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In response to the highly-successful Arizona Fall League (AFL), Minor League Baseball brought back the eight-years defunct Hawaii Winter Baseball League (HWB).
MLB established it as an AFL of sorts for younger, less developed top prospects, along with an added wrinkle: the league also includes some of the top prospects and best young players in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB).
This year, the Mets sent seven prospects to play for the Waikiki Beach Boys, and while the results have been up and down, there are some very promising signs coming off the island for the Mets.
Last night, Nick Carr, a 20-year-old hard-throwing right hander that pitched for Brooklyn this season, made his first start in the HWB, tossing three scoreless innings. Add that to a scoreless relief outing, and he’s got a blank ERA, having allowed just one hit in six aggregate innings for a .059 BAA.
Offensively, Met infielders have been impressive. Emmanuel Garcia, a 21-year old Canadian-born second baseman, is hitting .348 with five doubles, two triples and eight stolen bases in 66 at bats. He’s scored 13 runs in 17 games, and has walked eight times compared to seven strikeouts. All this after hitting .256 in the extreme pitcher friendly Florida State League, albeit with 34 steals.
Hector Pellot, 20-year old Puerto Rican second baseman and 2005 fourth round pick, carries a .283 average in 60 at bats, with a homer and 7 RBI. He’s continuing to show slow but steady progress after hitting .274 with 19 doubles, 3 triples and 7 homers for low A Savannah, then going .304 with a homer in a very late season promotion to St. Lucie.
Lucas Duda, a six foot four, 225 pound 1B/OF taken out of USC this past June, is hitting .389 with four extra base hits and five RBI in 18 at bats. After showing limited power with USC, he hit .299 with 20 doubles, three triples and four homers for Brooklyn.
A bit old for the league at 22, Dan Murphy, third baseman who put up solid numbers for St. Lucie this spring, is at .271 in Hawaii. He’s hit six doubles and a homer, and has 13 RBI in 17 games. He hit .285 with 34 doubles, three triples and 11 homers in a full season in the Florida State League, driving in 78 runs, walking 42 times and only striking out on 61 occasions.
Not so hot are catcher Sean McCraw and righty reliever Brant Rustich.
McCraw, a 21-year old who split the year hitting .268 between Savannah and St. Lucie, is just 3-for-31 for Waikiki, striking out 12 times, though he’s drawn eight bases on balls.
The bases on balls have been the real problem for Rustich. Drafted in the second round out of UCLA in June, he lost his closers’ job for the Bruins due to wildness. He had pinpoint control in 23 innings between Kingsport and Brooklyn, walking just two while K’ing 22 with 97 miles per hour heat.
Unfortunately for Rustich, he’s lost the location of his fastball again, walking eight in 10.1 innings. Allowing fourteen hits hasn’t helped, and he’s got a 5.56 ERA for the Beach Boys, though he has a 3-0 record.
…carr and rustich are big, hard-throwing right handers, and both could make big leaps this season, especially carr…pellot’s progress is encouraging, as a lot of people were questioning the pick back in 2005…he’s still just 20, so things are looking up for him…
…garcia, of course, is having the best fall league season of all, and as a speedy middle infielder, could become a big part of the Mets’ system if he continues this success next season, when he’ll most likely start the year in Double-A Binghamton…
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Free Emmanual Garcia! and Free Lucas Duda
That way, it can be Duda, Duda day!
Oh wait, I forget. These guys are in the Mets farm system, so they are all garbage and will never even be good trade bait, nevermind successful for the Mets.
Just one of the many things I have learned here at Metsblogs, thanks to some of the wiser posters.
Well they’re not going to get us Santana, but point taken.
I’m still waiting for Omar Minaya to magically make some of these 17-18 year old international signings advance 5 years overnight so they can be ready to contribute like Carmona. Why can’t Omar advance the age and development of his players, while still finding a way to maintain the advancement of time on its current plane of existence? Clearly we should be looking into more physicists with a background in string theory.
“String theory”…holy hell…the science geek in me very much appreciated the reference…
Trying to interpret results from such small samples and in a league where we really don’t understand the level of talent is impossible to do. I think it makes sense to get some work in and to perhaps advance certain things like learning to bunt or hitting to right field consistently or trying out a slider as a new pitch. But how can we translate results from a pitcher who threw 4 innings so far?
I guess I should thank you for the updates and move on but I frankly don’t see the value in these reports in particular unless you line them up with other major leaguers who have gone to the league and how they performed.
Say for example, Verlander pitched in the AFL and he threw 15 innings and struck out 12 and pitched to a 1.05 era etc. Or Jose Reyes played in Hawaii as an 18 yr old and hit .235 etc
These samples are too small to judge the players, I agree. But their fall/witner results should be looked at in line with their play during the summer, providing a larger sample & giving us a decent picture of how they’re progressing.
Ideally, you’d like to see one or two of these guys seize the opportunity and raise their level of play in the AFL. David Wright did exactly that in 2003 after really slumping for two months that summer at St Lucie. Sure it was a small sample, but it was the best competition he faced to that point and it really put him on the fast track afterwards. He reported to Binghamton the following spring and we know the rest of the story. Less than a year after that summer slump in A ball, he was making a rookie splash at Shea.
I’m really liking the minor league updates. This is probably the only way I’ll hear about these guys because it’s hard to get this information elsewhere.
Good job Jordan! And keep the reports coming.
I love the minor league updates too. Thank you to whoever gives us these updates.
I wish there was more info on each pitcher other than simple stats. I’d like to know about what pitches they throw and in what situations they’ve struggled or done well. I’d also be curious to see what sort of projection there is on each guy, i.e. has he peaked? Or, is he supposed to add couple MPH to the fastball or develop any other pitches?
[...] wrote an interesting post today on Minors: Hot in HawaiiHere’s a quick [...]