Baseball Maverick by Steve Kettmann

Author:Steve Kettmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2015-03-20T13:13:05+00:00

One afternoon early in spring training 2013, prospect Travis d’Arnaud was catching at Tradition Field. Everyone was eager to get a look at him in action so soon after the trade that brought him to the Mets the previous December. He had a puppy-doggish look as he hopped up to confer with the pitcher. A fly ball to left sent the outfielder back toward the fence and d’Arnaud shouted out, “You got room!”

“To me he just looks like he’s not having fun right now,” Alderson told me. “He’s feeling the pressure. He’s swinging at bad balls. The first pitch went off his shin guard. Right now he knows he’s this top prospect and either he’s overcompensating, trying not to be Johnny College, or something else. We’ve got plenty of time to figure that out.”

It was another perfect 86-degree Florida spring afternoon and Alderson was incognito in his white cotton golf shirt and shades, sitting with his posse of smart young men. Behind him was Adam Fisher, the director of baseball operations; Jon Miller, the director of minor-league operations; and DePodesta.

“Adam’s from Harvard, Paul’s from Harvard, Jon Miller is from Princeton,” Alderson told me later. “They replicate themselves.”

The key to the Mets’ future was development of talent, starting with Zack Wheeler. “He hasn’t done anything to disappoint us,” Alderson said on the morning of Wheeler’s spring debut. “Prospect status is a function of past evaluations and past performance. It’s a dynamic label. Once you get it, you’re not entitled to it forever. You’ve got to keep performing. Zack has kept performing and he’s moved up the list of top prospects across baseball.

“He’s kind of laid-back. He tries to maintain his sort of low-key, low-anxiety approach to things. The contrast is with a guy like Matt Harvey. He’s very outgoing, he’s always asking questions, he wants to be part of the group, he’s a joiner. I think Zack is a little more of a loner. Harvey is a very mature twenty-three years old, very self-confident. Wheeler I don’t think thinks about what he projects, whereas with Harvey there’s a little more posturing that goes on. They’re both good guys.”

Alderson took a break from talking about the future to take his dog, Buddy, outside. As soon as we got out into the parking lot, Buddy took advantage of the opportunity. Alderson pulled a little plastic bag out of his pocket and went over to clean up. As Alderson squatted down with his baggie, a friendly voice called out in the near distance.

“Hey, that’ll be a good tweet for Jay!”

It was David Wright. Alderson, uncharacteristically, had no comeback and just shook his head and laughed.

“The nice thing about the Wheeler trade was that the press kept saying, ‘They’ll never get a top-line prospect for Beltrán because it’s a two-month rental,’” Alderson says. “We kept saying we’re shooting for the best prospect we can get, but media commentary lowered expectations. So when we got Zack nobody could believe it. The same thing happened with the R.

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