Here is the final part of my exclusive interview on Friday morning with Mets general manager Sandy Alderson who was a guest on my Tip-Off Show. You can read Part One of Sandy’s interview by clicking here and Part Two here.
Huge thanks to Mets media relations vice president Jay Horwitz for putting this together and Joe D. who laboriously did all the transcribing so that this could be presented to you.
John: How important are the intangibles that a player possesses, including resilience, makeup or character in the decisions you make when you’re evaluating a player that your interested in acquiring?
Sandy: I think those things are vitally important. You know we have so much emphasis on the game today being placed on analytics and numbers. But those numbers are more easily realized or exceeded if the culture in the clubhouse or the chemistry in the clubhouse and the relationship with players is constructive.
Sometimes the relationship isn’t always friendly or professional and it’s difficult to predict what will be the outcome when you’re putting together 25 different players. What we try to do is make an attempt to have the right blend.
In our case we have some great veteran leadership in our clubhouse, but we’ve also got a lot of young and highly motivated players as well. It’s very nice right now because we have leadership in many different places. We have leadership among our position players, leadership among our starting pitchers, and leadership in the bullpen. Hopefully that’s a formula for getting as much out of our players as we possibly can.
John: Rookie outfielder Michael Conforto has moved through the Mets system in record speed, what makes him so special?
Sandy: It’s a couple of things. First of all, he’s a very polished and advanced hitter both from the standpoint of his mechanics as well as his approach. One of the reasons that we were comfortable with promoting him from Binghamton, despite having very little experience above Single-A and no experience in Triple-A, was knowing that he had that solid approach from his amateur days and that it would serve him well and that he would be fine.
Conforto is a very mature player that fits in very well with any group, and he’s been taken under the wing of many of his peers at the major-league level who really like him. He’s done an excellent job for us… he’s not hitting .400 but he’s had some big hits for us, and some great at-bats, and that’s really our point of emphasis right now with him.
John: How about Dominic Smith? He was the FSL player of the month in June and he’s another number one draft pick, can you share some insights on him?
Sandy: Dom’s a left-handed hitting first baseman, and a pretty good defensive player. He’s also a very patient and selective player who is always looking for good pitches to hit.
The knock on Dom is that he doesn’t hit for much power, but he’s in the Florida State League which is a very tough hitter’s league. I think he’s third or fourth in OPS. So while he may only have four or five homeruns, he has lots of doubles and is proving to be a solid run producer. He’s having a very solid year hitting a little above .300 and his slugging percentage is excellent.
As I said he’s an exceptional defensive first baseman and a run producer who is still young, and I believe that Mets fans are going to like what they see from Dominic Smith when he eventually comes up.
John: You recently demoted Kevin Plawecki and promoted Anthony Recker to the major-league squad. The injury to Travis d’Arnaud allowed you to get an extended look at Plawecki. Can you tell us what you saw and what he needs to do to continue his development as a major league catcher?
Sandy: He did an excellent job for us defensively when we lost Travis. He stepped right in and did the lion’s share of the catching and was excellent. It’s not just our pitchers that create the great pitching environment that we have, it’s also the catchers and he did an outstanding job in that regard.
The reason that we sent him to Las Vegas was just to get him more at-bats, because with Travis coming back he was going to be sitting on the bench most of the time. We felt it was important that he go back to Vegas and get some at-bats on a routine basis. We hope to see him again sometime around September 1.
If you look at Kevin’s history, he has the kind of approach at the plate that we like. But anytime you’re a young player when you come in at the major-league level for the first time – particularly when you have to play every day – it becomes kind of a sink or swim proposition.
It’s not always easy to just fall back on that foundational approach you have, as Michael Conforto has also shown so far. But we like how Kevin Plawecki has come along, we believe in him, and we will see him again very shortly.
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We hope you enjoyed this exclusive interview with GM Sandy Alderson, his fifth with the gang at MMO. We thank Sandy for his generosity, openness, and allowing us to pick his brain and being very cordial and sincere about it.
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