Previewing the Minors Mets Coverage in 2015

            For those of you who are familiar with Astromets Mind, you know that I love watching the minor league Mets on MiLB.tv, and most of my coverage here in 2014 was about what I saw through that wonderful subscription. In case you were considering getting a subscription to MiLB.tv, here’s what will be available to you in 2015. One thing I should note about my coverage for this upcoming season is that I won’t be trying to offer pitch-by-pitch coverage, as I felt I was not good enough at identifying pitches without velocities in 2014. If you're interested, there will be 249 Mets affiliate games available with MiLB.tv this season, making the subscription more than worth in my opinion.

UPDATE: It appears that the B-Mets are participating in MiLB.tv coverage at home this season!

Las Vegas 51s

            All 144 51s games are available on MiLB.tv, although they have the worst home TV coverage of any minor league team I’ve seen. As expected, MiLB.tv coverage as a whole is not near what you get with MLB coverage, as there are no pitch velocities shown, and rarely even a score bug, but Las Vegas makes those other feeds look amazing. For those 72 home games, you’ll be stuck watching the games from an awkward angle behind home plate. This would be more acceptable if you could see the whole field, but right field is not within the camera angle. The one redeeming factor of the home field angle is the view of the scoreboard in LF, which, with some strain, will provide you with a pitcher’s velocity throughout the game. If I do offer pitch-by-pitch coverage this season, it will only be on home games for the 51s thanks to this feature. On the plus side, the 51s have one of the best announcers in the business in Russ Langer, although he’s technically just the team’s radio announcer being played alongside the stream. If you’re fine just listening to the radio stream, you can listen to all of the games for free on TuneIn radio.

This is still better than nothing, right?

Binghamton Mets

A Closer Look at Cesar Puello's L/R Splits from 2014

Picture from Adam Rubin/ESPN

            I discussed Cesar Puello's improvements throughout the 2014 season during my top prospect series, but I wanted to take a deeper look at how his L/R splits changed throughout the season. The season is broken down into five parts: his slow start in April, his strong May after finishing his court stuff, an unusual 10-day hitless streak to start June, and then I split the remaining plate appearances in half to keep the samples closer in size - the 4^th group of data includes nearly two weeks missed while Puello recovered from a concussion. I got the data from www.mlbfarm.com, which compiles the info from minor league box scores and gameday.

Table 1 – Puello stat breakdown vs. R. (GB/BIP, FB/BIP, LD/BIP, PU/BIP)

Dates	PA	AVG	BABIP	OBP	ISO	OPS	K%	BB%	GB	FB	LD	PU
4/3-5/5	73	.217	.288	.260	.029	.506	23.2	4.1	62	16	20	2
5/9-5/30	34	.240	.240	.424	.040	.704	2.9	14.7	65	10	25	0
5/31-6/9	18	.000	.000	.222	.000	.222	11.1	11.1	83	17	0	0
6/10-8/4	61	.196	.231	.317	.118	.631	17.7	8.1	51	29	17.5	2.5
8/5-9/1	58	.300	.371	.397	.240	.937	22.4	8.6	46	19	24	11
Total	244	.220	.264	.326	.101	.647	18.4	8.2	57.5	19.5	19.5	3.5

            Even though Puello didn’t hit much against righties throughout the summer, he kept his OBP up thanks to an average walk rate and, as always, a high number of HBP’s. The power started to show up over the last 3 months, although he kicked it into another gear in August. The low BABIP totals could be considered poor luck to an extent, but he was such a groundball machine for the first two months that it’s not really surprising that his BABIP was so low for the first two months. However, the BABIP in the 4^th group does seem a little low, as he had already started hitting the ball for more power off of righties, and had less extreme groundball tendencies.

Astromets Top 83 Mets Prospect Series: 1-9

            For this top prospect list series I tried to include as many players as possible, as I watched a lot of talented Mets prospects in 2014, and was following the progression of those I couldn’t watch. I do not include any Dominican Summer League players here, as I know next to nothing about those guys and they are so far away. I started by separating players into different groups and then essentially ranked those groups. Still, a lot of these players become interchangeable beyond the top 25 or so prospects. Also, there are a number of ’50+ future value’ players (per Fangraphs Kiley McDaniel), so the very top of the list is pretty interchangeable too. I don’t think I missed any obvious stateside prospects, but I apologize in advance for when I did, and I'll address them at the end.

Other entries from this series: 10-15 | 16-24 | 25-33 | 34-45 | 46-55 | 56-62 | 63-74 | 75-83

*All stats listed are regular season only and from Fangraphs; age to start 2015 season listed; pitchers roles are based on what they did in 2014, not what they might do in the future

Astromets Top 83 Prospect Series: 10-15

            For this top prospect list series I tried to include as many players as possible, as I watched a lot of talented Mets prospects in 2014, and was following the progression of those I couldn’t watch. I do not include any Dominican Summer League players here, as I know next to nothing about those guys and they are so far away. I started by separating players into different groups and then essentially ranked those groups. Still, a lot of these players become interchangeable beyond the top 25 or so prospects. Also, there are a number of ’50+ future value’ players (per Fangraphs Kiley McDaniel), so the very top of the list is pretty interchangeable too. I don’t think I missed any obvious stateside prospects, but I apologize in advance for when I did, and I'll address them at the end.

Other entries from this series: 1-9 | 10-15 | 16-24 | 25-33 | 34-45 | 46-55 | 56-62 | 63-74 | 75-83

*All stats listed are regular season only and from Fangraphs; age to start 2015 season listed; pitchers roles are based on what they did in 2014, not what they might do in the future

Astromets Top 83 Mets Prospect Series: 16-24

            For this top prospect list series I tried to include as many players as possible, as I watched a lot of talented Mets prospects in 2014, and was following the progression of those I couldn’t watch. I do not include any Dominican Summer League players here, as I know next to nothing about those guys and they are so far away. I started by separating players into different groups and then essentially ranked those groups. Still, a lot of these players become interchangeable beyond the top 25 or so prospects. Also, there are a number of ’50+ future value’ players (per Fangraphs Kiley McDaniel), so the very top of the list is pretty interchangeable too. I don’t think I missed any obvious stateside prospects, but I apologize in advance for when I did, and I'll address them at the end.

Other entries from this series: 1-9 | 10-15 | 16-24 | 25-33 | 34-45 | 46-55 | 56-62 | 63-74 | 75-83

*All stats listed are regular season only and from Fangraphs; age to start 2015 season listed; pitchers roles are based on what they did in 2014, not what they might do in the future

Astromets Top 83 Prospect Series: 25-33

            For this top prospect list series I tried to include as many players as possible, as I watched a lot of talented Mets prospects in 2014, and was following the progression of those I couldn’t watch. I do not include any Dominican Summer League players here, as I know next to nothing about those guys and they are so far away. I started by separating players into different groups and then essentially ranked those groups. Still, a lot of these players become interchangeable beyond the top 25 or so prospects. Also, there are a number of ’50+ future value’ players (per Fangraphs Kiley McDaniel), so the very top of the list is pretty interchangeable too. I don’t think I missed any obvious stateside prospects, but I apologize in advance for when I did, and I'll address them at the end.

Other entries from this series: 1-9 | 10-15 | 16-24 | 25-33 | 34-45 | 46-55 | 56-62 | 63-74 | 75-83

Astromets Top 83 Prospect Series: 34-45

            For this top prospect list series I tried to include as many players as possible, as I watched a lot of talented Mets prospects in 2014, and was following the progression of those I couldn’t watch. I do not include any Dominican Summer League players here, as I know next to nothing about those guys and they are so far away. I started by separating players into different groups and then essentially ranked those groups. Still, a lot of these players become interchangeable beyond the top 25 or so prospects. Also, there are a number of ’50+ future value’ players (per Fangraphs Kiley McDaniel), so the very top of the list is pretty interchangeable too. I don’t think I missed any obvious stateside prospects, but I apologize in advance for when I did, and I'll address them at the end.

Other entries from this series: 1-9 | 10-15 | 16-24 | 25-33 | 34-45 | 46-55 | 56-62 | 63-74 | 75-83

*All stats listed are regular season only and from Fangraphs; age to start 2015 season listed; pitchers roles are based on what they did in 2014, not what they might do in the future

Astromets Top 83 Prospect Series: 46-55

            For this top prospect list series I tried to include as many players as possible, as I watched a lot of talented Mets prospects in 2014, and was following the progression of those I couldn’t watch. I do not include any Dominican Summer League players here, as I know next to nothing about those guys and they are so far away. I started by separating players into different groups and then essentially ranked those groups. Still, a lot of these players become interchangeable beyond the top 25 or so prospects. Also, there are a number of ’50+ future value’ players (per Fangraphs Kiley McDaniel), so the very top of the list is pretty interchangeable too. I don’t think I missed any obvious stateside prospects, but I apologize in advance for when I did, and I'll address them at the end.

Other entries from this series: 1-9 | 10-15 | 16-24 | 25-33 | 34-45 | 46-55 | 56-62 | 63-74 | 75-83

Astromets Top 83 Prospect Series: 56-62

            For this top prospect list series I tried to include as many players as possible, as I watched a lot of talented Mets prospects in 2014, and was following the progression of those I couldn’t watch. I do not include any Dominican Summer League players here, as I know next to nothing about those guys and they are so far away. I started by separating players into different groups and then essentially ranked those groups. Still, a lot of these players become interchangeable beyond the top 25 or so prospects. Also, there are a number of ’50+ future value’ players (per Fangraphs Kiley McDaniel), so the very top of the list is pretty interchangeable too. I don’t think I missed any obvious stateside prospects, but I apologize in advance for when I did, and I'll address them at the end.

Other entries from this series: 1-9 | 10-15 | 16-24 | 25-33 | 34-45 | 46-55 | 56-62 | 63-74 | 75-83

*All stats listed are regular season only and from Fangraphs; age to start 2015 season listed; pitchers roles are based on what they did in 2014, not what they might do in the future

Astromets Top 83 Prospect Series: 63-74

            For this top prospect list series I tried to include as many players as possible, as I watched a lot of talented Mets prospects in 2014, and was following the progression of those I couldn’t watch. I do not include any Dominican Summer League players here, as I know next to nothing about those guys and they are so far away. I started by separating players into different groups and then essentially ranked those groups. Still, a lot of these players become interchangeable beyond the top 25 or so prospects. Also, there are a number of ’50+ future value’ players (per Fangraphs Kiley McDaniel), so the very top of the list is pretty interchangeable too. I don’t think I missed any obvious stateside prospects, but I apologize in advance for when I did.

Other entries from this series: 1-9 | 10-15 | 16-24 | 25-33 | 34-45 | 46-55 | 56-62 | 63-74 | 75-83

*All stats listed are regular season only and from Fangraphs; age to start 2015 season listed; pitchers roles are based on what they did in 2014, not what they might do in the future