Mets manager Terry Collins says he expects Lucas Duda to settle in and produce now that the Ike Davis trade has opened up the club's full-time first base job, MLB.com's Spencer Fordin reports. Duda, however, says he doesn't feel much has changed. "If I don't produce, I'm not going to play. No matter what the situation is, if I don't get the job done, somebody else will," the slugger commented. More NL East links …
- A competing GM told Andy Martino of the New York Daily News (via Twitter) that the Mets were right to choose Duda instead of Davis. "They're both platoon guys, but Duda [is] a little better against lefties," the GM said.
- One MLB executive speaking with Newsday's David Lennon (Twitter link) guesses that the Mets may receive either the Pirates' 2013 fifth- or sixth-rounder as the player to be named later in the Davis deal. That would be either fifth-round pick Trae Arbet, a shortstop drafted out of high school, or sixth-round draftee Adam Frazier, a college shortstop. Neither player was ranked among the Pirates' top 30 prospects by Baseball America this offseason.
- The Braves brought on Aaron Harang near the end of Spring Training to eat innings in the season's early going, but now that he's posted a Majors-leading 0.70 ERA in four starts, their plans have changed. In fact, Harang was removed after giving up zero hits through seven innings against the Mets yesterday to help preserve his arm. Manager Fredi Gonzalez says he wants 25-27 more starts from the veteran, according to David O'Brien of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Why would the Mets want either of those players? Sure they have a SS deficiency at the ML level, but they don’t in the lower minors and neither of those players would bring anything to the Mets. Clearly the anonymous executive is wrong here.
Figure JaCoby Jones, Blake Taylor or Cody Dickson
Remember Davis is a guy who can’t hit for average, is average defensively, and isn’t a good baserunner. He can hit for power. That’s it. I don’t understand why people are expecting so much.
Davis is considered an above average defender and a high OBP guy…
Here is the problem: Mets fans, for the most part, wanted nothing to do with Ike Davis after his recent performance, But now that they traded him, some of them expected a big return. That isn’t usually how it works.
Take a few depth guys and be happy with it…it is what he was worth on the market. It is actually a fair deal overall…Ike Davis represents an upgrade over Ishikawa, and a team that fancies itself a contender should make any upgrade they can within reason. Ike provides them some cheap power and some plate discipline. The Mets? Even in the NL, where you need pinch hitters, you still need some flexibility. Having Ike and Duda on the same roster is overkill. One needed to go.
While I agree with this, it just seemed like odd timing. 3 weeks into the season is a particularly random time to decide to end a position battle unless you had a clear winner. My thought is that the Pirates had to finally give in and pay the Mets’ asking price
Let’s be honest here, they will ride Harang until the lighting he has in his bottle is gone. Mid-June he probably isn’t even on the roster anymore.
Feels a lot like the Ben Sheets effect. I hope we are wrong, but I agree, the other foot is going to drop very very soon, but even if it does Harang is excelling at what we picked him up to do, bridge a gap.
Absolutely, as absurd as this sounds, if the cy young was given out today he would be the winner. I will say it does make for a compelling situation, how many “bad” starts does he get before he is replaced with Floyd.
Nah, Cueto would win (strikeouts, deeper in games, coming off a complete game shutout) But regardless Harang would finish 2nd maybe 3rd behind Fernandez. …But there is no 4 game CY young award so, moot point.
And yes, a compelling situation indeed. Not sure we even know who will make that call Wren or Fredi…
I was just talking about Harang on another Braves’ group, and someone noticed that Harang has pretty much given up on both his change-up and his curveball this year. His curve was never much to write home about and his change is just terrible – even in his best days with the Reds, a bad Harang change-up was a bleacher seat souvenir. If McDowell has gotten him to ignore those pitches and focus on his fastballs and the slider, Harang’s revival might be legit. He’s obviously not going to post a 0.70 ERA for the season, but his velocity is up where it’s always been and he’s not leaving beachballs in the middle of the plate.
Hard to believe the Braves might have too much good starting pitching, but with Teheran, Santana, Minor and Harang, that’s just one spot for the trio of Hale, Wood and Floyd.
Floyd is gonna have to come out of the gate strong to move Wood out of the rotation (unless ‘politics’ are involved). Maybe down the road when Fredi starts managing Wood’s inning limit, but otherwise Wood is looking like he is in the rotation for good.
May be a bit hasty in my analysis, but less than two years ago Wood was just being drafted, he rose through the ranks (almost more IP in majors (104) than minors (114) at this point) because the Braves think he is special.
If the Bucs only gave up Arbet or Frazier, then this is a freaking steal.
Nothing is a steal unless Davis produces like 2 years ago. This is his value for a reason.
Significant aren’t those guys.
but are they fairly significant? I said yesterday is anyone is expecting Alderson to say the PTBNL isn’t significant? People who thought (Hanson, Meadows, etc…) are on drugs. Ike had little value.
I thought Marte was going to be the PTBNL?
Makes sense clearly because 2 years ago Ike had a nice year.
That’s impossible. A PTBNL can’t be on the active major league roster while he is a PTBNL.
how about Josh Bell although he wasn’t from the 2013 draft. That seems as high as the Mets will get in value. Chances are slim since this seems like unloading salary.
Let’s be honest here, whatever the Mets got doesn’t matter to the Mets owners. It was just a salary dump. They didn’t want to pay Ike Davis millions to just sit on the bench. The Mets are broke and thats it! The Mets are a small market team in the biggest market in the world. As a Mets fan I just have one word, SAD!
it’s sad that the Cardinals get a draft pick for being a “small market” while the Dodgers get new owners when Frank McCourt took his money out of the Dodgers. The only thing Met fans get is a kick between the cheeks.seeing Bud help out his friend Fred and the Yankees in suspending A Rod for a season.
Wrong on Harang leading the majors in ERA. Mark Buhrle leads with an ERA of 0.64.