my account:
premium blogad:
blogads:
advertisement:
advertisement:
sitemeter:
advertisement:
|
|
|
November 19, 2008
Are Mets Prospects Overhyped?
Let’s start by taking Mets fans off of the defensive by acknowledging Mets prospects are certainly not the most overhyped in major league baseball. However, the hype machine does seem to work overtime for the Mets, often making it difficult for die-hard Mets fans to recognize where their prospects fit into the big picture. In my time writing for MetsGeek, I’ve seen a number of posters throw out trades like Bobby Parnell and Eddie Kunz for Jake Peavy while labeling prospects like Jon Niese and Daniel Murphy untouchable. While I appreciate the fervor in which Mets fans support their team, I sometimes wonder how certain prospects become so overvalued in the eyes of their fans. When assessing the potential for players being overhyped, one often needs to look no further than the size of the media market. A sub category of this is how many teams are in a particular city and where each ranks in popularity. Additionally, organizational success breeds fan support and is another contributing factor. Based on this, my top five organizations in terms of potential for hype are: 1. New York Yankees These organizations have the largest fan bases and therefore garner the most significant media attention. For those of you who read prospect chats, the following should be all too familiar: Host: Welcome to the chat. Fire away! With the sheer number of fans from the big market franchises, they tend to dominate the conversation with a number of very similar questions asked different ways. Hosts even make comments about how often the same question is asked in the hope fans will get the point. With the conversation driven in ways similar to the chat above, it’s only natural for prospects from major media markets to rise in name recognition. That name recognition leads to hype when the players output does not equal the buzz surrounding them. Bobby Parnell is a perfect example of this. I’ve seen his name on many Mets fans top five prospect lists and his name comes up frequently on prospect chats. Meanwhile, his 4.62 ERA, middling strikeout totals and more than a hit per inning allowed are the epitome of average. The media also plays a huge role in they hype machine. A poster on MetsGeek was correct in bashing the media for their impatience with Mets prospects. The question I ask is where does the impatience come from? My answer would be from prospects being mentioned so many times starting at a young age that they are expected to produce MVP or Cy Young type numbers from day one. This is especially dangerous since I doubt reporters covering the Mets have the prospect knowledge of many well read Mets bloggers and fans. When time to research prospects is limited due to commitments to writing about the big club, writers tend to focus too much on raw numbers which can create a warped view of the prospects’ true value (see Mike Carp). I’m confident Lastings Milledge will be an All-Star-caliber player before all is said and done. In all honestly, 2008 should have been his rookie season. Had it been, he would have finished in the top-five in rookie of the year balloting and would be entering 2009 as the new toast of New York and the best home-grown African-American player since Straw and Doc. Instead, he’ll be a cornerstone in the Nationals’ rise to respectability after being dealt for a song as a fall guy for the Mets 2007 collapse. As an aspiring writer and blogger, I find myself a guilty party in making the hype machine worse, not better. On Baseball Handyman, 25 of 86 posts are about the Mets and Yankees. An additional 11 feature the Braves, another franchise whose prospects sometimes receive undue hype (think Kyle Davies). Meanwhile, I have made just one mention of the Nationals, Indians, and Mariners. With that said, I guess prospect hype is cyclical. Writers want readers so they write about franchises who have the most fans. Fans obviously want to discuss their own players so they ask questions about their teams prospects. The teams with the most fans has the most questions asked and the cycle repeats. What Mets fans can do is look at their own prospects with the understanding their opinion of a player is likely 10-20% more generous than a non-fan’s would be. This will help temper expectations and keep perceived trade values in the realm of realistic. It will also help many a Mets fan keep from sounding silly the next time the temptation to offer up Bobby Parnell/Mike Carp/Josh Thole for B.J. Upton around the water cooler gets them laughed out of the building. Read more articles by Mike Newman at Baseball Handyman.
Mike grew up a Mets fan in the days of Straw and Doctor K and is excited to be the newest contributor to Metsgeek! Hit me up at BaseballHandyman@comcast.net with any comments or article ideas. 14 Responses to “Are Mets Prospects Overhyped?”Leave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
advertisement:latest poll:
recommended journals:
recent user journals:
advertisement:recent articles:
rss/syndication:your ad here:advertisement: |
Loading ...
All prospects are hyped. Look at their MLEs.
Then look at how much you can get for a super prospect. They’re not really even close.
Never been sold on Parnell. He’s never excelled at any level (excepting perhaps the very low minors) and has poor K totals despite a 95mph fastball.
At least Kunz excelled in AA and below. Been ruff otherwise though.
Vargas is tearing up the AFL.
And you’re right that a big part of media impatience is the hyping of major prospects as saviors. There was every reason to think Reyes would be a very good player or even the great player he turned out to become. People were saying he’d be the greatest in baseball.
With the Mets, the good prospects are overhyped (sometimes wildly), but the modest ones really aren’t–some are unfairly overlooked. Contrast this with the Yankees, who hype the likes of Ian Kennedy as the next Lincecum and Melky Cabrera as the next Beltran.
Here’s the thing with some of the hyping; often overhyping is a result of expectation due to opportunity.
For example:
Parnell is suddenly hot. Why? Because he has talent. But talent alone doesn’t usually do it for a prospect (look at all the athletic outfielders that don’t make it past low-A). So what is it if talent isn’t enough? It’s opportunity. Parnell has a good chance to make the big squad which has openings not only in the pen but at closer.
Niese is similar in that aspect.
Surely you jest! Never!
I knew you would agree MightyJoe! You are the anonymous poster I was talking about!
Jose Coronado was overhyped by a metsgeek poster. ha!
Kunz didn’t really excel in AA. Outside of the save stats he was kind of meh, 1.72 k/bb he misses a lot of bats but he misses the strike zone a lot too. But other than that I kind of agree with JoeOrsulak. Some get widly overhpyed, Parnell and to an extent Niese for example and before this year Carp sort of, while others get overlooked by fans and everyone else, i.e Murphy and Evans, Moviel & Vineyard, before his injury. It seems like the media/fans hear a name a couple of times and run with it and decide he’s a surefire HOF. A year ago a lot of mets fans didn’t know who murphy was, now some of them have decided he’s untouchable and think teams would center trades around him for big time names, despite having a whopping 150 major league or w/e bats and no set defensive position.
All fanbases tend to overrate their teams prospects, having a larger and more vocal fanbase exacerbates that (as the author notes)
WRT MSM, I have yet to read any Newspaper baseball writer who knows anything more about prospects/minor league players than the average fan. They run with any name they’ve heard a team contact throw out. Someone with the Mets could comment that Parnell (Who appears more to be a non-prospect than even a mediocre prospect), throws hard, and bingo the writer indexes Parnell’s name next to the word, “prospect”- so do many fans, and then when a staff opening appears someone says, hey, why don’t we give Parnell a shot I’ve heard he’s a prospect…
In other sports the basketball and football writers are far more knowledgeable about prospects (ie: NCAA players), they actually have some understanding of who is good, who isn’t, who is a good college player but won’t make the pros, etc.
With baseball- they simply don’t have a clue and they make ZERO effort to get a clue - to the average baseball write a “prospect” is fungible- should a team keep or trade a prospect? To the writer that question resolve solely around where the team is now, who or what the prospect is irrelevant- to them each “prospect” is a lottery ticket.
Long live Sid Finch!
I’d say that though there is definitely some hype involved, the problem is more that too many of the Mets fanbase expects guys to perform immediately upon promotion to the bigs or should be immediately discarded.
Some players take two or three seasons as full time players to reach their potential, let alone the partial years they sit on the bench as back-ups and…
There’s just so damn much expectation for immediate results that I wanna puke. I think that’s more the issue than necessarily over-hype.
I’m beginning to suspect that the issue is not really one of prospect-hype as much as it is another extension of the NY star-obsessed win-now mentality.
If someone’s in the system and he’s a major prospect, he’s the next Albert Pujols who will help us win NOW.
If a prospect has a good shot at being a league average guy by the time he’s 26, like say, Dillon Gee, he doesn’t exist because he’s not the STAR we need to WIN NOW. At best, he’s trade bait. At worst, he’s inconsequential and we don’t need to protect him in the Rule-5 because we need room for Marlon Anderson’s grits. Pascucci is a good example of a guy who was ignored because he wasn’t a star, and NY media doesn’t understand the value of solid, low-cost, non star players. We were thus stuck with Marlon Anderson.
If a major prospect does not perform to such expectations IMMEDIATELY, he descends to the nothing level and becomes a Huge Bust by the time he’s 23.
That, in a nutshell, is the story of Pelfrey, Reyes, Flores, Milledge, and even Pascucci, as well as the story of guys like Murphy, who come out of nowhere, and like Gee, who are unheralded. (Kazmir is another situation entirely.)
I mostly agree with you but… waving the flag for Poochie takes it a bit far. There’s no evidence that he’d be worth having on a major league roster even as the twenty-fifth man to pinch-hit.
The few chances he’s had in the mages, dude sucked. Being able to perfect hitting in AAA after, like, ten years in the minors doesn’t prove much… especially when you have a glove that’s iffy even for left field.
He had about–what 40 PAs in the majors? If he ever gets another shot, I’m willing to bet money he would have been better than Marlon Anderson.