Concluding our interview with Baseball Prospectus prospect expert Kevin Goldstein from yesterday:

MetsGeek: Can you us anything about three pitchers who are doing very well in Savannah right now: Mike Antonini, Elvin Ramirez, and Angel Calero?

Kevin Goldstein: The last time I talked to a scout, the only guy he caught was Antonini, and he is obviously having a really nice year. But at the same time, he’s a 23-year-old lefty without a lot of size, and he’s just pounding the strike zone, has a good breaking ball. And those kind of guys do really, really well in the lower levels, but as they go up they have less margin for error because of a lack of stuff, and they tend to struggle a bit more. I think he projects as a lefty reliever-type. And that’s not a bad thing to have. Those kinds of guys make millions of dollars a year. But he very much is what he is; he’s not a special arm. Those guys are the kinds of guys you have to be really careful about looking at the numbers, older lefties at lower levels. They don’t have the stuff to match the numbers. It’s a bit of a smoke and mirrors thing going on there. The stuff doesn’t work as you go up nearly as well.

MetsGeek: Should we be similarly skeptical of Dylan Owen?

Kevin Goldstein: Unfortunately, yeah. And Owen’s even more “dangerous” because he’s a righty. The guys who are left-handed finesse control guys have a better track record of making it work than the right-handers do. If you watch Owen on the right day, he goes from nailing his spots to just kind of hitting them well. He gets hit hard. He needs perfect location for the way he does things to work, and if he doesn’t, he’s going to get hit, and hit hard. Especially against lefties. He’s not very deceptive, and left-handers get a really good look at his ball. I haven’t seen the splits, but I’d imagine lefties are hitting him pretty hard. [Editor's note: They are.]

MetsGeek: It’s sad. I remember being really excited about him last year, and then all the analysts called him a fringe guy.

Kevin Goldstein: Yeah. You’ve got to remember, teams spend millions of dollars signing talent, evaluating guys, and figuring out who goes where, and obviously they make mistakes, they’re not always perfect, but in general, a guy’s a 20th round pick for a reason. If he was a huge stud, he wouldn’t have been a 20th round pick. Obviously he’s pitched really well, and he’s continuing to get things done the way he does things. He’s better than most 20th round picks, at least. I mean there’s plenty of 20th round picks who are already out of baseball. It’s a low, low pick, and he’s in high-A and he’s getting it done. But at the same time, what is he? He’s a guy with very fringy stuff, and really good control. It’s a struggle for those guys all the way up. You need a pitch that will get you swings and misses, and those guys just don’t have the pitch.

MetsGeek: Yeah.

Kevin Goldstein: I wish I could be more positive! I’m a Mets fan, just so you know!

MetsGeek: I guess it’s better to be more realistic. I mean, I remember Yusmeiro Petit, and he was my first experience with a guy I was crazy about but didn’t quite make the jump from the minors to the majors.

Kevin Goldstein: Yeah. Well, again, it wasn’t a stuff thing, it was a command thing and a deception thing. You know? His delivery was so funky, you couldn’t see the ball until it came out of his hand, and even then it was hard to pick up, but he didn’t have blow away stuff by any stretch. If you’re looking for guys who might be serviceable big leaguers, some of those guys can turn into that. Even like an Owen, he could turn into some sort of middle relief type. But as far as being a big part of the Mets rotation? Those guys don’t do that. I would put far more faith in a guy like Jon Niese, as far as becoming a back-end starter.

MetsGeek: Would you say that F-Mart and Niese are the Mets’ two best prospects right now?

Kevin Goldstein: Hmmm. I would say probably. There’s some guys the jury is out on. Wilmer Flores is a bit of an unknown, but when you talk to Mets people, they’re crazy about him. They think he can be a pretty huge player for them, but at the same time, he’s sixteen years old, and we haven’t seem him play yet. But he has the potential to jump into that group. I think right now that’s probably pretty accurate: Martinez, and then Niese.

MetsGeek: The 2007 draft results, aside from a handful of players we already talked about, looks kind of terrible right now.

Kevin Goldstein: (Laughs) It really does.

MetsGeek: Is it premature to say that it was a disaster, or should we still hold out hope for Vineyard and Moviel?

Kevin Goldstein: Well, dude, it’s May 30th, calm down. Obviously, you’d like to see things going much much much much better than they are. But guy like Rustich has thrown ten innings this year, if that. And even guys whove been there all year haven’t gotten more than eleven starts or 150 at-bats. Would you happier if these guys were playing better than they are? Absolutely. But it’s early.

MetsGeek: Stephen Clyne still has an ERA over ten.

Kevin Goldstein: Yeah I’m a scouting guy, but the last time I looked, that’s not a good number. He’s getting hammered, but at the same time he’s thrown, what, twenty innings?

MetsGeek: He’s allowed twenty four runs in nineteen.

Kevin Goldstein: So yeah, it’s nineteen innings! It’s not time to hit the panic button yet. There’s plenty of time to right the ship. The ship’s just not going in the best direction right now. Plenty of time to turn that around. There’s a truckload of players this year who had horrible debuts. There’s plenty of major leaguers who took a while to get it.

MetsGeek: It is a little frustrating though, since a lot of the Mets’ hope for the farm system was in the young guys from the last draft.

Kevin Goldstein: Frustrating’s a fair world. If you talked to Mets officials, that’s the word they’d use as well. Universally, everybody’s at least a little disappointing, and in the case of a guy with a dougle-digit ERA, a lot disapointing. There’s certainly a lot of frustration there. There’s questions being asked about, did we do something wrong here. But hopefully the new round of picks will help even more.

MetsGeek: The St. Lucie Mets are 11-42. Is that approaching a historic season? And is that an indictment of the Mets farm system?

Kevin Goldstein: Hmmmm. It is approaching a historic season I think. It’s close. In pre-affiliation days, back when minor league teams were not part of a major league team, some of them were bad on a whole other level like .100 or less winning percentages. But in terms of modern times, this is probably close to some sort of record. It’s not necessarily an indictment of the season. You’ve got to remember, at the minor leagues, the ugly truth that nobody will ever tell you if you go to the games is that winning is a secondary objective. Developing talent is far more important than winning. If you have some kid on a team, and his future is as a leadoff man, he’s going to hit leadoff, for your team, even if he stinks right now. That’s the only way he’s going to learn how to hit leadoff. In the minors a struggling starter will stay in the rotation because the only way for him to get better is to give him more innings. It’s not necessarily a good measure of the talent (winning percentage). Let’s not act like it’s a really talented team, either. The Mets system is bad, let’s not kid anybody.

MetsGeek: But it might improve with the draft!

Kevin Goldstein: Nowhere to go but up right? Fernando Martinez is the only guy who’d I’d consider among the top one hundred prospects in baseball. He’s it; if I even take a sheet of scratch paper to write down players who I’d even think about for the top one hundred, the only Mets player I’d write down is Fernando Martinez.

MetsGeek: What’s the status of the players the Mets traded for Johan Santana?

Kevin Goldstein: It’s funny; I think [Phil] Humber’s been the same guy he was with the Mets. One start he looks really good, he’ll throw six shutout innings, and he looks like a number three or number four starter. One start later, he misses the strike zone, his curve ball flattens out, and he gets hammered. That’s what you saw with the Mets, and it drives you nuts. And Mulvey’s a guy who, while way way better than Dylan Owen, is still a strike thrower, and whose command and control is still more important to him than stuff. He doesn’t have a lot of margin for error–he’s not a super stud or anything like that. Carlos Gomez has been Carlos Gomez. The numbers don’t end up looking that good, but he sure makes a lot of SportsCenter highlights, doesn’t he? He still has the potential to be a great player, or he could be not much better than he is now. I never thought [Deolis] Guerra was as good as the Mets thought, and talking to scouts who’ve watched him, they’re not crazy about him either. He’s a big guy, but he never really throws as hard as advertised. People, when he first got signed, heard about this gigantic Latin teenager who throws mid-90s heat. He’s working at 86-91. He has a really good changeup, but a fringey breaking ball. His command comes and goes. I’m not sold on him as a big time prospect at all.

MetsGeek: Kevin, thanks a lot for speaking with us! Have a great afternoon.

Kevin Goldstein: I’ll try my best. Have a good one.