Supplemental First Rounder, Michael Fulmer Signs Over Slot

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• alex68 June 24, 2011 at 8:54 am

  i hope this kid the best, nothing against him but i would’ve prefer to get jed bradley, but i am sure the saber heads in our front office know what they are doing !!
  • Nicholas Pugliese June 24, 2011 at 1:20 pm

    Jed Bradley was long gone by this pick. Bradley went No. 15 overall and Fulmer was No. 44. Are you thinking of Brandon Nimmo who the Mets took at 13?
    • alex68 June 24, 2011 at 1:34 pm

      no, i wanted jed bradley then a hitter, but we went backwards and ended up picking him.. hopefully he becomes someone good for us in the future, i mean, he does throws 97 mph! but then again, so does parnell!!! and he sucks!!
      • t agee June 24, 2011 at 1:51 pm

        I liked Bradley an awful lot too. Usually I prefer the high school position player over everyone else because so many college pitchers bust but this draft was great for both high school and college pitching.

        If we weren’t going pitching with #13 I would have been blown away if we had taken Blake Swihart who’s switch hitting power bat is expected to be able to remain behind the plate and if not, easily be a top producer in RF.

        Either way as close to a can’t miss as any high school prospect picked in the first round and could fill one of our many long term needs for years to come.
        • t agee June 24, 2011 at 2:00 pm

          This is really great news that we got him signed. With both our #1 Nimmo and Fulmer being Arkanasas recruits I was afraid that the Razorbacks SID would get them together to turn us down, now maybe Fulmer gets Nimmo to join him in rookie ball.

          This is really optimistic but maybe we got our Josh Johnson. You never know. Even if he’s not, at least the optomisim won’t cost us games at the Major League level.

          Go get Brandon signed now and start developing him into our own Paul O’Neil.
  • t agee June 24, 2011 at 2:11 pm

    But Alex these picks were pure baseball scouting picks. Old school. One of the central themes about moneyball is drafting college players. These guys are pure scouting and projection. Hell Nimmo probably didn’t even have 100 games worth of stats to even look up.

    A high school kid with an arm like Fulmers, if he makes it, would be a top 10 pick in three years coming out of college. We got him with the 71st pick, without three years of abuse by college coaches on his arm and with some elite prospect development could be in A+ by the time he would have been drafted and will be facing better hitters than he would have in college.

    All around Fulmer is a win for us because his upside is Josh Johnson and he has no where and tear on his arm like Pelfrey, Humber and Kunz.
• Pete June 24, 2011 at 9:27 am

  This kid is a good pick for the Mets. If your just coming out of high school, can get it up to 97 mph with plus sink AND a breaking ball? That’s promising. The only reason he lasted as long as he did in the draft is because it was such a deep pitching crop this year. I think he’ll start at GCL, not Kingsport, since GCL is mostly high schoolers, and Kingsport is predominantly college players, but if he is advanced enough already for Kingsport, it would say a lot about the stage of his development, and he could eventually become a “fast riser”. Probable ETA: 2015.
  • Metsie June 24, 2011 at 12:47 pm

    It’s also rather scary to have a kid that young throwing 97. Good chance he will blow out that arm before he ever sees the Majors.
    • jdon June 24, 2011 at 2:18 pm

      not necessarily. Guys with a fluid motion (like our own Mike Pelfrey) look like they are expending minimal effort and get up to the mid 90s. It is the guys who look like they are trying to throw it through a brick wall that you have to worry about. Mejia is like that.
      • Metsie June 24, 2011 at 6:01 pm

        Fluid motion is nice but the key is where is the bulk of that velocity being generated from?

        Pelfrey has a fluid motion but he does not use his legs at all which is why he is always in the low 90′s. If he used more of his lower body to generate that power then he would constantly be in the mid 90′s.
        By not using your legs you are using your upper body more which is not really built to take that amount of stress.

        In many guys it is the shoulder that absorbs the stress, Others the Elbow.

        The leg drive Tag mentioned is a good sign because it means that the power is generated from the legs and not so much by over stressing some other part of the body.
    • t agee June 24, 2011 at 2:27 pm

      Metsie, he uses his legs pretty well in his delivery and has no recoil at all. It looks really smooth and easy. He even pitches well out of the stretch, holds runners and can even hit. Not to say he’s anything more than a possibility in 2016 but looks to my uneducated eye as less of an injury risk than some of the more advanced college pitchers who went before him like Jungman.

      Our luck has to change at some point too huh?
      • Metsie June 24, 2011 at 5:56 pm

        Well he has to have good leg drive to get there I would think…lol
        The concern is the rest of the mechanics. But I can’t really comment intelligently on this kid since I haven’t really seen him.

        But the Leg Drive is a good sign…

        As far as luck it sure can’t get much worse now can it? LOL
• Seligman July 25, 2011 at 10:35 am

  Glad to see we signed him and paid a little extra to get it done. As a high school pitcher I guess 2014 is the earliest we’ll see him.
• Steven A July 25, 2011 at 12:26 pm

  In the old days, the Mets used to emphasize the leg drive as the key to pitching development. Seaver used to jog all the time just to develop the thick thighs. Same with Koosman, and Swan. Gooden seemed more of an arm guy. Dont know why we dont see more leg drive on our pitchers or in ML for that matter.
• Jake in OK July 29, 2011 at 3:01 pm

  FYI, Your photo above isn’t of Michael Fulmer, it’s of another Oklahoma high school RHP Clayton Blackburn.