Future Shock

So, before I delve into the woeful performances of the Mets' prospects at the 2007 "XM All-Star Futures Game at AT&T Park," which I attended on a gorgeous, sunny Sunday in the Bay Area at the tail end of a West Coast trip that included plenty of wine drinking and a close encounter with a rose bush during a killer wiffleball tourney, a few general observations.

• For a 7-inning game played before a mostly empty stadium, it's an awfully fun event. Tickets to the All-Star Game proper, given the appreciating profile of the event and the big money to be had in San Fran, are running in the high hundreds -- tickets to this event could be had for $10 outside the ballpark, and probably less if you hustled a bit. And that makes for a big deal -- yeah, the Celebrity Softball Game is a colossal waste of time, but the Futures Game allows a group of kids or a guy who can't get tickets to the game or the Derby to be part of the All-Star experience. Contrary to what all us cynics out there might believe, in a baseball area like Northern California, people really buy into the totality of the week (which comes around to an area how often?) and the mise-en-scene of the thing, which includes your parades and your FanFests. I suppose my point is that the All-Star Game is good, but the Futures Game is for the children.
• Yeah, the stadium is as good as advertised. If you ain't seen that bay shining in the sun while players toss the ball around on the perfect grass in front of a sea of forest green seats, you ain't seen nothin'. Also, the park provided one of the best moments of the game itself, when Reds superstud Jay Bruce absolutely SMOKED a ball about 435 feet to right center (this ball could not possibly have been hit harder or more directly) only to see it bounce off the high triangle brick wall and back in. Bruce, showing off the wheels, slid in for a crowd-pleasing triple. Boffo.
• There were a couple of really live arms out there. The New Rocks' Franklin Morales, playing down for the Drillers in Tulsa (AA), threw up at 96 with a nasty curveball mixed in. In a similar but ultimately far more promising vein was the Dodgers' teenage badass Clayton Kershaw, another gassed-up lefty but one with a Texan pedigree and future Cy Young winner's profile. A fastball sitting between 93 and 96, a hammer curve, and a 2.12 ERA and 103 Ks in 76 innings in the Midwest League one year out of H.S. Naturally, he gave up a homer to (I think) the Reds' other tasty hitting prospect, Joey Votto. Oh, and the Bombers' Joba Chamberlain was good and all that (fastball at 96, sick slider, damn it).
• Jacoby Ellsbury, the Red Sox' fleet centerfield prospect, encountered his own personal Trail of Tears on Sunday, showing off a noodle arm in left and going 0 for 5 in the leadoff spot. This after hitting .375 in 16 ABs with the big club last week and giving New England a collective speed boner and Johnny Damon flashback. Serves them right, gullible drunkards. Or does that performance matter more than the results of one exhibition game? Yes and now.
  
• Too soon for the Trail of Tears jokes? Yeah? Probably.
• The on-field interview with World team manager Juan Marichal was just about as awkward as could have been hoped. Marichal is a Giants hero, to be sure, and was cheered 20 different times before and during the game, but the man simply hasn't mastered the finer points of conversational English, and had to follow the top-notch promotional routine of verbose USA manager Dave Winfield. Hilarity ensued. But we all clapped.
• Cheers to the bratwurst with sauerkraut served near section 310. Good spicy mustard on the rack, a bargain at $7. Jeers to the two fat chicks sitting next to Cheddar Ben who snuck trail mix into the stadium only to break down during the fourth inning and buy a Gilroy Garlic Fries and one of those fajita bowls from Orlanda Cepeda's concession stand. Come on now, ladies.

And now, for something entirely different.

Deolis Guerra, RHP, St. Lucie Mets (A), 4.58 ERA, 46K in 57 IP, Age 18

This guy sucked. Yeah, he was the youngest fella on the field, but overacheiver or not, there just wasn't a lot to like. The fastball was flat and sat at 87 most of the time, and the secondary pitches were literally all over the place. He wowed the audience by tossing an attempted curve about 15 feet onto the backstop, and bounced a couple of "changeups" into the dusty danger zone several feet in front of the plate. Texas prospect John Whittleman certainly liked what he saw of Guerra, launching a weak-ass fastball into the bleachers for the game's most predictable home run.

Now, nothing about this one outing says anything about Guerra's long-term potential or cap. Just didn't look all that good, that's all.

Fernando Martinez, CF, Binghamton Mets (AA), .271/.336/.377 in 236 ABs, Age 18

And even more disappointingly, this guy didn't even show. He hurt his hand or some shit, winding up replaced by a Canadian loser named James Van Ostrand. How embarassing. I was really looking forward to see the kid in person.

Instead, we had to deal with articles like this from the Chicago Trib's risible Phil Rogers, indicating that the White Sox were scouting both Martinez and Carlos Gomez a possible trade. For whom, Phil? A Rent-a-Buehrle? New York icon Javy Vazquez? Details, please. Then again, the Journal News' Peter Abraham seems to think dealing Fernando for Jose Contreras makes some type of sense. And people say the journalism business is in trouble.

Kevin Mulvey, RHP, Binghamton Mets (AA), 3.40 ERA, 60 K in 93 IP, Age 22

Um, I think one guy he faced didn't tattoo the ball. No, no, wait ... that was me during the wiffleball game, flying out to Blond Matt's 6-foot-9 friend from high school. EVERYONE spanked the ball off Mulvey, with his outfielders running down a couple of gappers after World catcher Max Ramirez (of the Injuns) creamed a line-drive double off the base of the wall in left field. Not much else to say -- I think he's a future addition to somebody's bullpen, but he was throwing creampuffs Sunday.

That's all for now. Anyone going to watch tonight?