I meant to link this last week, but forgot. So anyway, Mike Newman of Scoutingthesally.com and Adam Foster of Project Prospect did a joint chat together. Their answers included opinions about Jon Niese, Francisco Pena, Alonzo Harris and the Mets system in general, but I wanted to excerpt from their Jenrry Mejia Q&A:
Was Jenrry Mejia a max effort pitcher in the AFL and do you think he can become a frontline starter.
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He has max-effort arm action. His windup is really calm, then he fires through. That makes him really deceptive and some guys pull off his kind of delivery as starters. But I don’t think he will. He’s arm action is inconsistent. That’s why he has trouble throwing strikes. He’s someone who has probably gotten more hype than he deserves this offseason. The raw stuff is there, but I don’t see a frontline starter.
Tuesday January 12, 2010 8:45 Adam Foster
Durability seems to be the biggest issue with Mejia. You obviously give a player of his talent every opportunity to stick in the rotation, but I believe he will wind up a closer long term based on conversations I’ve had with people who have some ties to the Mets organization.
Adam really nails this one. Mejia’s so nice and easy at the start of his motion that hitters are caught off-balance by his heat. And his arm action has been inconsistent.
I don’t buy Mike’s point about durability being Mejia’s biggest issue. Mejia had a finger problem this year in his second full season, but has had two largely healthy seasons in the US in ’08 and’09. For me, his biggest issues remain: repeating his delivery, improving his command and developing his off-speed stuff. That’s a pretty serious list, and I think illustrates Adam’s point that Mejia has received an awful lot of hype this off-season.
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I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in my thoughts on Mejia’s arm action. Too bad he didn’t pitch more in the AFL so we could have gotten a better look.