Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Seeing The Future

Spring Training is full of no-name minor leaguers playing the late innings of games.  Usually, that means once the sixth inning rolls around there isn't much of a reason to keep watching.  However, this spring it already seems like it's going to be different.  The Mets have some exciting prospects and they are getting playing time early.

We have already seen Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Matt den Dekker playing centerfield.  Darrell Ceciliani played right field yesterday and Brandon Nimmo and Wilmer Flores also got some at-bats.  Jeurys Familia has already thrown a couple of innings as well.  Seeing the future of the organization is very different than seeing Jose A. Reyes getting a hand full of at-bats.

There is no way to avoid the late-game lull because it is simply how Spring Training works.  The starters get the reps they need and then do their conditioning on the backfields while the minor leaguers play out the games.  There isn't much to take from Spring Training stats, but seeing how pitchers respond to jams and batters perform with men on base can be interesting.  It is also cool to just see how prospects play.  I didn't how fast Ceciliani was until yesterday and I also enjoyed seeing den Dekker in centerfield.

The monotony of Spring Training will get to any baseball fan but at least this year it might not come as quickly.

Let's Go Mets!

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