantly improve the rotation anyway this offseason, i wonder to help them long term and placate the fans a bit, maybe they should go all out on chapman? at least then they could do the line of “we’re looking to the future and he may even help in the present.

I actually disagree with the premise in the first clause, I think the Mets will find a way to bring in another pitcher, whether it’s via a trade or signing.  Moreover, I disagree with the third clause that “placating the fans” is a good reason to make a move.  Fans will be happy when the team wins, and that should be the front office’s only concern. 

However, I agree with the rest of the question.  Signing Aroldis Chapman might well be a terrific idea.  He’s a unique talent. Mets representatives reportedly attended Chapman’s throwing session Tuesday in Houston which Ed Price wrote “answered” teams’ questions about him.  According to Price’s source at the workout, “He was nice and loose,” the source said. “Tremendous body. Very fast arm. Three above-average pitches, up to 96 (mph on the fastball). Just a tremendous talent. … It’s really good stuff.”

The Red Sox made a major league offer for $15.5 million to Chapman.  If the Mets can land him for $25 million or less, he could produce strong value going forward.   

The big news late Monday was the Phillies had traded acquired Roy Halladay from the Blue Jays, sent Cliff Lee to the Mariners, and paid the Blue Jays heavily in prospects, but how heavily will help determine which team will eventually win the deal.  Jon Heyman reports that Halladay will sign an extension for roughly $20 million annually for three years, so he will be in Philly for 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, his age 33-37 seasons.  Only when all of the prospects and dollars are sorted out, we will able to do a much more careful accounting.

It’s a funny deal for Philadelphia in that it does not appear to actually make the team much better in the coming 2010 season.  Halladay has been a 7.4 and 7.3 WAR pitcher the last two years in baseball’s toughest division.  Cliff Lee, whose spot at the phront of the Phillie rotation he will inherit, was worth 6.6 WAR last year which followed his 7.2 WAR Cy Young year in 2008.  Moving forward, CHONE sees Cliff Lee with a 3.43 ERA (82 runs total) in just under 200 innings with Seattle, and Halladay with a 3.22 ERA (85 runs total) over 218 IP with Philly.  That’s just not a big upgrade as the Phillies went from one of the game’s best to another of baseball’s best pitchers.  The trade, if Halladay stays healthy, improves the Philly rotation in 2011 and onwards.  However, could the value of the talent Halladay cost nearly equal his own surplus value over his contract in say 2012?  It’s very possible.

Is such a small immediate upgrade worth Michael Taylor and Kyle Drabek, both excellent prospects, who have both been rumored to be on the move to Toronto?  Does four years of Halliday, justify the expense of Lee and whatever prospects are included?  That’s a trickier question, and to even begin to answer it demands that we know the identities of prospects the Phillies plan on trading.

It appears that the Mariners did very well for themselves, but again, lets hold off on a judgment until it’s clear what Seattle gave up.

Because the Phillies haven’t drastically altered their 2010 outlook, little changes for the Mets offseason.  The team still needs a bat and another arm.   In this regard, the Red Sox moves Monday, reportedly agreeing to terms with John Lackey and Mike Cameron, does more to affect the Mets and the relevant markets, than the Halladay to Philly move does to the Mets plans. As John Harper put it in the Daily News, the Mets had “no shot” at either Lackey or Halladay.

So, lets all hurry up and wait for the prospects changing uniforms in this deal.