Looking for Surprises At Spring Training

The big spring training stories for the Mets and Yankees are going to surround their highly esteemed pitching prospects. In the Mets' case, it's because the rotation is somewhat sketchy. There are no guarantees that Mike Pelfrey and Phil Humber will pitch at all in the major leagues this year, but if either or both look like Chris Carpenter in Port St. Lucie, the Mets aren't going to hold them back in favor of guys like Aaron Sele. The Yankees have a far more solid rotation, but between Phillip Hughes's status as one of the half-dozen or so best pitching prospects of the past 10 years and the dread specter of Carl Pavano as the fifth starter on-paper, Legends Field will also see a rising star given every chance to force his way on to the big team.

For both clubs, though, there are other characters who will be just as interesting to watch. Few prospects have the sort of perfectly clean rise to prominence that we've seen with Pelfrey and Hughes; just as often, someone will, as Robinson Cano did, get called up out of obscurity during the season and establish himself as a force, leaving even people who follow the minors fairly closely wondering exactly what happened. While both the Mets and Yankees have their depth charts fairly well set already, there will still be opportunities for some young players to seize jobs this year, and there are players who might be able to do so.

One player to watch closely will be Mets center fielder Carlos Gomez. Since he was signed at the age of 16 in 2002, he's been regarded as a future star, a true five-tool player. Last year in Double A he had his breakout campaign, hitting .281 BA/.350 OBA/.423 SLG, with 41 stolen bases in 50 attempts. What's really notable is that those numbers were much better than they look, as the Eastern League was a miserable place to hit last year. More teams hit below .250 than above it, and the average batter hit .252/.323/.381. Gomez's .423 slugging average in Binghamton was, statistically, about as valuable as it would have been in Flushing, as the extreme difficulty of his hitting environment cancels out the gap in difficulty between the two leagues.

There are a few factors that make it unlikely Gomez will make any kind of impact this year. For one, the Mets have three veterans in the outfield, and for another, the presence of Lastings Milledge means he wouldn't even be the first center field prospect to get a crack at a job should Moises Alou or Shawn Green need to be replaced on grounds of injury (likely in Alou's case) or playing badly (likely in Green's case).

Still, if last year was truly a breakout campaign, he (like Milledge) is probably better than Green right now once defense and baserunning are taken into account, and five-tool prospects have a way of forcing their way into jobs ahead of schedule, especially when they're being blocked by stopgaps to whom the team has no long-term commitments. Either way, between Gomez, Milledge, Carlos Beltran, and Fernando Martinez, the Mets have a ridiculous amount of young outfield talent right now. There will be no more Jason Tyners.

While the Yankees don't appear to have anyone like Gomez kicking around, they do have a few pitchers you're likely to see in the majors this year, some of whom might do a pretty good job. The most compelling is Humberto Sanchez, the key prospect in the deal that sent Gary Sheffield to Detroit. He is a big guy (listed at 6-foot-6) with a big fastball (clocked at 97 mph) and some sense, judging by his walk rates, of where the ball is going. What makes him especially interesting is that while Detroit had him working as a starter, everything about him — from some durability issues to his fastball to the elbow problems — screams that he is a relief pitcher. Put in that role and allowed to focus simply on his best pitches, he could establish himself not only as the kind of dominant setup man the Yankees could use and certainly don't have, but perhaps even as the closer of the future. Past Sanchez and Hughes there are several more pitchers whose names are worth remembering, like Tyler Clippard and J. Brent Cox, but none are likely to do more this year than serve as cheap cannon fodder.

That the Yankees and Mets have plenty of guys capable of emerging, though, is, a real sign of how well New York's teams have corrected long-standing organizational flaws. In the Yankees' case, it's their persistent inability to come up with credible emergency replacements from the farm system, leading to such fits of brilliance as Darrell May and Tim Redding becoming Yankees starters, and in the Mets' case, their complete failure at producing any outfield prospects of any note. Neither Gomez nor Sanchez nor any prospect who's not Hughes or Pelfrey is likely to meaningfully contribute to a pennant drive this year; that there are players who will be able to do so if put in the right position, though, is a new and excellent thing for both teams.

tmarchman@nysun.com