Today, the Mets waived OF Fernando Martinez and LHP Danny Herrera. The move was made to accommodate OF Scott Hairston and IF Ronny Cedeno, each of whom are a physical away from signing contracts with the team.
While Herrera looked OK in his brief time with the Mets, rumor has it the team didn’t believe what it saw from him in September. As for Martinez, his once-promising Mets career appears to be at an end.
Martinez was perennially ranked among the top prospects in the organization. In fact, before the 2008 season, Baseball America ranked him the 20th best prospect in the game. My question is, what did they see in him to rank him that high? And what did Omar Minaya see in him when he signed a 16 year-old F-Mart to a $1.5 million dollar deal?
If you believe Moneyball (the book and the movie), baseball teams once relied on scouting almost exclusively when evaluating a player, until Sandy Alderson, Billy Beane, and others adopted the advanced statistical metrics of Bill James. These days, most organizations use a combination of both.
Minaya must have simply believed what he saw out of the Dominican teenager, considering most 16 year-olds don’t have a baseball card. He was billed as a five-tool talent, and would continue to be advertised as such throughout his career.
If I were to believe what I saw with my admittedly untrained eye, he was a skinny kid who could run fast, catch the ball, and had a good arm. Those are three tools. He never hit for significant power, and his batting average never reached .300 in 6 minor league seasons.
Besides the average, the rest of his minor league stats were unimpressive. His highest single-season home run totals were 10 in 2006, and 12 in 2009. His OPS exceeded .800 only once (2009), and he never stole more than 8 bases in a season (another tool he really didn’t take advantage of).
Of course, some of his totals were hampered by the passel of maladies he suffered throughout his career, the most unfortunate of all being the arthritis he has to deal with at the tender age of 23. He’s definitely had some bad luck.
Also, as the Minaya regime had a wont to do, he was also pressured to move through the organization. He made his major league debut at age 20, and seemed overmatched from day one. His approach at the plate improved a bit in 2011, but he looked slow, as a result of his arthritic knees. And perhaps it was unfair to saddle him with the top-prospect label to begin with.
But the question is, was he ever really a top prospect, and what was it that made him one, specifically?
6 comments
Bryan
1/9/2012-11:06pm at 11:06 pm (UTC -4)
Having seen F-Mart a few times in the minors and spring training, most recently this past August, I absolutely loved the swing. Even when I saw him this past year he had great bat speed and good power (launching a 400 foot bomb to center field that fell literally one foot short of the wall). I’m guessing that’s also what scouts and Omar saw in him. Of course, I also saw a guy that could not move in the outfield and wasn’t very nimble running the bases.
Aside the injuries, we should also remember that F-Mart was brought up in the time of Minaya when prospects, especially teenagers from Latin America, were rushed through the system faster than they probably should have been. He was in the upper levels of the minors at a young age and before he needed to and he made his major league debut before he was ready.
So, I will have to say that yes he was a legitimate prospect and there was good reason for him to be a top prospect. However, he was not handled properly and the injuries and arthritis became insurmountable. Should he have been an untouchable prospect and seen as a can’t miss, absolutely not, but there was more than enough tools and talent to justify him as a top-10 or top-5 prospect before the arthritis set in.
Paul
1/9/2012-11:11pm at 11:11 pm (UTC -4)
The Mets, the people at Baseball America, and others throughout baseball saw talent and potential in Fernando Martinez. He was probably rushed through the farm system faster than he should have been, and he got injured a lot and developed an arthritic knee.
Prospects are considered prospects because you don’t know how they’ll turn out.
Stickguy
1/9/2012-11:23pm at 11:23 pm (UTC -4)
prospect that young are really a crapshoot. You look at raw skills/tools (such as bat speed) and take a flyer on them, hoping they continue to develop. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes future stars get hurt and have their careers derailed.
Mr North Jersey
1/9/2012-11:45pm at 11:45 pm (UTC -4)
The injuries just kept piling up and in the end the arthritis which I believe the Mets termed as mild originally may have played a bigger part in the young 23 yr old outfielder being put on waivers who only appeared in 9 games in winter-ball and I am not sure if that was due to his health or his .077/BA or both.
Mr North Jersey
1/9/2012-11:54pm at 11:54 pm (UTC -4)
By the way he is still young and supposedly has options so if he does happen to clear waivers (which seems unlikely based on the 2 items I just mentioned) he still worth seeing if he can find his way.
TRS86
1/10/2012-4:09am at 4:09 am (UTC -4)
Well Fart. I mean Fmart. How sad though they would keep Dj over him. He must have pissed off someone.