With the increasing likelihood that Wilmer Flores will be the Mets Opening Day shortstop, here’s a mailbag question I posted on Monday that I now updated.
Sandy Alderson just told reporters: “We’ve continued to have conversations about shortstop with other teams, but nothing is likely to occur.”
Victor asks…
In your Winter Ball update you mentioned that Wilmer Flores had 7 errors while playing exclusively at shortstop for Venezuela. That sounds like a lot of errors for just 25 games played. I really hope he succeeds at shortstop, but what if he’s not cutting it after a month?
Joe D. replies…
That’s a good question and I hope we never have to find out. But if it does come down to Flores being pulled from shortstop because his defense was counterproductive to the team, you can bet that Ruben Tejada takes over as the starting shortstop. This is assuming we don’t sign or trade for someone else before the season starts.
Behind Tejada the Mets have Matt Reynolds at Triple-A who had kind of a breakthrough season at the plate in 2014. Reynolds hit .355 with a homer and 21 RBIs in 58 games with Double-A Binghamton, and continued to rake at Triple-A Las Vegas, where he hit .333 with five homers and 40 RBIs in 68 games.
A couple of scouts that watched him in the Arizona Fall League were impressed with his defense at short, and back in the summer a scout told me Reynolds could be an Adam Kennedy type hitter in the majors.
With Stephen Drew now off the board, the Mets could still be in on Everth Cabrera even though some in the front office are wary of his off the field issues. The Mets are no longer interested in Japanese SS Takashi Toritani, but I never believed they seriously considered him anyway.
Nobody knows what the future holds, but I’m sure the guys in the front office were keyed in on Flores’ defense during Winter Ball and are probably asking themselves the same question. What if…?
