Harvesting Opinion: New York Mets–Fernando Martinez

Harvesting Opinion is a regular feature on Seedlings to Stars. Each week, six of FanSided’s team blogs send S2S a question relating to their team’s minor league system, and we answer them in this space–each question gets one article devoted to answering it. In this way, we make sure we regularly get to discuss hot-button issues relating to the systems of every team, as these go on a five-week cycle. 

Please note that any statistics used may be a day or two out of date, as we prepare our answers over the course of a week.

In this edition, we tackle a question sent to us from our New York Mets site Rising Apple:

From 2007 to 2010, Fernando Martinez was ranked within the Top 100 prospects by Baseball America. After yet another injury-plagued and general disappointing season in 2011, is F-Mart officially a bust, or does the 22 year-old still have enough youth to prove his former high shelf status?

Nathaniel says:

One could be forgiven for seeing it either way.

On the positive side, we’re talking about a 22-year-old fairly athletic outfielder with a career .200 ISO in Triple-A. Since most prospects haven’t even reached Triple-A by that age, to have shown plus power at the level already is excellent.

That said, Martinez no longer plays center field, which raises the offensive bar for him, and makes his .265 average and .326 OBP at Triple-A look below par. After all, a .265/.326/.465 line isn’t going to translate well, especially not to Citi Field. Furthermore, much of that line is buoyed by a .290/.347/.540 line in a 45-game run in 2009 (at age 20!), and his ISO has declined each year – from .250 in 2009 to .202 in 2010 and finally to .157 this year.

Sometimes, guys like this will finally “get it” after a few years of struggles (Neil Walker, for example), other times (Andy Marte, for example), they’ll just continue to post the same frustrating batting line.

I’m not writing Martinez off until he finally can put a healthy season in and show what he can do. He played just 78 games last year (between Buffalo and the Mets), and has made it into only 74 this season. Of course, those injuries are bad news in and of themselves, but at this young age, we can still hope that Martinez can return to 2009 form or better if he’s 100%.

There’s a lot to be concerned about here, enough to keep Martinez out of any penciled-in future lineups, but writing him off due to some middling, injury-riddled AAA performances at age 21/22 is too rash.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wally says:

I don’t think it would be fair to call any 22-year old player a bust as long as he’s still in the game and has shown flashes of being a future major league contributor. In the case of Fernando Martinez he has obviously failed to live up to expectations, but from my perspective those expectations were a little unrealistic. That said, I understand why Mets fans are willing to write him off. There is nothing worse than watching a prospect falter, not based on his performance, but because he simply can’t stay healthy enough to take the field everyday. As a Royals fan, I suffered through Mike Sweeney’s 2002-2007 back problems and I know it’s an awful experience to see a guy struggle to stay on the field and produce at the same time.

After 6 professional seasons Fernando’s career high in games played is 90 and that came back in 2008. That season he logged 86 games with Binghamton (AA) and 4 games with the GCL Mets (Rk). His statistical high-water mark came in 2009 when he hit 0.290/.337/.540 in 45 games for Buffalo (AAA). Martinez was just 20 at the time and while his slash stats weren’t in the “oh my god what a season” class, it was good enough for me to remain optimistic about his chances 2 years later and 2 years older.

The injuries are a concern, especially given that many of them have been hamstring and knee related. He has lost some speed which lessens one of his tools, but more importantly he’s lost a ton of development time. He’s been unable to settle into a rhythm and routine and that might help explain my primary concern with F-Mart as a prospect.

In his minor league career:
412 games played
116 walks
353 strikeouts
3.04 strikeouts for every 1 walk

In 2011 with the Buffalo Bisons*:
63 games
18 walks
60 strikeouts
3.33 SO/BB

*By the way, memo to the good people of Buffalo: the plural form of Bison is, in fact, Bison. There is no need to add an “s” on the end and frankly our educational system has enough problems without a minor league team incorrectly naming their team. I shudder to think of all the people in Buffalo, and surrounding regions, going through life thinking Bisons is the correct term for multiple Bison.

Anyway, back on point … Plate discipline and patience are to some degree innate, but players can and do improve their skills as they advance through the minors and as they gain experience in the majors. Logging at bats day in and day out is a key piece to developing this skill and Fernando’s inability to stay on the field has adversely impacted this part of his development more than any other.

He’s always going to be aggressive at the plate and if you were to try and take that away from him you would take away a large piece of what he is – and could become – as a player. But that doesn’t mean he can’t become more selective with that aggressive approach and while I’m sure the Mets have been working with him in this area the results, at least statistically, are simply not there. At least not yet.

His current plate discipline is a bit of a red flag for me. However he remains a guy with plus power to all fields and the ability to hit for a solid average. His arm and defense both project to average as well. If his selectivity comes around and if he can stay healthy, he could still become an everyday major league outfielder.

Is he going to be a superstar? No, but anyone who started thinking that at any point after he signed back in 2005 (for $1.3 million) was simply kidding themselves.

For more on the Mets, check out Rising Apple.

Follow us on Twitter: Nathaniel (@stoltz_baseball) and Wally (@thebaseballfish) and also keep up to date with all things S2S by liking our Facebook page.