- Traditional Egg & Vegetable w/Salsa Labor Day Wrap
Drizzle & Fizzle (as Snooop D-O-double Gizzle might’ve called the Draft & Follow) has been on something of a hiatus while I adjust to some changes in my personal and professional life. My slow slog back into TRDMB activity begins with the first part in a multi-part series looking back on the first professional seasons of the players chosen by the Mets in the 2009 First-Year Player Draft.
With the regular season already complete for the GCL Mets of the Gulf Coast League and the Kingsport Mets of the Appalachian League, and with just 1 game remaining for the Brooklyn Cyclones of the New York-Penn League and 2 games left for the Savannah Sand Gnats of the South Atlantic League we begin our look back.
- 2nd round – Steven Matz: the high school LHP signed late, was assigned to the GCL Mets, didn’t play.
- 3rd round – Robbie Shields: the college SS signed after the season was underway and started his pro career in Brooklyn ice cold. His final numbers in 142 at bats were .176/.273/.268. He did show some improvement after the NYPL All-Star break hitting .238/.319/.286 from then on. The high point of his season may have been scoring the game winning run on rehabbing Carlos Beltran’s single recently.
- 4th round – Darrell Ceciliani: the college OF had a line of .234/.313/.310 in 158 at bats for Kingsport. He had a fine month of July going .303/.361/.447. He did better in away games, batting .298 outside of Kingsport. He stole 14 bases in 16 attempts.
- 7th round – Darin Gorski: the college LHP pitched in 13 games, starting 11, for Brooklyn. He is 3-4 with a 4.91 ERA in 62 1/3 innings including his September 5th start against Lowell in which he allowed 1 run in 5 2/3 innings on 1 hit and 4 walks while striking out 7. For the season walks seem to have been the negative. He allowed just 51 hits in his 62 1/3 innings, but walked 26. His ERA, ground ball out percentage and batting average against all improved notably after the All-Star break.
- 8th round – John Freeman: the college C played in 39 of Kingsport’s 65 games compiling a line of .221/.271/.305 in 131 at bats. He finished strong with a .308/.383/.462 line in 52 August at bats. Like Ceciliani, he hit much better away from Kingsport, with a .289 away BA compared to .127 at home.
- 9th round – Jeffrey Glenn: like Matz, the HS C signed late, was assigned to the GCL but did not play.
- 10th round – Nick Santomauro: the college OF spent the season with Brooklyn, compiling a .241/.368/.441 line in 145 at bats. His .809 OPS is 2nd on the team and his 6 HR leave him tied for the club lead with 1 game remaining.
Nick salutes one of his 6 home runs
12 comments
stickguy
9/6/2009-7:29pm at 7:29 pm (UTC -4)
It’s been a while, but what the heck.
Free Zapata!
rustyjr
9/7/2009-7:56am at 7:56 am (UTC -4)
yeah where is zapatta?
GravediggerHebner
9/7/2009-10:26am at 10:26 am (UTC -4)
He was 19th round so he’ll be in the next installment, but hint: he really tailed off after a boiling hot start.
rustyjr
9/7/2009-12:32pm at 12:32 pm (UTC -4)
i still think he will make his mark on this organization – in a non communist sorta way
metsfan4decades
9/6/2009-10:43pm at 10:43 pm (UTC -4)
Grave, your posts are the only reason I even know anything about are draft picks in the lower leagues. Thanks for taking the time.
Does anyone at TRDMB know why the Fox Sports MLB Scoreboard widget on the left no longer works? Or is it just me? I’ve been showing ‘There are no games scheduled for this day’ for about a week now.
stickguy
9/7/2009-12:09am at 12:09 am (UTC -4)
a little late now, but you should take a look at Toby Hyde’s mets minors blog (it is one of the SNY ones, so a “sister” to Matt’s). But it is excellent. Not many commenters, but they tend to be very knowledgeable, and very mature!
Ton’s of good stuff, and an interesting tp 41 (preseason) prospect list.
GravediggerHebner
9/7/2009-10:28am at 10:28 am (UTC -4)
I second that, it really is a tremendous blog, Toby does an amazing job. It’s so good in fact that it intimidated me into narrowing the focus of my coverage just to 2009 draft picks, because there was no way I could approach his level of coverage on the minors overall.
Another informative, if potentially overwhelming blog on Met minor leaguers is Mack’s Mets.
trs86
9/8/2009-7:55am at 7:55 am (UTC -4)
I am checking into it and will either have it fixed or replaced by tonight. Thanks MF4D.
nypbosnyp
9/7/2009-4:46am at 4:46 am (UTC -4)
I happened to be at the Cyclones games on Wednesday and Friday last week. I went mainly to watch Beltran (and I have some video, which I’ll try to post somewhere if it came out … haven’t checked it yet). But I was especially impressed by Nick Santomauro, who hit a pair of home runs (one each night) to almost exactly the same spot in the right field bleachers, and I believe a couple of other hits as well. He has a nice, fluid swing, and looked like he didn’t even break a sweat to hit those two dingers. I’m no scout, and I certainly wouldn’t presume to make any grand pronouncements about his future based on 18 innings of play and about 7 at bats, but I did like what I saw.
And he was the 10th round pick, almost an afterthought. Go figure.
GravediggerHebner
9/7/2009-10:30am at 10:30 am (UTC -4)
That’s cool, if the video does come out and you do post it somewhere please let us know. You can post links in the comments section and as long as they don’t go to something inappropriate we leave them up.
Welcome to our little corner of Metsworld!
nypbosnyp
9/8/2009-2:35am at 2:35 am (UTC -4)
Thanks. I posted a lot to Metsblog last year, but had a real busy beginning of the year this year, and now Metsblog is doing that “audition” thing which I cannot seem to get by. So I thought I’d try hanging here for a while, since not a single post I’ve made over there has seen the light of day, and I’m getting pretty bored with that.
The Beltran video isn’t anything exciting, just have a couple of his at bats that I filmed with my little Canon point & click that also does video (from my front row seats just to the right of home plate). He flied out to left once and grounded out once. Though his timing is probably off now and he’s obviously got some work to do, it was nice seeing him swing the bat again. And he looked pretty healthy swinging that bat, as well as playing the outfield, and even sliding into a couple of bases. Nice.
trs86
9/8/2009-7:54am at 7:54 am (UTC -4)
Welcome!