Mets Not Yet Ready To Cut Ties With Emaus
Of the 19 players selected in December's Rule 5 Draft, only a handful made it through Spring Training and remained with their new club when the season began. One such player is Brad Emaus of the Mets (formerly of the Blue Jays), and manager Terry Collins told Newday's David Lennon that the team is going to give him the chance to develop into an everyday second baseman.
"When Brad Emaus made this club, there were some things discussed, and one of them is to give him a legitimate chance," said the skipper, who spoke with GM Sandy Alderson about Emaus on Friday. "Putting him in and out of the lineup — we're not going to get answers out of that, so I got him back in there."
Emaus has appeared in 12 of the team's first 13 games, but he's started just eight of them and only one in the last week as Daniel Murphy gets more playing time. The Mets also acknowledged that Emaus is being given greater leeway given his status as a Rule 5 Draft pick, since he must first clear waivers and be offered back to Toronto before he could be sent to the minors.
In 34 plate appearances, the 25-year-old is hitting just .200/.294/.200 with seven strikeouts and three GIDP's. Emaus did hit .290/.397/.476 with 15 homers and 13 steals between Double and Triple-A last year, so he certainly has offensive potential. Baseball America ranked him as New York's 21st best prospect in their Prospect Handbook.
Stark On Orioles, Beltran, Reyes, Carpenter
The Yankees weren’t counting on much from Kevin Millwood when they signed him to a minor league deal and, according to Jayson Stark of ESPN.com, that may be a good thing. Stark hears that Millwood “looks terrible” and isn’t throwing as hard as usual in extended Spring Training. Here’s Stark’s latest from around the league:
- An AL executive expects the Orioles to be one of the most active sellers in baseball if they fade this summer. With Vladimir Guerrero, Derrek Lee, J.J. Hardy and others on the roster, the O’s have a lot of potential trade chips.
- The Mets would ‘love’ to see Carlos Beltran play well enough to make himself appealing as a trade candidate. Scouts are already watching Beltran in case he’s available at the deadline.
- One NL scout says he’d recommend Jose Reyes on a two month rental, but wouldn’t advise committing to the shortstop long-term.
- Despite speculation that Chris Carpenter could be traded, most clubs expect the Cardinals to hold onto him. St. Louis holds a $15MM option for Carpenter in 2012 ($1MM buyout).
Olney On The Bullpen Market
Teams like the Yankees and White Sox are already encountering bullpen problems and it won’t be long before other clubs are looking for relief help as well. The Yankees aren’t optimistic about the current relief market, while Chicago’s search for an effective closer has manager Ozzie Guillen dreaming of Bobby Thigpen. As one GM points out to ESPN.com’s Buster Olney, lots of teams will be looking for bullpen help this summer and lots of effective pitchers should eventually become available.
Unless Heath Bell takes a massive discount to stay in San Diego, Olney suggests the Padres will deal him. The White Sox should be considered the early favorites to land Bell, Olney says.
Jonathan Broxton, Francisco Rodriguez and the Blue Jays and Rays relievers could also become available this summer. Jose Valverde will probably stay in Detroit unless the Tigers fall far out of the race, but Michael Wuertz (now on the disabled list) could be on the block even if Oakland contends.
Mets Notes: Feliciano, Collins, Mejia
The latest on the Mets after wrapping up a doubleheader against the Rockies at Citi Field…
- Andy Martino of the New York Daily News (via Twitter) says that reliever Boof Bonser will undergo Tommy John surgery next week. The 29-year-old was one of the team's top insurance options in Triple-A Buffalo.
- Pedro Feliciano has a 'damaged' shoulder, but Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News says "nobody should be blaming the Mets for this injury." The Yankees had the chance to look into the left-hander's medical reports before signing him and Feliciano didn't have problems early in Spring Training.
- New Mets manager Terry Collins went "ballistic" in a team-only meeting after last night's loss, one player told Mike Puma of the New York Post. David Wright said the message will help prevent the 4-7 Mets from getting emotionally deflated.
- Help may be on its way. Pitching prospect Jenrry Mejia says he's becoming a pitcher, rather than a thrower, according to Robert Emrich of MiLB.com. The 21-year-old has allowed no runs, five walks and six hits through 12 2/3 Triple-A innings so far in 2011, striking out 11.
- A bit of Mets history: though we think of recently-deceased Hall of Famer Duke Snider as a lifelong Dodger, the Giants purchased him from the Mets on this date in 1964.
Carlos Delgado Talks Career, Retirement
When Carlos Delgado cracked the Blue Jays’ Opening Day roster 17 years ago, the two-time defending World Champions knew the 21-year-old catching prospect was powerful. He had punished Southern League pitchers the year before, hitting 25 home runs, posting a .954 OPS and establishing himself as one of the best prospects in baseball. But when he had eight home runs after 13 games in April of 1994, everyone was surprised, including Delgado.
“I was a kid in a candy store,” he told MLBTR over the phone from Puerto Rico. “I’m at the big league level, I’m hitting, I’m hitting home runs and it’s great. I was on cloud nine."
Pat Gillick, a 2011 Hall of Fame inductee who was Toronto's GM at the time, credits Blue Jays scout Epy Guerrero for his role in discovering and signing Delgado in 1988. Seeing the teenager develop from a prospect to a big leaguer was nearly as exciting for Gillick as it was for Delgado.
"We all knew that he had tremendous power potential," Gillick recalled. "But potential is one [thing and] results and performance is what counts."
The Blue Jays weren’t sure of Delgado’s defense behind the plate, so they put him in a new position, left field. Brewers assistant GM Gord Ash was Toronto’s assistant GM at the time and he says Delgado’s hitting ability forced him onto the big league roster.
"Obviously his bat earned him the opportunity but we struggled as to where to play him defensively," Ash said in an email. "I think in retrospect that brief opportunity helped him better transition when he came back to stay."
Nearly two decades later, Delgado has announced that his playing days are over and the reasons for his retirement are firmly grounded in reality. His hips allow him to do normal daily activities, but they prevent him from swinging the way he once did.
Delgado had hoped to play in the majors again, so after a brief comeback attempt with the Red Sox last year, he underwent hip surgery in the fall and started preparing for the rigors of another MLB season. About two weeks ago, Delgado was watching video of his swing and he realized his playing career was over.
“I watched myself hit a few times and it didn’t resemble anything like the swing that I had, so at that time and with the discomfort I had, I knew that it wasn’t there anymore,” Delgado said.
Before his hips started limiting his mobility, Delgado was one of the most durable and powerful players in the game. He averaged 35 home runs and 148 games per season from 1996-2008, posting a .937 OPS over the course of that 13-year stretch. Now 38, Delgado finishes his career with 473 home runs, four of which came on a single night. Delgado won’t say his historic power outburst is the highlight of his career, but he acknowledges that it’s up there.
“That four home run night in September of 2003 was great, but I can also say that Opening Day 1994 was phenomenal because it was my first Opening Day at the big league level,” Delgado said. “I can look back to my first All-Star Game in 2000, which was a great experience. It was pretty surreal. Even when I was in Puerto Rico in 1995, I played for the so-called ‘dream team’ and we swept the Caribbean Series.”
Delgado spent four seasons with the Mets and another one with the Marlins, who signed him to a $52MM contract in 2005. Yet he spent most of his career – 12 seasons of it – in Toronto and he remains grateful that the Blue Jays didn’t give up on him when he didn’t work out as a catcher or a left fielder.
“They were patient with me,” he said. “The city embraced me like family. It was phenomenal having that opportunity and I met some great friends there like Shawn Green, Pat Hentgen, Jose Cruz Jr., Darrin Fletcher [and] Roger Clemens.”
The Blue Jays didn’t make the playoffs once during Delgado’s tenure (excluding 1993, when he had two plate appearances as a callup). So he looks back at the Mets’ 2006 playoff run as one of the best experiences of his career, even though the Cardinals beat the Mets in the seventh game of the NLCS.
“It was phenomenal,” Delgado said. “It was a great experience. It was an energy that you’d never experienced before. I wish I could have done it more often. I wish it had happened every year, but it didn’t happen. After 12-13 years when I finally made it, it was great.”
Now that it’s all over, Delgado says he’ll spend some time with his wife and children before deciding whether to pursue other opportunities in baseball. When eligible, he’ll become a candidate to join former teammate Roberto Alomar in the Hall of Fame, but he says he doesn’t intend to worry about Cooperstown.
“It would be a great honor,” Delgado said. “I would be lying if I told you that it wouldn’t be. But by the same token, I try to keep it real, because that’s a situation where I really have no control. I played the game with passion, I played the game as hard as I could for as long as I could and I did what I wanted to do, which was have fun and play … I think I had a pretty good career. I put some numbers on the board, but like I said it’s beyond my control."
Photo courtesy Icon SMI.
Blaine Boyer Elects Free Agency
Blaine Boyer cleared waivers and elected free agency instead of accepting an assignment to Triple-A Buffalo, according to Adam Rubin of ESPNNewYork (on Twitter). The Mets designated the reliever for assignment over the weekend after he made the team as a non-roster invitee.
Boyer appeared in just five games this year, but after 6 2/3 innings, eight earned runs, 13 hits and just one strikeout, the Mets GM Sandy Alderson had seen enough. The 29-year-old right-hander was more effective last year, when he posted a 4.26 ERA in 57 innings of work for the D'Backs. However, he walked as many batters as he struck out in 2010 (29).
Carlos Delgado To Announce Retirement
Carlos Delgado will announce his retirement tomorrow, tweets Noel Pineiro of El Nuevo Día.
Back in February, Delgado told MLB.com's Jesse Sanchez he did not want to retire, which is why he went through multiple hip surgeries. He last played in the Majors in May of 2009.
Delgado finishes with a strong .280/.383/.546 line with 473 home runs across 17 seasons with the Blue Jays, Marlins, and Mets. His OBP ranks 149th all-time, while his slugging percentage ranks 28th. We know him as a first baseman, though Delgado caught in the minors and played left field early in his big league career.
He earned almost $150MM in his career, according to Baseball Reference. Alex Rodriguez has been the highest paid player in baseball since December of 2000, but Delgado is the most recent player besides Rodriguez to have had that distinction. The David Sloane client signed a four-year, $68MM deal that briefly made him the highest paid player in the game after the 2000 season.
Tim Byrdak Has An App For That
Let's face it: our constant desire for baseball transaction news is insatiable, but there isn't much logic to it. Whether our favorite team signs a left-handed reliever in December or January will have little effect on the upcoming season.
But a person with a vested interest in offseason signings is, naturally, the player himself. A guaranteed Major League deal as opposed to a simple invitation to Spring Training is the difference between someone asking you to move to a new city with a guaranteed income and asking you to come for a few weeks to play a lottery ticket.
So it should come as no surprise that Mets reliever Tim Byrdak, who has pitched for five Major League teams and numerous minor league outfits, has the MLB Trade Rumors app on his iPhone. Every rumor, whether involving him or one of his lefty specialist brethren, has the potential to completely shake up his life and uproot his family.
"You do everything you can to keep your job, and I felt like I put up pretty strong numbers," Byrdak said as we chatted in front of his locker last week. Byrdak noted that he'd pitched through a sports hernia last year, though his results against lefties (a .644 OPS, 8.0 K/9, 3.0 BB/9) hardly suffered as a result.
"I thought we'd have more of an opportunity to secure a big-league job," Byrdak continued. "So you have to keep watching the wire, MLB Trade Rumors, all these sites to see who is going where, who has interest in guys. So it became a pretty valuable tool for me to keep an eye on other lefties that were still on the market, and how that market was developing."
What may seem like a minor post to a reader about a team's interest in a middle reliever is seismic to someone like Byrdak, and he found it hard to avoid getting frustrated by some of the things he read.
"There were a couple [of times]," Byrdak said. "You would hear from a couple of different teams, and you thought you'd be starting the negotiation process. People have asked me, 'How come I don't play for the White Sox' [Byrdak is from nearby Oak Forest, IL], and I tell them, 'Well, you know, they've never offered me a job."
Apparently, the White Sox did express some interest, raising Byrdak's hopes of a homecoming.
"They said last year, they were going to offer me a minor league deal, but we didn't know what they were going to do with [Chris Sale], what they were going to do with [Matt] Thornton – was he going to close for them – and then all of the sudden, out of nowhere, I read on MLB Trade Rumors that they signed Will Ohman to a two-year deal.
"So there were times that you'd be talking to a team, and then you'd read that they had interest in somebody else, and it was kind of a shock."
After three seasons with Houston, Byrdak worked hard not to worry too much about the process all winter. But he acknowledged the difficulty in being unable to tell his family just how their next few months would unfold.
"The whole adversity of it was the wait-and-see," Byrdak explained. "You want to do everything you can to prepare for the season. But it's nice to have, in the back of your mind, knowing where you're going to be. It was different for me and for my family."
Over the course of the offseason, Byrdak had a number of other minor league offers. Ultimately, after waiting for a Major League deal that never came, he signed with the Mets on January 21, and made the team with a strong spring.
"I read somewhere, Chad Durbin said the same thing, that you've got to take what was out there," Byrdak said. "There wasn't a big-league job out there for us to get. I'm a guy who usually is coming into camp – you're in shape – but it's about getting your arm strength, getting everything together without the pressure. It was different this year. You have to compete, put up zeroes as early and often as you can."
Now with a Major League roster spot secured, Byrdak plans to use the 2011 season as proof to the 29 other teams that he deserved more security.
"You want to prove to all of those teams that they were wrong," Byrdak said. "It's a little extra incentive to go out there and have the best year you can."
And if Byrdak excels for the Mets in 2011, that article he seeks – Byrdak Signs Long-Term Deal – could pop right up on MLB Trade Rumors. You may read it and have little reaction. But in the Byrdak household, the response will be huge.
Heyman On Manny, Mets, Yankees, Dodgers
Jon Heyman of SI.com points out that despite all of his antics, Manny Ramirez earned more than any players other Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. And unlike Jeter and Rodriguez, Ramirez was not a well-rounded player. Here’s Heyman’s latest from around the league:
- There’s ‘growing suspicion’ that the Mets will look to trade veterans such as Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes and Francisco Rodriguez if they are not contending midseason. Plus, Mike Pelfrey could find himself on the block.
- Though the Yankees maintain that Phil Hughes is healthy, it’s troubling for them to see him pitching with reduced velocity. It’s part of the reason they have continued adding starting pitching depth, most recently with Carlos Silva.
- Dodgers owner Frank McCourt had proposed a deal that would have seen FOX advance him $200MM, but MLB rejected it, according to Heyman. McCourt is losing the support of fellow owners, Heyman reports.
Mets Designate Blaine Boyer For Assignment
The Mets have designated Blaine Boyer for assignment according to Peter Botte of The New York Daily News (on Twitter). The team also sent down outfielder Lucas Duda and recalled right-handers Ryota Igarashi and Jason Isringhausen.
Boyer, 29, beat out Izzy for the final spot in the Mets' bullpen in camp but failed to impress. He pitched to a 7.71 ERA and a 2.14 WHIP in 4 2/3 innings, and that was before his four run, two inning outing this afternoon. Isringhausen agreed to remain with the team in Extended Spring Training before the season started.