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Last night was Minor League Baseball’s Opening Day, and the Mets’ four full-season affiliates were in action.
Here is a recap of how each team began the season, and how their 
top prospects performed:
New Orleans (AAA): 5-2 win over Nashville
LHP Adam Bostick pitched five effective innings, allowing just one earned run on six hits and a walk, striking out seven. RHP Willie Collazo pitched 3.2 innings of strong relief, giving up his only run in the ninth. He was relieved by Carlos Muniz, who slammed the door for his first save.
SS Anderson Hernandez, hitting lead off, was 2-for-5 with a double, a run and two RBI, while 2B Argenis Reyes – impressive during spring training – was 3-for-4 with an RBI and a run scored.
Binghamton (AA): 2-0 win over Trenton
LHP Jon Niese tossed five shutout innings against the Trenton Thunder – the Yankees’ Eastern League affiliate. Niese walked one and struck out five. Eddie Kunz pitched a scoreless ninth for the save.
At the plate, the B-Mets were held to just four hits. OF Fernando Martinez went 1-for-4 from the lead off spot, while DH Mike Carp hit a solo homer. 2B Emmanuel Garcia had the
B-Mets other RBI, on a ground out.
St. Lucie (A+): 8-3 loss to Vero Beach
Orlando Hernandez, in a rehab start, went five innings for the St. Lucie Mets, allowing two earned runs on three hits and a walk, striking out six. Brandon Nall took the loss in relief.
Lucas Duda, a seventh-round pick out of USC last year, was 2-for-4 with a double, a run scored and an RBI. Ruben Tejada,
an 18-year-old shortstop, was 1-for-5.
Savannah (A-): 2-0 win over Columbus
LHP Mike Antonini tossed six hitless innings against the Columbus Catfish, striking out four. Francisco Pena was 2-for-4 with an RBI.
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I’m starting to get excited about Niese.
…and in a bit of serendipitous posting, Kevin Goldstein at BP wrote:
Call it someone else’s hunch. While working on this pre-season’s Mets Top 11, two separate people inside the game pointed at Niese as having breakout potential. That might seem a strange choice–he’s a breaking-ball specialist, and last year’s numbers (a 4.29 ERA and 151 hits allowed in 134 1/3 innings) don’t inspire confidence. But team officials pointed at his slow and steady progress throughout the year and the fact that his fastball is hardly sub-standard. In his Double-A debut last night, a 2-0 win over Trenton, Niese was much more than sub-standard, needing to face just 17 batters to complete five shutout innings that including a hit, a walk, a five strikeouts. Mets fans desperate for anything resembling a prospect beyond Fernando Martinez, Niese just might be your guy.
I was at the game last night. Niese was pretty good. His fastball was consistently 91-92, going as high as 94 in the first inning. He was ahead of the count with a lot of first pitch strikes, and fooled a lot of hitters with his off speed pitches. I was disappointed to see him go only 5 innings, but it’s still early in the season. 5 strikeouts in 5 innings was nice to see.
Fernando followed up his hot spring training with a somewhat disappointing performance. Chease Wright made him look foolish striking out swinging at off speed pitches. He clearly needs some more time in the minors to learn pitch recognition and to not get too eager at the plate. There was one spot with runners on (I can’t remember if this was before or after Mike Carp hit his first home run) where FMart took a huge cut at the first pitch trying to be a hero… and ended up popping out weakly. The kid’s got to slow down a little and see a few more pitches.
Eddie Kunz came in for the save, and he was probably jittery with nerves. He had trouble finding the strike zone and got behind the count for almost all the batters he faced. In addition to the pressure of opening day, I was cheering his name as he came on the field (in a mostly empty stadium – it got pretty cold at the end), and he might not have expected fans to be aware of him so early on. Anyways, the catch came out… had a good mound conference, and he was able to get himself back in the game…. finishing off the final batter with a swinging strikeout (95mph).
Anyways, it was a good game and really exciting to see these guys in action after hearing about them all off season.
Baseball is back. And I’m loving it.
All in all, a solid day for our minor league affiliates. Can we expect this sort of an organization-wide recap regularly? (I understand it would be a little much to do daily, but maybe a weekly recap every Friday morning? Come to think of it, didn’t someone do a daily rundown last year, albeit without the fancy graphics?) I think it’s great feature, although it does make me a little nervous that some readers may get a little too attached to some of our minor leaguers…
Toby Hyde’s Mets Minor League Report is a pretty frequently updated blog dedicated to the minors. Also, the Scout.com forums feature a board where we post daily highlights threads and discussions.
That’s right. Toby’s was the one I was thinking of. Thanks.
Awesome segement…. i hope this becomes a regular… keep us up to date on prospects… another good job guys
Typical Anderson Hernandez–good enough at every level, except the majors.
Why do they use a DH in the minors. When the pitcher makes it to the big leagues he wont know how to hit and when the DH makes it he wont have enough experience in the field.
probably because it’s not worth having pitchers get hurt batting and running the bases.. I agree though, they should let/make these kids hit.
If you play an American League affiliate, you always play with a DH. no matter who is the home team.
i would say that although it’s true that P’s will need to bat in the NL, you are primarily concerned with their pitching abilities. More than worrying about an injury while batting or running, you get to see the offensive abilities of an additional hitter as a DH vs the pitcher batting whose offense doesnt matter as much. instead of seeing 8 position players develop/perform offensively, you get to 9 do it, plus the pitcher works on his primary role. just a guess
That kid Orlando Hernandez sounds like he has a bright future! Hopefully we don’t trade him for C.C. Sabathia or someone like that.
haha!
PLEASE let Niese be the real deal. Can’t the Mets have a young pitcher who goes through their system work out for once? Just by dumb luck?
I believe it’s the “Blind Squirrel Theory.” Eventually, the blind squirrel does find a nut.
Call me nuts, but maybe Niese proves the theory.
adam bostick might make that owens/lindstrom trade look okay after all.
If he can keep the walks and wildness down like last night be could be very effective at AAA and above. Would be odd if he was the best player in that trade.
Why do minor league teams always have cooler logos and mascots?
…because if all they had was players no one knows and useless stupid promotions between every half inning, no one would go?
If Lucas Duda makes the team, I guess we’ll be singing Camptown Races at Citifield.
Actually Niese didn’t sound like he was in control in the first inning. They were making strong contact, deep fly ball (over the OF’s head, deep foul up the line for two of the outs). I stopped listening after the first inning since he sounded so average.
Fernandez, batting 1st in line up didn’t have a stellar day either.
Just one game and it sounds like Niese settled down for the remaining 4 innings…I should have kept on listening!
I have the irrational expectation that these two guys will explode in this league so early that they will have to be promoted to the triples.
All they could talk about with Fernandez was how adept he was at batting but how raw he was as a fielder and base runner. It is a good thing that he is getting a chance to develop more at this level rather than getting pushed.
Was at the B-Mets game last night. Niese did look good. He hit low 90’s on his fastball and had sharp movement on his breaking stuff. He kept his pitched down and was helped out by an ump who had a strike zone that stretched down to batters’ ankles. The only hit he gave up was a grounder at the second baseman that took a bad hop.
it was a cold night and none of the batters looked like they wanted to make contact. Carp’s shot, that easily cleared the fence in right center, was the only really well hit ball of the night. F-Mart had a clean single up the middle, but otherwise looked somewhat over matched at the plate.
Hey! I was at the game too. Are you local or just visiting?
I agree with your assessment (see my post above). The only thing I might disagree with is your implication that there weren’t many hard hit balls. I was sitting over by right field, and there were quite a few hard hit foul balls that came my way.
I was at the bing mets game last night too. Niese looked great and so did Kunz closing it out. I was by 3rd base and almost got hit by a line drive that hit an empty seat 3 seats away from me. Cold night but i got F-mart to sign my hat so it was all worth it
I’m in Ithaca and get down to the games once in a while. There were some hard fouls, but not much staying in play. Just seemed like a night when everyone was cold and the ump was in a hurry to get inside.
Nice to hear Pena got a couple of hits. Let’s hope he has a bounceback year and gets people excited about him again. He’s still got loads of time to develop, being an 18-yo catcher.
GREAT JOB, JORDAN.
This is excellent stuff.
This Argenis Reyes kid showed a lot of moxie in Spring Training. If Castillo goes down, might we get a look? I know AHern is usually the first one up, but he has shown no signs that he can hit.