Baseball: Brandon Nimmo experiences highs, and lows, of full season pro ball | Casper Star-Tribune

A nice article in a home state newspaper of Mets’ 2011 1st round draft pick Brandon Nimmo.

Mets: David Wright stealing the show | NorthJersey.com

"There was a time when he was a legitimate thief, a threat to opposing pitchers who underestimated his legs. One season, David Wright stole 34 bases. Another, he stole 27..."

Backman On Wheeler: ‘He’s Going To Be Pushing The Door Open Himself’ | CBS New York

Too early to get excited about this but the day is coming soon enough.

Mets’ Ynoa and Lara Add to Dominican Pitching Pipeline | FanGraphs Baseball

Fangraphs with a great review of two Mets pitching prospects further down the pipeline, Gabriel Ynoa and Rainy Lara. (Yes, his name actually is Rainy. No word yet if he has a brother named Sunny.)

Brandon Nimmo Stands Out For Savannah | FanGraphs Baseball

Great post on Fangraphs about Brandon Nimmo, the Mets 1st round draft pick (13th overall) in 2011. I've written about and posted about Nimmo in the past. The Fangraphs post has some great video, which I re-posted below. This quote pretty much sums up the post:

"Finally in full season, Nimmo has achieved a .447/.518/.574 line through twelve games and shows no signs of slowing down. Having scouted him a couple of times against the Rome Braves, the left-handed hitter deserves mention with the very best the South Atlantic League has to offer."

The Sand Gnats are actually in Lakewood, NJ this weekend playing the Phillies Low-A Affiliate, Lakewood Blue Claws. Unfortunately I can't make it this weekend to any of the games but hopefully enough local fans will make it out and post lots of video of Nimmo, Steven Matz, Gabriel Ynoa, Rainy Lara, Phillip Evans, Kevin Plawecki, and others.

Johan Santana: The Lost Man of Mets Camp

One of my favorite Mets bloggers, Patrick Flood, has joined one of my favorite Mets blogs, Amazin Avenue. If you've never read Patrick's writing before, he has a way of creating vivid imagery with words that very few sports bloggers are able to do. This was a particularly interesting post about Johan Santana, with this astute observation as to why he flew under the radar before becoming an All-Star and two-time Cy Young Award winner with the Minnesota Twins:

"...at his best Santana was genius. He didn’t throw remarkably hard by major league standards, his slider was just a junky waste pitch he only threw to lefties, and he always seemed to be fighting himself. He’s not unusual physically, maybe other than being broad shouldered. There are good reasons he was never a prospect and the Astros now-famously let a young Santana go in the Rule 5 draft. His gifts were never obvious because they were always hidden away in his mind. Santana’s brilliance was not only in reconciling his body and his will in the way all great control pitchers do, but in that his will was able to dominate the physical in ways that seemed, at times, almost supernatural. Like he could actually decide, after throwing a pitch, whether it was a fastball or a changeup. Or he could cause a popup to hang in the air just long enough for the shortstop to chase it down. Or he could not only manipulate most hitters, but actually control some. As in some poor slugger like Dan Uggla didn't even have a choice as whether to swing, he just swung or didn't swing because Santana made him."

Punk Hits: Why I'm Rooting for the Dutch in the WBC | Baseball Prospectus

I'm tempted to subscribe to Baseball Prospectus just to read the rest of this article, oddly written by the groom from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding".