Balentien, Evans, and Other Stuff to Look Forward to

The Mets announced today that they are placing Gary Sheffield on the DL retroactive to July 17th. That means Sheffield won’t return until August 2nd, leaving the Mets with a gaping hole in left field the next eight games, including tonight’s contest. In other words, Nick Evans can easily accumulate 30-40 at-bats over that times period. Afterwards. once Sheffield proves himself healthy, the Mets should trade him elsewhere. Perfect. Unfortunately, Omar and Jerry probably prefer “trying to get Fernando Tatis’s bat going” or cash in on their $900,000 investment in Cory Sullivan.

In other news, the Mariners DFA’d Wladimir Balentien. The Mets should look into acquiring him to play center (left, if they really hat Evans that much), or at least stash him in Buffalo. I like Angel Pagan- he has a quick bat and has hit well so far in limited action (.310/.361/.425). Like the Francoeur move, however, if Balentien can untap his potential, it can pay huge dividends for the Mets.

Last year, Balentien made his major league debut with Seattle and hit .202/.250/.342 in 260 plate appearances. His xBABIP was .306. This year, in 170 plate appearances,he has hit  .213/.271/.355. ZIPS does not project him to hit all that better the rest of the way (.703 OPS). His plate discipline is more or less the same as Jeff Francoeur’s, and his fielding is terrible.

Still, he’s got less than 400 at-bats under his belt in the big leagues. He is also just two years removed from mashing AAA and being rated the Mariners number five prospect. Like most young hitters, he can hit a fastball a mile, but struggles with off-speed stuff.  We are not going to see the likes of Ike Davis, Lucas Duda, or Fernando Martinez until September, so there is no reason not to try and strike gold with him. I’m guessing  he’ll cost something of similar value (Lance Broadway?) or a C-level prospect (Mike Antonini, Sean Ratliff, etc.), but nothing the Mets should lose sleep over.

B-Mets “Underage Drinking”

 

Kind of irrelevant in light of everything else, I guess. But from Adam Rubin’s zinger in the Daily News today:

While the 52-year-old Bernazard’s actions were over-the-top no matter what the motivation, alleged underage drinking on the team apparently was one motivation for the eruption, an organization source said. Still, sending players to counseling rather than challenging them to a rumble might have been a more appropriate course of action.

Apparently, Bernazard’s incompetent enough to screw up his own cop out. There have been only two players on the B-Mets active roster all year who are younger than 21 (Ruben Tejada and Jenrry Mejia). Rubin also contends that this incident occured within the last week or so. Mejia, however, has not pitched since June 23rd.

Regardless, even if Bernanzard is the new Al Goldis/Bill Livesey, there is no way I see the Wilpon’s letting him  gt away with this going public. It is a question of when, not if.

Fernando Nieve to DL; Cory Sullivan to Bigs

Not much to say about Nieve.  His peripherals were terrible, and if it weren’t for his Jorge Sosa esque first couple of starts, Jon Niese would already be here. Still, he has never really gotten a fair shake in the big leagues (just 143.2 career innings), and has the stuff to make him a serviceable reliever or starter elsewhere. Best of luck to him.

Taking his place will be Cory Sullivan. Sullivan, a seventh round pick for the Rockies back in 2001, is yet another player in the Angel Pagan/Jeremy Reed mold. It’s mind-boggling enough to watch this team’s free-fall. To watch them lose with just two players (Daniel Murphy and Jeff Francoeur), who have any reasonable chance of improving is becoming more boring by the day . No wonder why so many average fans seem psyched about Niese’s performance lately.

What’s more interesting is why Sullivan got the nod over Nick Evans. Jerry Manuel’s argument that Sullivan is “more versatile” than Evans in bunk.  This year, Sullivan, a natural center fielder, has played center almost exclusively for the Bisons. In fact, over his entire major league career (355 games), he has played just 27 games in left and 14 in right. In six seasons in the minors, he played just 47 in right and 57 in left. Since 2007, he played a grand total of eight games in the corner outfield spots. Glancing over his defensive stats, he is not particularly good in the outfield period. 

This tells me that the Mets think Gary Sheffield should be back any day now, and don’t want to take the trouble to promote Evans and send him down before Saturday (when Niese will start).  If the Mets once again (purposely or not) underestimated Sheffield’s injury, however, this costs Evans another oppurtunity in the majors for a team that is more or less done and needs to find out about its’ young talent.

Man without a Party

 

The recent trade sending Ryan Church packing south in return for Jeff Francoeur has put me in the awkward position of defending a trade contrary to the opinion of fans and bloggers who I usually agree with. Entering the All-Star Break, the Mets are six-and-half games back of first place in the NL East and the Wild Card. In addition, they are at least two-three weeks away from anyone meaningful returning. Hardly anyone aside from David Wright can be considered above average, and their rotation is Santana and numerous question marks.

Hence, this team is not making the playoffs.  As I wrote at Flushing University, the Mets are better off losing with Jeff Francoeur in the outfield than Ryan Church, since Francoeur is young enough to still cash in on his promise. I am not sure if this is Omar’s motive; I just learned today that the Mets will either have to pay Francoeur at least $2.7 million next year, or non-tender him, which indicates Omar truly thinks he can make a difference down the stetch.

Regardless, last year at Fan Graphs, David Golebiewski wrote this about Francoeur’s 2008 season:

He did experience pretty awful luck on balls in play, as his expected BABIP (.327) was much higher than his actual BABIP (.277). If we adjust for that, his line improves to .289/.344/.409.

That is right. Just a year ago, Francoeur outperformed what ZIPS projects Ryan Church to finish with this year (.273/.335/.397). Granted, his LD% this year (18.2%), warrants his .285 BABIP, but I expect we will see quite a bit more power out of Frenchy before the season’s over. But the changes in his game may not be immediate, both at the plate and in the field. But if given time to settle into a new environment and work with Howard Johnson and co. he can be ready to go as a fourth outfielder or even starter in 2010.

Tim Marchman is certainly no fan of this deal, but props to him for recognizing this justification:

1) The Mets have given up the season.At least in what I’ve been reading this doesn’t seem to have received much attention, but this seems to me to be by far the most important thing about the move. You can say that the people who run the Mets are fools, and maybe they are in a global sense; still, their computers work just like yours. They’re surely aware that between the beginning of 2008 and the time they traded for him Francoeur hit .240/.290/.357, and that even if they can fix him he’s not a solution for this year. They’re also surely aware that they just filled a gaping hole in the lineup of a division rival. This is a white flag move.