Former Teenage Hitting Machine Leaves Game With Sore Knee

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• alex68 June 17, 2011 at 7:47 am

  to think we could’ve kept carlos gomez and trade this softee to the twins in the deal for santana…
  • FelixM June 17, 2011 at 7:50 am

    What?
    • alex68 June 17, 2011 at 7:59 am

      what? what?
• K Maxx June 17, 2011 at 10:17 am

  This guy has become an absolute joke. It’s pathetic. Whoever thought Martinez was going to be a superstar must have been on crack. He cant even play centerfield anymore and his knees have made him miss more games than Carlos Beltran.
• t agee June 17, 2011 at 10:47 am

  Every organization has players that washout due to injury or not being able to perform. That’s why it’s so important to not count on just one guy coming through big time for you at every position.

  More prospects is the answer, not less. Having just one top shelf talent at RF in Fern leaves us with no one after this year. The same with 2B. Having just one solid prospect can very easily leave you with none. If it weren’t for Tejada we’d have no real Second basemen, no backup, and no AAA emergency backup until a guy like Valdespin leap frogs a guy like Havens. Catcher we still haven’t produced the 2nd part of the tandem. What are we going to do? Have our pitchers pitch to a different catcher every year? First base we had just one guy (Davis), his backup (Murphy) and Duda but Murphy and Duda just aren’t all that talented or well developed and that lack of development costs baseball games.

  Giving away 15 1st 2nd and 3rd round picks in the last 13 has cost this team a lot of talent and then drafting less talented but cheaper players on top of it has killed us. Failing to sign a couple of top shelf talents every year in the IFA pool just defies understanding. Two guys in the last 3 years. One with no defensive position. There is no draft and there are no slotting guidelines in the IFA arena. You can increase your teams talent level pretty quickly by having a great scouting and development program in place.

  Then you won’t have to go out and sign all these guys that wind up damaging your chances down the road.

  “Free agency is a short term solution to a long term problem.” What’s wrong with fixing the problem of not having enough top shelf talent in our farm system instead of just reaching out the lazy way and forking over huge bucks for yet another Jason Bay, Scott Schowenweiss, Guillermo Mota, Luis Castillo, Billy Wagner, Oliver perez, Vince Coleman, Roberto Alomar or Jeremy Burnitz.

  Face it. Even when you pay the big bucks your not guaranteed good performance or health but your still on the hook for 10 – 140 Million dollars regardless. Fern cost 1.4 Million to sign. If we signed 10 Fern’s it would cost about what Schowenweiss did and a few of them would have to pan out, some big time.

  Do that enough in the IFA market and employ some strategies to get a few extra draft choices like Boston and Toronto do and go over slot like the NYY did with Dellin Betances an eighth round draft choice out of high school who got one million dollars to come out early and your going to have some big hits that provide options so you don’t have to sign a Tim Redding or a Chris Young or count on a John Maine and an Oliver Perez.

  The answer is more prospects, not less. They might bust and cost you a Million or a Million and a half, not 70 or 80 and they don’t cost you any games at the Major league level either but when they hit, some of them hit big like Alfonzo and Reyes or Wright, Niese and Davis and they’ll be around a lot longer too.

  Wake up.
• Matt June 17, 2011 at 12:15 pm

  When was he a teenage hitting machine? Before The Mets signed him in 2006? His 3 years as a teenager in The Mets minor league system he batted .279, .265, and .292. In 229 total games as a teenager in the minors he had 226 hits. Fernando Martinez is just the next over-hyped Mets OF prospect in the Mets long history of over-hyping their prospects. Ryan Thompson, Alex Escobar, or Alex Ochoa ring any bells?
  • Seligman June 17, 2011 at 2:11 pm

    Definitely another fine product of the great Mets hype machine. Time to move on already from this one.
• Jimmy June 17, 2011 at 5:05 pm

  Martinez was a monster as a kid in the Dominican Republic. Usually when Dominicans tag a kid as a future star, he doesn’t flop. This guy was regarded as the best hitting prospect since Jose Reyes. He was compared to Vlady. What happened with Martinez is what happens to PLENTY of athletes. Their bodies simply can’t handle playing everyday for weeks at a time. Martinez simply can’t stay healthy. And it’s a shame. The kid has a fantastic swing.