The Mets and Mejia

I have been meaning to write a post on the Mets apparent decision to shorten J Mejia's outings over the next couple weeks in order to gauge if he can pitch in the big league bullpen this year. I didn't get around to do it yet, but R.J. Anderson over at Fangraphs beat me to it.

The scariest part of this is not that Jerry Manuel is evidently making decisions on prospects. It’s that Omar Minaya is either in complete agreement or is totally indifferent to the situation at hand. Minaya’s job is to handle the team’s present and future assets with care and diligence. Manuel’s job is to manage the players assembled by Minaya and provide input on the margins, not to decide in autonomous fashion what capacity the team’s best pitching prospect should be used during spring. Neither is doing their job.

Here is the link to the full article: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-mets-and-mejia/


My take: Mejia has more value and upside as a #1 starter and needs more time to develop his secondary pitches in order to be a #1 starter. Can he pitch effectively out of the bullpen and help the club this year? Possibly. But this will stunt his development and create a potential fiasco later on (aka Joba), something that the Mets really need to avoid. Send the kid down to AA, and if we are in a pennant race in August/September, then bring him up to support the bullpen, then great. But no need to start him the bullpen. To read my thoughts from last Saturday on this, check this, with a video link (J Mejia)