Mets Minor League Blog Report 9-12-08
Toby Hyde
In this issue
- Rubin: Mets Want to Buy Into Syracuse
- BA’s Badler on Flores, Marte, Murphy, Hanson, Niese and Parnell
Rubin: Mets Want to Buy Into Syracuse
A day after Adam Rubin wrote that, “the Mets are trying to buy a portion of the Syracuse franchise” but that “if they don’t succeed, Buffalo’s facility would seem to trump Syracuse’s” in his blog, the Matt Michael in the Post-Standard in Syracuse did a lengthy story on the subject Thursday with some excellent insight into the structure of the publicly owned Chiefs.
According to Michael:
The Chiefs are owned by 3,934 stockholders who hold 15,798 shares of stock, according to the Chiefs' most recent proxy statement.
It's unlikely the Mets could get a piece of Buffalo's Triple-A team, which is owned by Rich Products Corp. chairman Robert E. Rich.
When Robert E. Rich died in 2006, he was is one of the wealthiest men in America valued at over $2 billion. His son, Robert Rich Jr. now owns the Bisons.
Michael reports that the Syracuse stockholders were unaware of the Mets interest in purchasing the team. There are two obvious problems with the Mets purchasing in.
- The first is the valuation of the shares. Per Michael:
Originally purchased for $10, each share is now worth $125.79 based on the stockholders' equity of about $1.8 million, according to the Chiefs' most recent financial statement. But the going rate for Triple-A teams is more than $10 million, so the real value of the shares is probably much higher than that.
- According to team bylaws, there is a severe limit on the voting power of any single shareholder:
“No matter how many shares a person owns, he or she could only vote up to 500 shares”
Gee, if you were the Mets would you want to buy into that?
BA’s Ben Badler did the honors for Baseball America in their weekly ESPN chat this week.
Brian (Brooklyn):
Was Wilmer Flores the number 1 international prospect signing last
year? Also
has he been the most productive from last year's class?
Ben
Badler: (2:20 PM ET ) Nope, there were eight others who got
more
than Flores during last year's
international
signing period. If all those guys suddenly because free agents again
though, he
would almost certainly get the most money. There's a tremendous amount
of
uncertainty involved in international scouting, mostly because the kids
you're
dealing with are so young that so much can change between ages 16 and
17. Huge
ceiling there with Flores, great bat speed, tough to strike out and a
frame
that projects for power.
Flores dominated the Appy League, but the other guy we need
to be
talking about here is Jefry Marte, who also signed last year, has good
tools
and just led the GCL in OPS as a 17-year-old.
Yes, Ben, I’ve been writing about him all season.
jon (nyc): Most
scouts seem to
question Dan Murphy, but every time I see him I see a professional
hitter with
extra base power. what am i missing?
Ben
Badler: (3:08 PM ET ) The scouts we've talked to do like
Murphy and
say he's going to be a good hitter in the big leagues. I think a lot of
times
if a guy posts good numbers in the minor leagues but doesn't get
written about
as much as the premium, elite-level prospects, it gets assumed that
scouts
don't like him, but that's not always the case.
Implicit in this answer is the notion that scouts like guys who won’t necessarily be all-stars, but rather MLBers, while fans focus on finding and hoping every minor leaguer will be an all-star.
Brad (Georgia):
Tommy Hanson and
Charlie Morton or Jon Niese and Bobby Parnell?
Ben
Badler: (3:08 PM ET ) Hanson/Morton, but mostly just
because of
Hanson.
This is more than fair. Tommy Hanson had a dynamite year in AA with the Mississippi Braves going 8-4 with a 3.03 ERA and 114 K, 41 walked and just 70 hits allowed in 98 innings.
Toby Hyde has written about the Mets organization since 2004. Please pass this along to friends, family, co-workers, and Mets fans of all stripes. To sign up for the email newsletter, click here. Even better, please visit my site at http://www.metsminorleagueblog.com.