33 days until Spring Training!
We continue our journey up and down the Non-Roster Invitee list with a look at Adam Kolarek today. You won’t find Kolarek in any of the of the popular top 10/15/20 prospect list for the Mets as he’s been largely unknown in the Mets organization, at least to fans.
As a heads up though, I will probably be biased for the rest of this prospect preview. Kolarek and I went to the University of Maryland College Park at the same time. I’ve never met him (which is not surprising given the tremendous size of Campus) and I never watched any baseball games because I almost always had class during them. Yet, we hail from the same school and we’re both from Baltimore so I have a predisposition to root for him. He was drafted from Maryland’s flagship university in 2010 out of the 11th round. He will be 25 in the 2014 season (actually, he’ll be 25 in a few days).
In four minor league seasons he is 15-8 over 144 games and 227.2 innings with a 2.69 ERA. Let’s break it down by year:
2010 (Kingsport/Brooklyn): 2-1, 22 G, 37.1 IP, 3.13 ERA, 1 SV, 0.964 WHIP, 4.1 BB/9, 10.8 K/9
2011 (Savannah/St. Lucie): 7-1, 26 G, 60.0 IP, 2.85 ERA, 5 SV, 1.283 WHIP, 3.4 BB/9, 8.7 K/9
2012 (St. Lucie/Binghamton): 3-3, 50 G, 63.1 IP, 2.70 ERA, 19 SV, 1.326 WHIP, 3.6 BB/9, 11.1 K/92013 (Binghamton/Las Vegas): 3-3, 46 G, 67.0 IP, 2.28 ERA, 1 SV, 1.149 WHIP, 3.4 BB/9, 8.6 K/9
There are some important trends here. His ERA has dropped each year. In 2012, it looks like he spent a significant portion of the season as a closer as his innings increased with the amount of games he appeared in (also the huge spike in saves). As his ERA dropped with his innings increasing, his WHIP increased, but last year his WHIP dropped by a noticeable amount. His BB/9 have mostly stayed constant and his K/9 has bounced from being high to being above average.
If he can put another season of a low ERA together partnered with a high K/9, he could be an intriguing addition to the bullpen as a left handed pitcher. He also one of two non roster invites who throw lefty in camp, which brings down competition.
A strong spring campaign and Kolarek could be in the blogs as a discussion point towards the end of March. Let’s see what happens!
