Just Mets

With the Mets offense sputtering and seemingly no improvements in sight, the Mets have considered a solution which could be considered unconventional for this front office.

Sandy Alderson said on Friday afternoon in Los Angeles the Mets have discussed the possibility of calling up Michael Conforto directly from Double-A.

However, Alderson said a promotion of the promising outfield prospect would not happen in the near-term.

The organization’s plan has been for Conforto to complete his first full, long season with Double-A Binghamton. While he’s an exciting and somewhat unusual talent in the Mets system, he lacks a lot of professional experience so far.

While there has been vast improvements with his defense, there’s still work for him to do in the outfield, and despite the immediate need for offense in both Las Vegas and the big leagues, Conforto’s development will likely remain independent of those needs for the time being.

Of course, plans change quickly in baseball. If he continues to dominate teams in the Eastern League and opposing pitchers stop pitching to Conforto, the team will have very few reasons to keep him at Double-A for the duration of 2015. Whether that means he goes to Triple-A to finish off his year or they bring him up here will depend on how he performs down the stretch.

But still, the Mets would be calling him up asking him to transform an offense when he probably isn’t ready for that just yet, and the team needs more than for Conforto to grow into his prime right now anyway. Given the probability of this happening for Conforto, the club has to weigh the risk versus reward of exposing arguably their best hitting prospect in the system prematurely under what could be some impossible conditions to overcome.

Conforto has hit .327/.411/.522 since being promoted to Double-A Binghamton on May 30.