Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Forgotten Fernando Martinez

Once upon a time, there was a young talent so coveted in baseball that he was deemed the future savior of the Mets at the meager age of 17. In fact he was so good and so lauded the he was not even worthy to be traded for the best pitcher in baseball, Johan Santana.

But then something happened that caused the Mets to lose sight of this phenom and move on without regard to what plans had been set in place many years before. It was called losing.

And so Fernando Martinez finds himself in an odd position...he has none. With the Mets pushing hard for Matt Holliday and the keeping of Jeff Franceour, Martinez will be the 4th or 5th outfielder on the team or will spend another year in the minor leagues honing his skills.

My question is what are the Mets plans for Fernando Martinez? I believe the answer is they don't know or don't have one. If the Mets sign Holliday or Bay they'll have a left fielder locked up for another 5 or 6 years. Beltran has another year left on his contract, and the question mark is how long the Mets will look to hold onto Franceour.

But in the mean time, Martinez is left blowing in the wind. Pagan looks like he'll be the 4th outfielder and I'm not sure you want Martinez riding the bench for a full season.

Do you trade him? If you can get a young starting pitcher like say Felix Hernandez? Than yes. But if it's for a middle of the road guy, I don't think you should.

For a guy that we've been hearing and talking about for at least 3 seasons, you'd think we'd know when we'd see him taking the outfield in Citi Field on a regular basis. For now, he's just trying to recover from injury and find his way back to the ballclub. In another 6 months, who knows where he might be.

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