Collect the Mets

Auditions for 2014 are now open

It’s been a rough year for the Mets. Starting pitchers have been dropping all season long, with Johan Santana and Shaun Marcum unlikely to return, Jeremy Hefner out for all of 2014, and Matt Harvey due to be ready for Opening Day, either in 2014 or 2015. David Wright missed two months, Ike Davis and Ruben Tejada went down just when they were trying to make a case to come back in 2014 as more than AAA org filler, Bobby Parnell and Scott Rice saw their seasons end with surgery, Jeurys Familia and Frank Francisco missed most of the season… All of this does open doors for the prospects though, until they too suffer an injury like Wilmer Flores did and is still trying to recover from while also getting playing time (the opposite of recovery…). If you want a job in baseball in 2014, the Mets are the team for you.

Take starting pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka and Aaron Harang, for instance. Both earned release from their previous teams and were quickly snatched up by the Mets. Both are aiming for a starting job in 2014, for another team. I’m not sure Mets fans could take much more of either of them, but I guess you need someone to pitch those innings with Montero, deGrom, and now Wheeler shut down. Lost amid the rotation shakeup is the outstanding job Dillon Gee has been doing; he should be getting a nice little contract in the offseason to keep him under team control at a reasonable price for the next few years. The bullpen has its share of 2014 candidates as well, with Vic Black and Sean Henn making their Mets debuts, Carlos Torres splitting time between starting and relief, and Jeurys Familia, Pedro Feliciano, and Tim Byrdak back after recovering from injuries. Frank Francisco is almost certainly not coming back next year, but fill-in closer LaTroy Hawkins wants to come back and the Mets want him back, so hopefully the Mets don’t go and screw this up like everyone expects them to.

The outfield is nothing but 2014 auditions with the departure of Marlon Byrd, but more playing time for Juan Lagares and recent call-up Matt den Dekker can’t be a bad thing. As for Eric Young Jr., well, there’s always a backup role to shoot for. Around the infield, Lucas Duda is at first trying to prove that he’s a first baseman, which is better than when he was an outfielder trying to prove that he’s a first baseman. Juan Centeno beat out Francisco Pena for the third catcher spot and, after Ruben Tejada’s freak injury, Wilfredo Tovar made his MLB debut after spending the season in AA. Barring another freak injury, that should be it for the 2013 Mets, leaving them with 28 new faces. That’s tied with 2006 for the 5th most new Mets in the club’s history, behind only 1962 (45), 1967 (35), and 2002 and 2004 (29). Interestingly, those 2002 and 2004 newcomers include one current Met in each year (Pedro Feliciano from 2002 and David Wright from 2004), while no current Mets debuted in 2006. Daniel Murphy in 2008 is the next oldest debut on the active roster behind Feliciano and Wright (next is Niese, then nothing until 2010). With such a young team, just about everything should be up for grabs next year.

John Buck	Marlon Byrd	Collin Cowgill	Brandon Lyon
1 April 2013	1 April 2013	1 April 2013	1 April 2013
Scott Atchison	Scott Rice*	Greg Burke	LaTroy Hawkins
1 April 2013	1 April 2013	3 April 2013	3 April 2013
Aaron Laffey	Anthony Recker	Juan Lagares*	Shaun Marcum
7 April 2013	7 April 2013	23 April 2013	27 April 2013
Andrew Brown	Rick Ankiel	David Aardsma	Carlos Torres
3 May 2013	13 May 2013	8 June 2013	16 June 2013
Zack Wheeler*	Eric Young Jr.	Gonzalez Germen*	Wilmer Flores*
18 June 2013	19 June 2013	12 July 2013	6 August 2013
Travis d’Arnaud*	Daisuke Matsuzaka	Matt den Dekker*	Vic Black
17 August 2013	23 August 2013	29 August 2013	2 September 2013
Sean Henn	Aaron Harang	Juan Centeno*	Wilfredo Tovar*
9 September 2013	12 September 2013	18 September 2013	22 September 2013

*MLB Debut

Previous Editions

All-animal edition

Another April means another round of players making their Mets debuts. The action started, fittingly, on April Fools’ Day with three newcomers taking the field. John Buck, acquired in the R.A. Dickey trade shortly after being traded to the Blue Jays in the Marlins’ 2012-2013 salary dump, Collin Cowgill, picked up from Oakland for a redundant Jefry Marte, and Marlon Byrd, fresh off being released by two teams and suspended for 50 games, all secured Opening Day starting jobs, kicking off their respective “days until trade/release/demotion” pools. I’ll go with Byrd getting released by mid-May, Buck sliding back into a backup/mentor role by then and getting traded in mid-July, and Cowgill getting sent down in August when his offense lags and Matt den Dekker offers better defense.

Continuing the animal theme, Brandon Lyon became the first new pitcher of the year, relieving Jon Niese after 6 2/3 innings in the season opener. I have to figure that LaTroy Hawkins will be up next… No, Scott Atchison. That’s an animal, right? Close enough. Then Scott Rice made his long overdue Major League debut. Not quite an animal… Come on, Mets, you’re killing me here. Just put Hawkins in so I can close this out.

April 3rd brought with it a new crop of relievers, starting with Greg Bur…ke. Damn, so close. Then finally, after going through almost the entire bullpen, LaTroy Hawkins made his Mets debut. And with that, we’re done here until Shaun Marcum’s spot in the rotation gets figured out. See you next month…

No relief in sight

A month into the 2013 season, the Mets have already had a fair amount of roster shakeup. Aaron Laffey and Anthony Recker wrapped up the first week’s debuts, but Laffey wouldn’t stick around long before being designated for assignment and claimed on waivers by the Blue Jays, who will claim just about anyone these days. After predictably failing to impress the Jays, Laffey received his second DFA of the month, this time passing through waivers and electing to become a free agent so he could sign a minor league deal with the Dodgers. Greg Burke took a more direct route to the minors via a flight to Las Vegas. Shaun Marcum finally made his long-awaited debut at the end of the month, but not before Juan Lagares earned a call-up. None of this seemed to matter as the Mets took a decent start and went straight into mid-season form, concluding the month with a six-game losing streak by snatching a 15-inning walk-off loss from the jaws of victory followed up with a mercifully quick wild pitch walk-off loss. Both with a one-run lead going into the bottom of the 9th. Against the Marlins. It’s too soon to close the books on the 2013 season, but the newcomers aren’t providing much hope for a turnaround. Time to start counting the days until Zack Wheeler is rescued from the desert.

Wheels up

It may be hard to imagine, but things have actually gotten worse since the last update. Rick Ankiel was brought in (after being released by the Astros) to bolster the outfield. That went about as well as you would expect. When calling on a top pitching prospect from 13 years ago didn’t work, the Mets tried calling up a top pitching prospect from this year. Worth a shot I guess. With Wheeler now where he belongs, Rafael Montero begins his incubation period before a likely 2014 call-up. But before we get to Wheeler, there are a few June roster shakeups to go over.

A day after Ankiel got his long-overdue DFA, Ike Davis was sent to Vegas in a demotion that everyone saw coming from a mile away. Davis was given Mike Baxter and Rob Carson as traveling companions, with Josh Satin, Collin Cowgill, and Josh Edgin called up to replace them in what can’t be called much more than a change-of-scenery move. The head-scratcher of the month came a week later when Carlos Torres, a mediocre journeyman reliever, was set to opt out of his contract if not called up to the majors. In a typical Mets move, Torres was called up and Greg Burke, one of the few effective relievers in the Mets pen, was sent down to make room. Torres also needed to be added to the 40-man roster, so Collin McHugh, a young pitcher who has had some success as a starter and reliever in the past year, was DFA’d (and later traded for Eric Young Jr.). All so the Mets could hang on to someone whose best qualifications are “warm body with arm attached.” I suppose that’s a step up from a few of the other pitchers in the organization…

And that brings us to Zack Wheeler. Acquired in trade for Carlos Beltran in 2011, Wheeler’s arrival has been one of the few things to look forward to in the Mets’ dismal 2013 season, so it’s good to see that he’s up and here to stay. Until tomorrow when he gets sent down for a few days before he gets called up again for real. Hooray for the doubleheader 26th man rule! It’s best not to overthink these things. There should be plenty more new faces in the coming months as the Mets continue their spiral into oblivion.

Let the kids play

By some miracle, the addition of Zack Wheeler, Carlos Torres, and Gonzalez Germen, the acquisition of Eric Young Jr., and the returns of former top prospect Jenrry Mejia and everyday lefty Pedro Feliciano managed to pull the Mets out of their death spiral. With the Mets now just barely threatening to maybe start to look like they could possibly make a run at the second wild card, they stood pat at the trade deadline and refused to deal the resurgent Marlon Byrd or the newly anointed closer Bobby Parnell. Byrd held steady, but Parnell developed neck issues, Eric Young Jr. returned to being Eric Young Jr, and David Wright tried to play through an injury and could now be out for the season. Don’t buy your playoff tickets just yet. Oh yeah, and Mejia’s offseason surgery might come a bit earlier than planned, so the 6-man rotation that Wheeler entered into is starting to look like a 4-man rotation two months later.

The Wright injury at least provided the answer to the question of where to play Wilmer Flores, the Mets’ latest “His bat will play, but what do we do with him for the other half of the game?” prospect. First base was looking like an option, but Ike Davis, seemingly feeling the pressure to put up or take a hike, managed to cobble together a serviceable enough performance. There’s still no long-term solution, but at least Flores can get regular playing time, which has worked out well for Juan Lagares after he spent about a month forgotten on the bench. Flores started off as an RBI machine, but an ankle injury set him back a bit. We’ll just have to wait and see how he finishes out the year

Another non-traditional roster move provided an opportunity to catching prospect Travis d’Arnaud when John Buck’s wife was due to deliver a baby Bentley in early, mid, and/or late August. Once Buck got the call to go on paternity leave, d’Arnaud got the call to the big leagues. His .000/.500/.000 triple slash after two games isn’t particularly useful for evaluations, so he could take over the primary catcher role from Buck for the remainder of the season. With the playoffs no longer a possibility, the best course of action is to give the young players every chance to succeed and then figure out what to do with everyone in the offseason.