spotlight: jeurys familia

jeurys is a starting pitching prospect for the mets, currently on their high-a team, the st. lucie mets. keith law ranks him as the mets #10 prospect, baseball prospectus ranks him #13 and baseball america has him unranked in each of the last 3 years he's been a pro.

jeurys is 21 years old and won't turn 22 until after this season is over. unlike other mets prospects he has not been rushed through the system, spending his age 18 season in rookie ball, his age 19 season in low-a, and his age 20 season in high-a where he will open up his age 21 season. on friday night, he started his first game of the year and pitched 7 innings with 7ks, giving up just 1 hit and 0 walks.

since his debut in 2008, his k rate has increased each year from 6.62 to 7.32 to 10.19 last year. his era, however, skyrocketed from less than 2.80 in each of his first two years to 5.58 last year. his fip was only 3.89 though and was more consistent with his low 3 fips from previous years. the high era can probably be attributed to his increased bb rate which doubled from 08 to 10, from 2.26 to 5.50. that number though was tempered by his increased k rate and was reflected in his slightly increased fip number.

what keeps his fip reasonably low and what should come back to normal this year is his strand rate, which was around 72% previously but dropped sharply to 60.7% in 2010. his babip also jumped from .273 to .341. finally, the last reason that his fip was reasonably low with all those walks is that his hr rate is only 0.52 and was even lower the previous two years.

the mets front office has taken a mildly approach than the previous regimes (especially tony bernazard who famously tried to fight one of his minor league affiliates) who would promote rapidly if you showed any signs of success. one of the more famous examples of this was fernando martinez and that hasn't worked out so great. the new front office will mostly take a case-by-case approach but should probably allow their raw prospects to enjoy some prolonged success before pushing them up a level.

in jeurys' case, his high era last year should drop significantly if he can keep his k rate high, regardless of his walk rate, simply bc his babip and strand rate should both move towards the norm. if he can get his walk rate back to his career norm of 4.00 at the same time, he could be looking at some gaudy numbers. with some luck even, we could be looking at a sub 3 era, which would result in a nice dose of confidence moving forward.

as it usually is with most prospects i am hoping for the best. jeurys made 24 starts last year, pitching about 5 innings per start. hopefully he can make about 10 starts in high-a ball before being promoted to double-a (with matt harvey perhaps), where they definitely can use some starting pitching help. familia will certainly need to work on his control and command to limit his walks but some scouts have predicted a move to the bullpen anyway once he moves up the system. either way, confidence can't hurt and it seems as though he's well on his way to achieving that early in this season.

....shooting for a 2013 arrival