AAA
There’s nothing here. Well, Nickeas hit .214/.286/.304 in 60 games.
Raul Chavez, at the tender age of 38, hit .199/.214/.253 in 80 games, which actually was the most games any Bison played behind the plate.
Solomon Manriquez, who turned 29 in September bopped .321/.356/.429 in 27 games for the Bisons after a much less impressive .254/.304/.388 in 60 games for AA Binghamton. The Mets signed Manriquez out of the independent Atlantic League in 2010, and he’s been a good organizational player the last two years in AA and AAA.
AA
This was not a productive position for the B-Mets.
Kai Gronauer (pictured) led the B-Mets in games caught with 51, hitting .253/.326/.373 at age 24. His season was interrupted by a hamstring injury. Gronauer is a good communicator and a good interview, but threw out 29% of opposing base stealers (17 of 58). That’s not enough to even be Nickeas.
At age 25, Jean Luc Blaquiere hit .229/.368/.331 in 38 games behind the dish and 47 overall while nabbing 32% of potential thieves (16 of 50).
Dusty Ryan, who turned 27 in September, spent the second half of the season with Binghamton, where he hit .265/.351/.496. Ryan appeared in a combined 27 games for the Tigers in the big leagues in 2008 and 2009 before getting stuck in AAA with the Padres affiliate in Portland for all of 201.
A+
After a foot injury held him to 10 games in advanced-A in 2010, Francisco Pena returned and hit a whopping .223/.275/.310 in 95 games, 91 of which were spent behind the plate. He’s listed at 6’2″ and 230 pounds and it appeared soft when I saw him briefly in August. He threw out just 25% of potential base stealers (22 of 87). I don’t know what the Mets will do with Pena, who will be 22 in ten days, but sending him to St. Lucie for a fourth season in 2012 doesn’t seem like the right answer. However, his performance does not suggest that he’s at all ready for double-A.
Pena’s back-up, Juan Centeno, who turns 22 in November, is interesting. He’s tiny (listed at 5’9″, 172 lbs) but he makes contact and hit .318/.368/.382 in 157 AB spread over 52 games. The Mets rewarded him with a trip to the Arizona Fall League, where he can prove he deserves a spot on the 40-man roster. He’ll be rule 5 eligible this winter, and while it’s a stretch to think a team would want to carry him on their MLB roster all year in 2012, the Nationals did pluck Jesus Flores from the Mets straight from the Florida State League. Centeno threw out 39% of opposing base-stealers (19 of 49). After backing up Blake Forsythe in Brooklyn in 2010, and Pena in St. Lucie in 2011, he seems poised to grab the bulk of the playing time in double-A Binghamton next year.
A
Coming into the year, Baseball America ranked Blake Forsythe as the 29th best prospect in the Mets system, the only catcher to make their Mets top 30. Forsythe earned the ranking because he flashed some power, and a strong throwing arm. Then he hit just .220/.295/.353 in 50 games in the first half of the SAL season. He was much better in the second half (and turned 22), both at the plate and in the field. At the plate, he drew nearly twice as many walks in the second half (36) as he did in the first half (20) while doubling his homer output from three to six while hitting .249/.368/.431. That’s the good news. The bad news? He still struck out 68 times in 55 games. For the year, he fanned in 28% of his at-bats.
Behind the plate, Forsythe, to my eyes, became a better receiver, and more adept at blocking balls, especially those to his right. He threw out just 29% of opposing runners (20-for-68) this year, suggesting a need to improve his footwork and release.
Albert Cordero (pictured) split time nearly evenly with Forsythe. For my money, he was the most improved Gnat hitter from Opening Day through the end of the season, and it wasn’t particularly close. Sure, he made some minor mechanical tweaks to put him in a better hitting position, and improve his balance, but the major difference was that he stopped chasing everything. Cordero hit .219/.248/.297 with eight extra base hits and four walks in 45 games in the first half and .330/.373/.439 with 15 extra-base hits and 11 walks in 59 games in the second half. He became very good at taking pitches on the outer-half into right field.
It’s nice that he hit, but he has the tools to become a strong defender. He has really good feet and soft hands. He threw out 40% of the runners who attempted to run on him (24-for-60) which would have been good enough for fourth in the South Atlantic League. However, he could get sloppy at times, as his 17 errors and 14 passed balls attest.
We’ll get into the short-season catchers in a second post.
