Baseball America has released a list of minor league free agents.  What makes a minor league FA?  Here is Matt Eddy’s explanation:  Any player who was not on a 40-man roster on Nov. 7 qualified for free agency if he had accumulated at least six years of service time (minors and majors inclusive) while still bound by his first uniform player contract. That contract is broken if the player is released or granted free agency by other means before he logs six years.

The Mets have 24 total minor league free agents, which ranks them in the top 10 organizations, in total FAs.

Here are the Mets minor league FA:

RHP: Yhency Brazoban (AAA), Brian Bruney (AAA), Chad Cordero (AAA), Jack Egbert (AAA), Johan Figuereo (SS), Carlos Muniz (AA)
LHP: Derrick Ellison (AA), Arturo Lopez+ (AAA), Mike O’Connor (AAA), Adam Pettyjohn (AAA), Raul Valdes (AAA)
C: Michael Barrett (AAA), J.R. House (AAA), Salomon Manriquez (AA), Luke Montz (AA)
1B: Marshall Hubbard (AA)
2B: Russ Adams (AAA), Alex Cintron (AAA), Jonathan Malo (AAA)
3B: Mike Cervenak (AAA)
SS: Jose Coronado (AA)
OF: Brahiam Maldonado (AA), Jorge Padilla (AAA), Jesus Feliciano (AAA)

Other teams notable FAs:  Carlos Delgado (BOS), Ray Chang (BOS, he is a co-worker of mine in the offseason), Jeremy Reed (CWS), Jason Isringhausen (CIN), Kaz Matsui (COL), Alfredo Amezega (LAD, former teammate of mine), Johnny Raburn (MIL, former college teammate), Tyler Yates (PIT), Ruben Gotay (STL), Yusmiro Petit (SEA), Mark Prior (TEX), Shawn Bowman (TOR).

AFL Update

Kirk Nieuwenhuis hit his first AFL home run last night, in the 7-5 Mesa Solar Sox victory over the Surprise Rafters.  Nieuwenhuis, who played CF last night, has been hot of late, with three consecutive multi-hit games (6-13, 3 doubles, HR, 4 RBI).  Nieuwenhuis has a season line of  .308/.384/.477, in 65 AFL at-bats (18 games).

Kai Gronauer was 1-3 and threw out a would be base stealer on the night for Mesa.  Gronauer is now hitting .167/.242/.267 in 30 AFL at-bats (9 games).

TH: I spoke with Kirk earlier this week.

Here are some excerpts from that conversation.

On the AFL:

It’s been a good opportunity for me to get some work in.  …

What he’s working on

At the moment, it’s pretty much just some timing with my hitting and trying to simplify things… It could be anything from where my weight is on my back foot or where my stride foot lands.

Yesterday, Adam Rubin reported that 2B Jordany Valdespin had “suffered a forearm strain,” and his Arizona Fall League campaign might be done.  After going 0-2 Monday, if true, Valdespin would finish his AFL campaign hitting .355/.388/.461 with four walks, 12 strikeouts and six errors in 19 games.  He’ll be 23 in December.

Before heading to the AFL, he hit .232/.243/.304 with 23 strikeouts and two walks in 28 games for AA Binghamton after a .289/.323/.437 line in 65 games for advanced-a St. Lucie.  At this point, I would not put him on the 40-man roster.  Yes, that would mean exposing him to the rule five draft.

Last night, Keith Law tweeted:

I’ve been asked what a “leak” is, so let me try to explain.  Think about a swing as an explosion.  Everything that happens before the hands start forward, including a hitter’s stance and load, prime the batter to blast through the zone.  When a hitter leaks, he’s not hold the energy in place.  Rather, he’s sliding forward and giving away potential power.  Nothing good comes from leaking.  It deprives a hitter of balance and power.
I haven’t seen Valdespin in the AFL, but most likely, Law is describing a sequence where his hips and body start moving forward before his hand go.  Thus, Valdespin will have little power.  Also, because his body is starting too quickly, ahead of his hands, he’ll be into his swing too early and be forced to make decisions on pitches early, leading him to chase breaking balls out of the zone. Some pictures or video of this would be nice.

I didn’t watch the AFL Rising Stars game Saturday night.  I was too busy enjoying Stanford’s 42-17 beatdown of Arizona.

Robert Carson gave up an unearned run in the third in the game on an infield single, an error and a passed ball.  Again, via pitch fx, he was mostly 92-94 with his fastball.  Still, the prospect watchers were unimpressed.  Baseball America’s Ben Badler tweeted that he thought Carson was a “Fringy guy with some situational relief potential.”  Jordany Valdespin was 1-2 at second.

Did you watch?  What’d you think?

Yesterday in the Arizona Fall League, three Met pitchers threw an inning of relief: Eric Niesen, Brad Holt, and Nicholas Carr.  This would normally not be notable except once again the pitchers were pitching in Peoria, which has Pitchf/x cameras installed.  Naturally one inning per pitcher results in a tiny sample size for each, but it’s better than nothing, so let’s take a look at the three pitchers today.

Brad Holt

Brad Holt has been a very frustrating pitcher.  In Brooklyn, and even part of last year his fastball was said to hit 94-95 and be a pitch that at worst made scouts think he might be a good reliever.  This year however, his results fell off a cliff and his velocity dropped.

Looking at his pitchf/x results, we can see this drop for ourselves:

Figures 1 and 2: The Movement and Velocity of Holt’s pitches.  The Graph is shown from a catcher’s point of view.
To Read:

Vertical Movement: the amount of inches the ball drops or “rises” as compared to how we would expect gravity to make a pitch drop.  So a Fastball with Positive 10 Vertical Movement “RISES” 10 inches more than it should if gravity was the only force acting on it and a curveball with -10 Vertical Movement drops 10 inches more than a pitch thrown that is just acted on by gravity.

Horizontal Movement: The Graph is from the view of a catcher or umpire behind home plate.  So a pitch  on the left side of the graph (and has “negative horizontal movement”) moves in to righties and away from lefties.  A pitch on the right side of the graph moves in to lefites and away from righties.

Legend for these graphs
Fastballs = Red Dots
Change Ups = Yellow Dots
Cutters/Sliders = Blue Dots
Slurves=Purple Dots

Holt threw 3 or 4 different types of pitches yesterday:  A Fastball, a change-up and a slider/curve-ball-like pitch (which I’ve labeled as a slurve).  In addition, he threw two pitches (in a row) which appear to be a cutter or slider (slutter?), but could in fact be just a slip out of the hand (this is the problem with small sample sizes).
The fastball is very disappointing: it had always been talked of having not great movement but of having once great velocity…now it doesn’t even have that (he topped out at 93.1MPH).

The other pitches aren’t great either:  The Change-Up has a decent sinking action, relative to the fastball…but in yesterday’s performance, 3 out of the 4 change-ups that Holt threw to batters were located REALLY HIGH (as in one was at the top of the regulation strike zone, and the other two were over a half a foot higher than that).  This kind of location would tend to negate the sinking benefits of the pitch.

The Slurve is slower than a slider should be but has slider-like movement instead of curveball movement, and as such is not very impressive (Holt’s breaking stuff has always been considered a work-in-progress, and this just shows that).  The Cutter/Slider, if it is indeed a real pitch, actually isn’t bad at all, with decent cutting motion and a good velocity (only 3MPH less than the fastball).

All in All, if Holt is to make a comeback and stay a starter, he’ll need to either regain his lost velocity (unlikely), improve and feature the cutter/slider as a feature pitch along with the change-up, or somehow wind up with a decent curveball.  Sadly, I’m not holding my breath.  It looks like his best outcome may be a fastball-slider-change-up throwing reliever, which is a shame.

——

Eric Niesen

Niesen, unlike the other two pitchers, had a quick inning yesterday, throwing only 15 pitches.  While that’s good for his results, it’s kind of a bummer when you’re trying to look at him with Pitchf/x.

Niesen only threw a fastball and slider in his outing, though Toby tells me that he used to use a change-up when starting.  The Fastball’s velocity is nothing special (average for a lefty, really), but it has less rise than the usual four-seam fastball.  It doesn’t have as much sink as we’d think of for a sinker/two-seam fastball, but one would think the vertical movement would help him hit lower in the strike zone and thus get some ground balls.  However, Niesen has never had a good ground ball rate and his fastballs on Wednesday were located from medium height to high (with only one fastball being located “low” in the strike zone).  This is something you’d think he should work on with the pitch.

The Slider’s movement on the other hand is not terrible.  The speed isn’t great, but the pitch clearly moves the opposite direction as the fastball and thus could be a decent strikeout pitch.  That said, Niesen located all 5 of his sliders in the strike zone on Wednesday rather than at the corner or out of the zone, like you’d expect from a breaking pitch.  This is of course a tiny sample size, but for it to be a good out pitch, the pitch should be more off the plate.

Overall, Niesen is clearly heading toward a bullpen role, and his stuff might be good enough to make him a decent reliever, if he can fix his location problems (Of note is that he had walk issues in AA this year which probably indicate that his accuracy is more of a problem than these 15 pitches suggest).  Mind you, Niesen is NOT young (25 already), so his time as a potential relieving prospect is probably running out.

——
Nicholas Carr

Figures 3 and 4: The Movement and Velocity of Carr’s pitches.  The Graph is shown from a catcher’s point of view.
To Read:

Vertical Movement: the amount of inches the ball drops or “rises” as compared to how we would expect gravity to make a pitch drop.  So a Fastball with Positive 10 Vertical Movement “RISES” 10 inches more than it should if gravity was the only force acting on it and a curveball with -10 Vertical Movement drops 10 inches more than a pitch thrown that is just acted on by gravity.

Horizontal Movement: The Graph is from the view of a catcher or umpire behind home plate.  So a pitch  on the left side of the graph (and has “negative horizontal movement”) moves in to righties and away from lefties.  A pitch on the right side of the graph moves in to lefites and away from righties.

Legend for these graphs
Fastballs = Red Dots
Sliders = Blue Dots

—–

Carr is the youngest of the 3 pitchers and might be the one with the most potential (oddly enough), simply because he clearly has a pitch that could be characterized as a plus pitch: his fastball.  Carr averaged 95.81MPH on his 22 fastballs and hit a high of 97.6MPH.  It should be noted that it’s possible that we’re dealing with two different fastballs here, a two-seamer and a four-seamer, but it’s hard to tell due to the small sample size and is probably just one fastball with a decent amount of variation among its movement.  Carr also has a slider at 85MPH with okay movement, but his fastball is really the pitch that is going to get him into the Show as a reliever.

The problem with Carr, as seen in this appearance where he walked 3 guys in a row, is that he has accuracy issues (aka walk issues).  Check out this plot of the locations of Carr’s pitches in the strike zone on Wednesday:

Figure 5:  The location of each of Carr’s pitches on Wednesday.  The graph is from a catcher’s point of view, so pitches on the left side of the graph (more negative) are inside on a right-handed batter and away from a left-handed batter.
—-

You’ll note that every pitch, including his fastball as well as his slider, is located from the middle of the strike zone on down (and that the pitches all seem to be aimed in toward a right-handed batter or away from a left-handed batter).  This is pretty odd for his fastball really….whereas Niesen should be throwing his fastball low to try and use his “sink” on his fastball to get ground balls, Carr should be throwing his fastball UP, particularly on 2 strike counts!  This is because a fastball with a lack of sink is best used to get swinging strikes high in the strike zone, or just above the strike zone.  This is especially true for those pitchers who actually have good velocity on their fastball, like Carr does.  (In case you’re curious, Carr got 0 swinging strikes on his fastball in this appearance, probably for this very reason).  So these low pitches are very odd and one would hope Carr would work on locating his pitches higher in the strike zone in addition to getting his overall accuracy down.

That said, if I had to pick one of these three pitchers as the most likely to make the Majors and to make an impact, and I didn’t know anything about the rankings of any of these 3 as a prospect, I’d pick Carr right now for sure.  He reminds me a bit of Bobby Parnell, and I see no reason why he couldn’t serve the Mets in a similar role in a year or two (probably two).

Robert Carson started on Tuesday in the Arizona Fall League and threw 58 pitches over 4 innings, giving up just 4 hits (2 doubles, 2 singles) and 1 run while striking out 4 and walking none.  Interestingly, he did so in Peoria, one of the two parks with Pitchf/x cameras set up (Met pitchers have had little games seemingly in these parks so far, which is kind of lame).  As such, we can take a look at what pitches Carson was throwing on that day, their movement and their speed.

Figures 1 and 2: The Movement and Velocity of Carson’s pitches.  The Graph is shown from a catcher’s point of view.
To Read:

Vertical Movement: the amount of inches the ball drops or “rises” as compared to how we would expect gravity to make a pitch drop.  So a Fastball with Positive 10 Vertical Movement “RISES” 10 inches more than it should if gravity was the only force acting on it and a curveball with -10 Vertical Movement drops 10 inches more than a pitch thrown that is just acted on by gravity.

Horizontal Movement: The Graph is from the view of a catcher or umpire behind home plate.  So a pitch  on the left side of the graph (and has “negative horizontal movement”) moves in to righties and away from lefties.  A pitch on the right side of the graph moves in to lefites and away from righties.

Legend for these graphs
Fastballs = Red Dots
Change Ups = Yellow Dots
Cutters/Sliders = Dark Blue Dots

Table 1:  The average movement and velocity of each of Carson’s pitches.

*A LARGE NOTE OF CAUTION: The Pitchf/x camera at Peoria (at least on Tuesday) seemed to have a calibration issue in that the Horizontal Movement of pitches tended to be a good 3-5 inches skewed toward the side of a right-handed batter.  In other words, to get the true Horizontal Movement #s, you should add +3 to +5 to each number and on the graph you should shift every pitch over to the right 3-5 inches.  DO NOT TAKE THIS DATA AS SAYING THAT CARSON’S CHANGE-UP and FASTBALL HAVE CUTTING MOVEMENT.

Anyhow, putting the calibration issue aside, we can see that Carson threw 3 pitches on Tuesday:  A Four-Seam fastball, a change-up, and a pitch that’s either a slider or a cutter (These two types of pitches look extremely similar at times and are hard to distinguish without knowing about the pitcher beforehand).  (TH: Carson and his coaches call the offering a slider, unless he’s working on something new here.)

The movement of the fastball is not particularly notable…once we take into account the calibration error, the pitch has average movement for a four-seam fastball and about average velocity (92MPH).  The pitch doesn’t get basically any sink at all, and I’d expect it to be a fly ball pitch unless Carson has unusual skill in keeping this pitch down (which certainly wasn’t the case in this start).

The Change-up’s movement is also not particularly special…in fact, it’s not particularly great at all.  Basically the pitch moves the same as the fastball, with minor differences.  The pitch’s velocity, at 86.6 MPH, is not bad for this type of pitch and is an okay 5 MPH different from the fastball.  That said, like the fastball, if Carson can’t locate this pitch particularly well (low and away?), it really isn’t a great pitch.

The Cutter/Slider on the other hand shows some promise.  At 87.4MPH, it would be considered fast for a slider and roughly par for the course for a cutter.  This pitch, unlike the other two pitches, has some sink (above average for a  cutter, average or below average for a slider) and Carson located it low and in on right-handed batters in this game.  In this game, it clearly showed its promise as Carson got 3 swinging strikes on 13 total sliders/cutters thrown (and 3/10 if you ignore the 3 sliders thrown to left-handed batters).  Of Note:  The pitch isn’t thrown with anywhere near the accuracy one would expect from a cutter (23.1% Strike Zone Rate), but instead seems to be thrown like a slider in terms of accuracy…thus it’s not a pitch he should be throwing on 3 ball counts very much.

On a final note, you’ll note from the graph above that Carson’s pitches were all spread out horizontally on the graph and didn’t form tight clusters.  This doesn’t seem like a calibration error, and more like something caused by Carson’s own inconsistency.  One would expect him to have to improve his pitches so that their movement is more consistent in order for him to improve his accuracy with these pitches.

—-

Overall, I’m really not that impressed with Carson at this present moment.  He has at best an average fastball and change-up, while his only pitch that shows any promise is his cutter/slider.  Meanwhile with just these 3 pitches in his arsenal (and only one potential plus pitch), I wonder if he should be a reliever rather than a starter.
Of course, this conclusion is drawn from a ridiculously small sample size (58 pitches), so it should be taken with a grain of salt.  Plus, Carson’s only 21, so there’s time to develop.  But from this start, there really wasn’t much to be impressed with (aside from the slider).

TH: 92 mph from the left side is a little above average, but not much.  Given his persistent L/R splits, and the fact that his slider is his best pitch, a bullpen role seems like a more reasonable set of expectations for his eventual role moving forward.

As exciting as Sandy Alderson’s press conference was Friday, there are still Mets farmhands playing baseball in Arizona and the Caribbean.  In general, it was a brutal week for Mets pitching in Arizona.

I’ve excerpted the highlights for me, but the full list of Mets’ guys playing winter ball and their stats is available here.

Position Players
2B Jordany Valdespin – Mesa Solar Sox – AFL
Valdespin, who had the day off Saturday, has hit safely in five straight games and sits at .339/.362/.429 overall after 14 games.  He’s shown off his speed too: he’s stolen seven bases without getting caught even once.  Here’s the issue for the 22-year old Valdespin: he’s drawn two walks in two weeks’ worth of games and has walked in 3% of his Arizona plate appearances.  He simply must learn to draw a walk more than once a week, if he’s going to be a valuable big leaguer.

OF Kirk Nieuwenhuis – Mesa Solar Sox – AFL
Captain Kirk played all three outfield positions this week, hitting safely in four of six games.  He’s hit .297/.381/.405 in 11 games in Arizona with three extra-base hits, four walks and 11 strikeouts.  Obviously, the versatility to play any of the three outfield positions, but if he does move to a corner full-time, the offensive expectations move up dramatically.

2B Daniel Murphy – Aguilas Cibaenas – DWL
Murphy was 3-4 with a home run on on Halloween Sunday to lift his Dominican batting line to .250/.333/.438 in nine games.  He’s played everyday at second for Aguilas.

3B Eric Campbell – Caribes de Anzoategui – VWL
After a quick start with the Caribes, Cambell is in an 0-13 skid that’s taken his overall line down to .250/.371/.346 in 15 games.  Even while hitting .129/.308/.194, he’s still shown a strong plate eye (8 BB & 8 K) but he just hasn’t found any room on balls in play recently.

C Kai Gronauer - Mesa Solar Sox – AFL
Gronauer picked up his first, and only extra-base hit in seven games last Wednesday, but is hitting a meager .087/.192/.217 in those seven games which is to say, he’s 2-for-23.

C Francisco Pena - Aguilas Cibaenas – DWL
The 21-year old Pena was 1-4 with a double on Halloween and is now 2-for-15 (.133) after the opening week in the DWL.

Util Josh Satin – Mesa Solar Sox – AFL
Satin was 2-for-4 with a double and a pair of strikeouts Saturday while playing first base.  In four games, he’s hit a robust .357.

No Wilmer Flores yet while he rehabs a strained calf.

Pitchers
Nick Carr – Mesa Solar Sox – AFL
Carr gave up three runs, only one of which was earned in two innings on Friday in Arizona.  His AFL line now reads: 10 IP, 10 H, 7 R, 5 ER, 1 HR, 5 BB, 5 K.
I still I still like the arm, but…

LHP Robert Carson – Mesa Solar Sox – AFL
Carson got ripped in his second AFL start last Wednesday for six runs, all earned, on five hits, and a walk.  His AFL line: 4.2 IP, 8 H, 6 R, 1 BB, 3 K

RHP Jeurys Familia – Gigantes del Cibao – DWL
Working in relief last Tuesday, Familia gave up two runs on two hits, one of which was a homer. He walked one and fanned two.

RHP Brad Holt – Mesa Solar Sox – AFL
Holt, the AFL’s pitcher of the week for week one was at his best a week ago Saturday (3 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 5 K), but followed that up with a stinker on Friday: 2.1 IP, 3 H, 5 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 3 K.  In 11.1 innings in the AFL, Holt has now walked eight and fanned 12.  The control problems, continue.

LHP Eric Niesen – Mesa Solar Sox – AFL
Niesen was better than Holt on Friday, tossing 1.2 scoreless innings, but on the whole, he’s been hit very hard.  In 6.1 innings in the AFL, he’s yielded 14 hits, eight runs, and three walks against six strikeouts.

RHP Armando Rodriguez – Leones del Escogido – DWL
Rodriguez made his only appearance for the Leones a week ago Saturday, tossing a scoreless inning with a strikeout.  Since then: nothing.

LHP Raul Valdes – Tores del Este – DWL
Valdes tossed 5.1 shutout innings on Thursday, yielding just two hits and a walk while fanning eight.  Why am I writing about Raul Valdes?  Mostly to point out something out about the level of play at this point in the DWL:  in 7.1 innings, he’s given up four hits, fanned 10, and walked one.

Brad Holt was named the Arizona Fall League’s Pitcher of the Week for Week 2.  In his nine AFL innings, he’s allowed four hits, four walks and struck out nine.  Scouts have noted that he’s working in the low 90s and touching 95 and been working on an upper-80s cutter-type offering that is, to quote one, just “meh” right now.

Daniel Murphy, despite going hitless in his first two games had three doubles in his third, which was enough to earn Aguilas’s team Player of the Week, says Adam Rubin.

You can follow all of the Mets playing in winter-ball here at MLB.com’s aggregate page.  They’ve had this feature for a few years on their proprietary site, but I hadn’t seen it publicly available before.  So good job MLB.com.