Baseball America - Mets Top Ten Prospects - 1999

[Frayed Knot]

Kirk Presley had to be one of those prospect choices based on his draft slot alone [8th overall in 1993] as BA slotted him just outside their top 50 (59th) before he even threw a professional pitch. A RHP from Tupelo Mississippi, and, yes, was supposedly 2nd or 3rd cousin to 'The King', his minor league career started rather unremarkably and never got any better from there. He pitched pieces of five seasons, all in A-ball or lower, before being done in by the old 'injuries and ineffectiveness' double whammy.

Turns 50 y/o this Spring. Hope he's doing well.

[kcmets]

My last dart, Jackie Jolemon?

[Cowtipper]

Paul Byrd

[Centerfield]

Updated with hints.


1. Bill Pulsipher, LHP
2. Paul Wilson, RHP
3. Rey Ordonez, SS
4. Edgardo Alfonzo, IF
5. Carl Everett, OF
6. Jason Isringhausen, RHP
7. __________, OF
8. __________, OF
9. Kirk Presley, RHP
10. Preston Wilson, 3B (had no idea he was a 3B in the minors)

Incorrect: Scott Saurbeck, joelmon, Paul Byrd

[MFS62]

Brian Daubach
Later

[Cowtipper]

He was pretty awful in the minors, but Al Shirley?

[Edgy MD]

Let us go back to the Jay Payton well.

[Centerfield]

Jay Payton is correct. #8.

#7 already appears in this thread as well.

No to Daubach and Shirley.

[Edgy MD]

Let us go back to the Benny Agbayani punawai.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Sergio Valente.

[Cowtipper]

I'm going to try one more...Jeromy Burnitz.

[MFS62]

Terrence Long
Later

[Centerfield]

Terrence Long is correct!

1. Bill Pulsipher, LHP
2. Paul Wilson, RHP
3. Rey Ordonez, SS
4. Edgardo Alfonzo, IF
5. Carl Everett, OF
6. Jason Isringhausen, RHP
7. Jay Payton, OF
8. Terrence Long, OF
9. Kirk Presley, RHP
10. Preston Wilson, 3B

9 players who all had significant ML careers. All 9 played for the Mets!

[Centerfield]

Also, one of the cool things you can do now is to go back with today's stats and get a better idea of the performance of past stars.

Remember the Great Rey Debates? For those that weren't there, there was fierce debate over the value of Rey Ordonez. Some felt Rey's extension was a drag on the team, and that the Mets needed to upgrade at SS. Others argued that Rey detractors didn't understand the value of defense. Some of the most extreme argued they'd rather have Rey over Jeter due to his superior defense. There were arguments over his .250-ish average and how badly that weighed down the team's offense.

Looking back, Rey had a Mets career OPS of .596. He put up 0.9 WAR over 7 seasons with the Mets. Not much of a debate.

[kcmets]

Some of the most extreme argued they'd rather have Rey over Jeter due to his superior defense. There were arguments over his .250-ish average and how badly that weighed down the team's offense.

Looking back, Rey had a Mets career OPS of .596. He put up 0.9 WAR over 7 seasons with the Mets. Not much of a debate.

Sounds like there were a bunch of misinformed assclowns around back
then. Glad it was before my time and I missed all that buffoonery.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I remember hearing, perhaps on WFAN, that "the Mets don't need A-Rod because they have Rey Ordonez."

[Frayed Knot]

DEFENSE!!!!

[batmagadanleadoff]

I remember hearing, perhaps on WFAN, that "the Mets don't need A-Rod because they have Rey Ordonez."

WFAN? You probably heard that everywhere. Everybody lost their minds over Rey Fraudonez. The guy couldn't hit the ball past the pitcher's mound if you spotted him four bounces. His fans are probably the same knuckleheads who think that Gary Carter's number should be retired. They traded a future all-star, Melvin Mora, who could hit more HRs in a month than Fraudonez could hit in his entire career, all because of their ridiculous fascination with the piece of crap player. And he was a bad guy, too. A prima Donna. A diva who threw tantrums and made scandals whenever it was decided that he needed a day off. You woulda thought he was Lou Fucking Gehrig the way he carried on whenever he was rested with the manufactured outrage. It got so bad that Bobby V had to rest the brat like on the same day that somebody good, like John Olerud, would get a day off. "See? I'm resting Oly, too! He also needs a rest. It's not just you, Rey."

[Edgy MD]

Not to defend the deployment of Ordóñez, but let us not believe that WAR has defense figured out yet. Some versions of WAR likely have it better than others, but since their formulae are proprietary to the agencies, it is hard to say which. And many defensive metrics that had once been at the forefront or mainstream of measuring defensive contributions have since been scrap-heaped as less than useless.

I do believe that StatCast and other motion-capture data have brought us very far in the last few years in measuring the impact of defensive performances, but until somebody cares to find a way to transfer older game footage into three-dimensional models to apply that technology to older performances, we will struggle to compare historical performances to contemporary ones.

Again, that isn't to endorse or dispute any conclusion about the deployment of Ordóñez or any other defense-first player, but I think the question is still open.

[batmagadanleadoff]

You can't be as horseshit of a hitter as Fraudonez was and claim to be an asset. Do you know how good of a fielder he'd have to have been to overcome his sad, pathetic ineptitude with the bat -- to justify the absurd and unjustified vomit-inducing accolades smart Mets fans have had to endure during Fraudonez's Mets tenure? So good that no stat, no statistician could possibly overlook the value of his defensive prowess. It'd be like not seeing the tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur living in your backyard.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

The thing with Ordonez was he confounded people for not improving. He had all the hand-eye coordination in the world, it's not hard to imagine he could have gotten more from his abilities as a hitter. I think that's what the Mets were hopeful of, and fans too. He just turned out to be a hardheaded asshole who didn't take to coaching and thought he was a good hitter. And then his fielding went to shit.

[batmagadanleadoff]

He had all the hand-eye coordination in the world.

So did Wayne Gretzky and Muhammad Ali. Jimi Hendrix, too. But I wouldn't want them taking any at-bats for the Mets. Fraudonez was an awful baseball player who had the capacity to make highlight reel worthy plays. And personally, having been a full season ticket holder for his entire Mets stint and having seen more of his games than I can remember up close, I would swear that he was a fucking fraud, who purposely timed some of his defensive stops to turn what should have been an easy routine defensive play into something that ESPN would replay later that evening.

[Centerfield]

Point taken about WAR being imperfect. But it’s not like Ordonez numbers are close to being good, where a tweak in the formula may lead to a different perception. Rey’s numbers are categorically awful. And unless you throw out WAR as too flawed to even consider, it’s a damning assessment. He had a negative WAR or a WAR under 1 in all but one year as a Met.

Andrelton Simmons is considered a glove first SS. His WAR numbers put Ordonez to shame.

As for his offense, it’s not just that he put up terrible numbers. It’s that he had the misfortune of almost always being healthy so he would take up 500 ABs of terrible numbers. I really think if we had OPS as a stat back then, not only would he have not gotten that contract, he would have been the late inning sub he deserved to be.

[Edgy MD]

Oh, we definitely had it. Like Doug Flynn before him, Rey's consistently low averages somewhat masked the reality that average wasn't really his problem. Rob Neyer among others wrote at length about how much just a few more walks and/or doubles would do for his stock. But he wasn't just a .245 hitter, but a .245 hitter whose game was about 80% singles.

[Centerfield]

True. Let me rephrase. If OPS had been as common and as widely understood as it is now, there would have been no debate.

Imagine if the Mets gave a multi year deal to a player with a sub .600 OPS. There would have been rioting.

As for “fraud”. I don’t know if I’d go as far as calling Ordonez a fraud, but certainly his WAR numbers suggest his defense wasn’t as valuable as advertised. Take a look at Seattle era Vizquel numbers. They’re far better than Rey. Maybe it’s that Omar had better range and Rey just looked cooler and more acrobatic.