Into the Third Week of Spring Training

Spring Training is in full swing, and while we must take every performance with a grain of salt and a handfull of small sample size, it’s important not to ignore what’s happened so far. Here are a few highlights after the first few weeks:

The Position Players

The middle infield – Danny Espinosa is batting .324/.378/.559 and Ian Desmond is batting .314/.351/.400 while having the two highest AB totals on the team. They’re not walking much, which is troubling, but at least they are hitting the ball. Without walking, they will have to sit lower in the lineup, they just won’t get on base enough, but hopefully some of that will come.

Left Field – It would be hard to deny Mike Morse the starting job at this point. He’s hitting .469, he’s slugging 1.000, and he’s got 5 HRs in only 32 ABs. This compares with Rick Ankiel‘s .194/.219/.548. Ankiel has shown enough power that you’d think he’d make the team, but he doesn’t look like the starter yet.

Center field – Nyjer Morgan is now batting .212/.242/.261, while Roger Bernadina is hitting .281/.324/.438. Bernadina is putting together a strong case to be the 4th outfielder, since Morse is hitting so well. But if Morgan continues to slump this way, Bernie’s got a chance to be the starting centerfielder.

Spring Training in Person

Intrepid correspondent and part-time contributor to the blog Brian is fortunate enough to be down in Florida visiting family. Non-coincidentally, it’s the start of spring training, so he went out to check out the Mets-Nats game. He caught warmups, the debut of Bryce Harper, and the mashings of Mike Morse.  He took some completely excellent pictures, as well. Here’s what he had to say:

Today’s game in Port St. Lucie between the Nationals and the Mets was interesting on so many levels.  Since I was lucky enough to be there in person, I wanted to share some of my notes from the game; outside the boxscore type stuff that you could only know by being there.  For those of you in the DC area that want to set the right mood for reading this post, crank the heat in your dwelling to 83 degrees and maybe have someone fan you to simulate the slight breeze towards left field.  You could not have asked for better weather.

- I arrived at Digital Domain field at around 11AM to catch batting practice.  I got to see the Nats lineup take BP and watched all of the accompanying drills.  It was obvious from watching all the activity that Riggleman is running a pretty tight ship.  Every minute before game time was perfectly orchestrated to prepare the team for the game and of course, the season.  The Mets on the other hand didn’t take any BP or fielding practice.  The end result was the Nats were ready to play at game time where as the Mets were not.  This is encouraging to see especially with a young team who is going to have to play stingy defense to make improvements over last year.