51s groom so many good pitchers for Mets that it’s easy to forget one
This is how many fantastic pitching prospects have had layovers in Las Vegas on their way to becoming rich and famous with the New York Mets, where they presently throw heat, aspirin tablets or seeds, or whatever small, inanimate object you prefer:
When I asked 51s pitching coach Frank Viola about it during Mets spring training at Port St. Lucie, Florida, he couldn’t remember them all.
“To have five guys like this, from (Matt) Harvey to (Zack) Wheeler to (Noah) Syndergaard to (Steven) Matz to … who am I missing? I’m missing somebody pretty good, too …”
DeGrom, he was told. He was missing Jacob deGrom. Winner of 14, loser of eight in 2015. ERA of 2.54. Miniscule WHIP. Wild hair. Hellacious heater.
“DeGrom — oh my god,” Viola said.
Viola had worked with all of these New York throwers of flame, all of whom played in Las Vegas with the exception of Harvey — the Mets’ Triple-A farm club was in Buffalo, New York, when Harvey was on his way up, before he became the Dark Knight and wouldn’t speak to reporters. But that Viola could forget a pitcher the quality of deGrom, even momentarily, is testimony to how many great, young arms the Mets have developed over recent seasons.
“I mean, you go from one to the other during the same day and time — you don’t see that very often,” said Viola, who threw pretty hard himself en route to winning 176 games in the major leagues and the 1988 American League Cy Young Award for the Minnesota Twins, though his changeup might have been better than his fastball.
“The only (group) it could compare to was the Braves, and that wasn’t until they brought Maddux over in a trade.”
When Atlanta added Hall of Famer Greg Maddux of Las Vegas to a staff that included fellow Hall of Famers John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, as well as Denny Neagle and Kevin Millwood, it was a pitching rotation for the ages.
Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen also invoked the names of those Braves pitchers when asked about the great rotations, while I mentioned the 1971 Baltimore Orioles quartet of Mike Cuellar, Pat Dobson, Jim Palmer and Dave McNally, which was just after Warthen broke in with the Montreal Expos. That Orioles team is the only one to produce four 20-game winners in the same season since the 1920 Chicago White Sox.
A few years ago, ESPN put together a list of the all-time great rotations. The aforementioned Braves’ group of 1998 and the Baltimore foursome ranked first and second.
Warthen said once Wheeler gets healthy — he went 11-11 after being recalled from Las Vegas in 2014 but missed the 2015 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery, and haven’t you heard that before — one might want to consider the current crop of Mets’ starting pitchers in the same category, or close to it.
“You won’t see this once in 10 lifetimes, I think,” said Warthen, who also was the Las Vegas pitching coach when the 51s were affiliated with the San Diego Padres.
“To have the same kind of individuals as far as great people coming from good families with good training and good work ethic and a huge amount of talent … you put all those things together, it just doesn’t happen.”
This is where I like to point out that you could have seen all of those guys, except for Harvey, pitch here, and if you like to sit close to the field on the first-base side, it would have cost around $11, whereas it now costs around $163 for the same seat at Citi Field.
And if those guys were scheduled to pitch Thursday night at Cashman Field, it would have cost only $1 for a beer.
The 51s will open the season Thursday night at Cashman Field against the reigning Pacific Coast League champions, the Fresno Grizzlies, and it will still cost $11 to get in, and $1 for a beer, to watch 25-year-old Rafael Montero pitch for the 51s. Montero is not in the same class of the aforementioned group that came through here.
But he was the starting pitcher for the World Team in the 2013 All-Star Futures Game at Citi Field. Noah Syndergaard started for Team USA, so at least Montero was in the same box score, if not in the same class.
When the Mets traded for Yoenis Cespedes and some other guys to bolster their pennant drive in 2015, they had to part with quality Double-A pitching prospects. So indications are Las Vegas will have a better bullpen than it will a starting staff this season.
But I’m sure Montero still throws pretty well, or the Mets wouldn’t have called him up for multiple cups of coffee the past two seasons. He’s from the Dominican Republic, as were Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal. And even if the Grizzlies cuff Montero around a little bit, the beers still will only cost $1.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski