Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Mets draft seems okay by me
So the Mets got right handed pitcher Philip Humber of Rice University with the third pick of the 2004 draft and I don't have a whole lot to say about that. He's got great stats and scouting reports, as you would expect, but I personally don't know enough to really put them in context. What was the level of competition? How many others pitched similarly well? Did he succeed by excreting positively charged magnetic residue from his fingertips to avoid metal bats, making him ill-suited for major or even minor league success? Judging from the various expert testimonies, it seems the Mets got a pretty good pitcher out of a pretty thin draft and that he could wind up on a relatively fast track to the majors. Hopefully said track will have fewer detours than the one 2001 first rounder Aaron Heilman took.
Aside from Humber, the Mets got seven more pitchers with their eighteen picks, six of them righties. And they got five outfielders, although none before the tenth round. Pitching and outfielders were the obvious areas of need for the Mets, and they at least addressed each of them with quantity if not quality. The Mets have about two notable outfield prospects in their system in Victor Diaz and last year's first pick Lastings Milledge and while both are hitting well at the moment, both also have some glaring holes in their game that need to be worked out (Milledge's three bases on balls in seventy at bats gives him the better walk rate of the two). Unearthing a hidden jewel or two among those later picks sure would be helpful.
Of the fourteen men the Mets have selected in the first round since picking Jeromy Burnitz in 1990, only the Wilsons, Preston and Paul, have been above average major league players for any length of time, and Paul's length of time is pretty much just the one that's going on right now. There's still some hope for the last three, but they've all still got plenty to prove. Hopefully Humber will turn out a little better than Kirk Presley and Geoff Goetz, better even than Terrence Long and Jason Tyner. ¶ joe | 3:19 AM |
So the Mets got right handed pitcher Philip Humber of Rice University with the third pick of the 2004 draft and I don't have a whole lot to say about that. He's got great stats and scouting reports, as you would expect, but I personally don't know enough to really put them in context. What was the level of competition? How many others pitched similarly well? Did he succeed by excreting positively charged magnetic residue from his fingertips to avoid metal bats, making him ill-suited for major or even minor league success? Judging from the various expert testimonies, it seems the Mets got a pretty good pitcher out of a pretty thin draft and that he could wind up on a relatively fast track to the majors. Hopefully said track will have fewer detours than the one 2001 first rounder Aaron Heilman took.
Aside from Humber, the Mets got seven more pitchers with their eighteen picks, six of them righties. And they got five outfielders, although none before the tenth round. Pitching and outfielders were the obvious areas of need for the Mets, and they at least addressed each of them with quantity if not quality. The Mets have about two notable outfield prospects in their system in Victor Diaz and last year's first pick Lastings Milledge and while both are hitting well at the moment, both also have some glaring holes in their game that need to be worked out (Milledge's three bases on balls in seventy at bats gives him the better walk rate of the two). Unearthing a hidden jewel or two among those later picks sure would be helpful.
Of the fourteen men the Mets have selected in the first round since picking Jeromy Burnitz in 1990, only the Wilsons, Preston and Paul, have been above average major league players for any length of time, and Paul's length of time is pretty much just the one that's going on right now. There's still some hope for the last three, but they've all still got plenty to prove. Hopefully Humber will turn out a little better than Kirk Presley and Geoff Goetz, better even than Terrence Long and Jason Tyner. ¶ joe | 3:19 AM |
