Wow... Mazzoni touched 96 in his last start




Holt-•

Valdespin-•

Marte-


Ceciliani



Hughingson/Mazzoni


http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/mets/p ... er-of-week

The Holt/warmup note made me chuckle. If he threw like 5 mph harder, maybe he could be Mike MacDougal. As is, I'll hope he finds more consistency out of the pen - I'm still intrigued that he upped his K rate so much after that move.

I asked Rubin if he knew of the tiebreaker referenced in the Peavey LLWS story. That didn't make sense to me and I tried to figure it out. How could scoring LESS runs help them in a tiebreaker? Hopefully Adam knows it, it's bugging me right now.

As always, great piece. Really look forward to these.

I've only seen Holt this one time but he really wasn't impressive. He looked like Brian Stokes with less velocity. Insanely straight FB, curve was "ok" nice little drop to it. Granted it was his AAA debut so maybe he was nervous but so far I don't see a major league asset.

Mazzoni hitting 96 is very good.

I hoped we would have gotten more in-depth reports on the other guys he features, like Peavey and Hutchingson. I know he says low-90's for both, but that sounds like general info aggregated somewhere. I think Toby actually had Hutchingson more 88-90 than "low 90's" but who knows I guess.

Also Germen would be something I'd like to hear. Most reports say he's pretty much just a chanegup specialist, and Toby gave him a giant "meh" yesterday even as he was pitching well. I called him the least exciting guy we have starting games right now and maybe that was a bit harsh, considering his results, but a really old guy who survives on fooling hitters much younger than him without a good fastball (I don't know if this is true) or breaking ball at all (we do know this to be true) will almost certainly max out soon.

Toby pre-season on Huchingson

"Huchingson is lanky at 6’5″ and batters have a tough time picking up the ball out of a octopus-like motion that’s all arms and legs. He was mostly in the upper 80s with his fastball with a 90s sprinkled in. He calls his breaking ball a curve, but it has a lot of slider action to it out of a low arm-slot."

Toby is probably more accurate BUT it's not IMPOSSIBLE that 88-90 is 90-92 this early in the year with less wear on the arm/off-season work


Germen-

"RHP Gonzalez Germen combined to three-hit the Crabs. His three start line: 1.65 ERA, 16.1 IP, 15 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 14 K. Germen’s an older righty, who’s moved through the system one level a year. He’s a lean 6’1″. In terms of stuff, he throws his fastball around 90 mph and complements it with a change-up that he throws a lot. His breaking ball a year ago was rough."

I think Rosario is worth monitoring. Goldstein prior to last year cited his FB as being very good. Low 90's with plus movement. Not saying he's going to be anything at all but he seems like less than "nothing". Better chance he's ever in CitiField then say Angel Cuan.

Peavey pretty openly sounds like he goes out of his way to pitch to contact (his BB rate is ridiculous). I wonder if they would ever experiment with him throwing LESS balls in the strikezone.

Agree on Rosario over most of those starting arms. I think besides Mazzoni, the most interesting arms on that staff are Hutch, Whitenton (who flashed plus velocity in the AFL), Rosario and Kolarek (who could be on the Edgin track soon and has K'ed nearly 10 per 9 in the minors to date). Aside from Mazzoni, all are almost certainly relievers.

The starting stuff is mostly just a big bag of "meh" to me.

Yeah. I think you have identified the few "interesting" arms in St. Lucie, Goeddel obviously joins that group for me once he's off the DL. I'd probably go

Mazzoni
Goeddel
Hutch
Kolarek
Whitenton
Rosario

If I had to rank them but Hutch/Kolarek is very close for me. I think Mazzoni based on stuff/draft status is the clear #1 arm there.

Lots of nice velocity reports on some of those guys, especially Huchingson and Mazzoni.

I'd rank Chase second behind Mazzoni among those guys based on last year's results and being left handed.

It is some consolation watching the Mets bullpen this year and last that there does appear to be a lot of help on the way, eventually.

Unbelievably most of it is from the left side. Who is even our best RH relief "prospect"? Nobody stands out. Maybe McHugh if he lands in the pen with his slightly "unique" delivery? Not much at all.

Adam explained the tiebreaker to me for anyone who was curious as I was:

Peavey's team was 2-0 heading into their final game of the round-robin play, against a team who was 1-1. The other 2 teams had already completed their round robin play, at 2-1 and 0-3. Therefore, if Peavey's team won, they automatically advanced with a 3-0 record, but if they lost, they would be put into a 3-way tie with only 2 teams advancing.

The tiebreakers went as follows: with all 3 tied, the team with the lowest runs allowed per innings played first advanced, then the winner of the previous head-to-head matchup of the remaining two teams would be the second team to advance. Peavey's team had already played and beat the 2-1 team, so they would win the head to head matchup tiebreaker there. Obviously they would lose it to the 1-1 team if there was a tiebreaker, since that would mean they lost that game. So, in the event of a 3-way tie, to advance, Peavey's team needed to the team they were about to face to be the lowest runs allowed winner, forcing them into the head-to-head tiebreaker with the other squad. The 2-1 team had allowed 7 runs to date in the tournament, the 1-1 team just; hence, had Peavey's team thrown the game by only scoring 2 or less runs, they would have advanced automatically, win or lose. They scored 4, lost, and did not advance.

Whew.