Happy Thanksgiving.  How about finishing a weekend of family, friends and football with a little baseball?

            In Hawaii, now a few weeks ago, I interviewed Adam Wogan, the Mets Director of Minor League Operations.  Wogan has been with the Mets since January 2006, and oversees the day-to-day business on the farm as both a talent evaluator and administrator.  Adam, who graduated from Wake Forest Magna Cum Laude, is a sharp dude.  In a major boost to my ego, he said he’d heard my name, and knew my work a little. 

            Programming notes.  I’m scheduled for a chat at The Happy Recap, a Mets fan site on Tuesday at 8PM.  We’ll focus on minor league/prospects, but happily will do anything else Mets too.  The HWB and AFL seasons have finished, so I’d like to finish my thoughts on all of the Mets guys on Sunday.  Also, while in Hawaii, I sat down the Donovan Mitchell who managed Kingsport in 2007. I’ll write up a special K-Mets piece. 

TH: The Mets have sent a lot of guys out to Hawaii.  A couple got injured, but most are still here, sent a lot of rovers, so clearly a big deal for the Mets.  Talk about the Mets philosophy with this Hawaiian Winter League. 

AW: We just see it as a great opportunity for some guys to continue playing and continue their season.  To get another 20, 30 plus games in and any chance we see to get that, we’ll take advantage.  We also see it being a great opportunity for guys to play against a high level of competition.  A lot has been said about the guys who were in this league last year.  I think there are seven or eight, who played in the big leagues this last year.  There’s also the international element.  We kinda see this league as a nice entryway for young players who we see, in a year or two, playing winter ball.  So it gives them a step towards that.  They get to play away from home.  A little more maturity is gained …in a different environment than the regular season.  So we see it as a way for them to develop in a lot of ways. 

TH: Do you see it as different for guys in their first pro season, like a Duda or Rustich versus guys who have been in the system longer for a year or two like Carr or Garcia?

AW: Definitely.  I think for both sets of guys it’s really extending their season and teaching them what it’s like to play over the seven months that we that hope our big leaguers are going to be playing, 162 games plus we hope more.  And for these guys, the ones coming out of college, they’ve obviously been playing since early in the spring with a lot of gaps in between.  For the guys who have played the full year, it’s just a nice extension of their year.  

TH: Do you treat the two classes of guys, the first year guys and the not first year guys, differently in terms of what you’re looking for once they’re here?

AW: I think every guy we treat a little differently, so every guy has a little different set of expectations out here.  I don’t know if there’s consistency between the two guys who are out of college versus the others.  For each guy we know what they’re coming off of, and what they might need in their time out here. 

TH: Now, you just got here a couple of days ago, so you didn’t see Manny Garcia here, who was doing great - one of the top hitters in the league- , and now off playing with his national team, but what do you see for him?

AW: Well, I think it was just a great chance for him to keep playing.  Whenever anyone talks about Garcia, they talk about him being from Montreal, and growing up not playing a ton of baseball.  He’s a tremendous athlete who just needs at bats, and reps and opportunity.  The chance to add experience for him, was just a real benefit for us. Then, the Canadian Team discussed wanting to go young this year and giving him the opportunity to go play in that tournament, in international competition, is a great chance for him, to go play and develop.  We’re real happy for him, and we’re real happy with the year he had.  He came on in the second half of the year, and really adapted well to being challenged, responded well to the challenge of playing in this league, and hopefully he’ll respond to the challenge of playing in Taiwan. 

TH: Lets step back from Hawaii to the Mets system as a whole.  When you look down at your charges from triple-A on down through the instructional league, what do you see as the biggest strength of the Mets system?

AW: Well, I think through the draft, from [Director of Amateur Scouting] Rudy Terasas and his staff, we added quite a bit of pitching to the organization.  We’re real happy with a lot of the young pitchers we have coming along.   I think you’ll see over the next couple of years that we also have a lot of young middle infielders that have been added to the organization.  Ismael Cruz and Ramon Pena and our international staff have added quite a few guys, all over the field, but really especially in the middle infield.  So I think those are two areas we look at when we talk about depth.  Certainly there are some guys that you and others know well; and speak well about, guys like Fernando Martinez, Gomez, Milledge, and Pelfrey and Humber and Mulvey.  Those guys we hope will help our big league club in the short-term.

TH: Lets talk about some of the young pitchers a little bit.  Two high school guys Moviel and Vineyard, both in the first two rounds of this June’s draft, put up ok numbers, especially Moviel in the GCL.  But more important, than the numbers at that age and level are how they looked and how they adjusted to pro-ball.  Have you seen them recently?

AW: Yeah, they were both down in instructional league.  Both had a great instructional league.  That first season, in our eyes, is about guys adapting to pro-ball especially high school players, especially high school pitchers.  So they have to go to a whole new schedule, a whole new routine in terms of when they’re throwing their bullpens, how often they’re throwing, a whole new throwing program, conditioning program, new maintenance program for their shoulder, adapting to a life maybe away from home for the first time, new instructors, new environment.  So everything is about these guys getting acclimated to pro-ball.  If on top of that, they can go out and put up numbers and maybe develop on the field a little bit, great.  …But in instructional league we were able to transition over to these guys going to work a little bit more on the field, because they’ve already gotten acclimated.  It was great for those two guys to sign as early as they did. 

TH: Yeah, they pitched just about all summer.  How about from a developmental perspective, when you step back and look at the season, and say, are there things we can do better?  Are there changes in the program?  Like a throwing program or a workout program or a workout program going forward? 

AW: I think we always have to look at that.  We’re always having discussions trying to improve in every area, trying to tweak a little something all the time trying to improve.  …We like the continuity of the program, the consistency that’s been in this organization for a number of years….

TH: What’s the next big idea when it comes to player development?  Is there such a thing?

AW: I don’t know.  I don’t know if there’s going to be a radical change coming along to the way business is handled.  Certainly, we’re always trying to push the envelope, and I think every organization is.  We’re just trying to accelerate our players to the big leagues as fast as we can, while getting them there in a time when they’ll help the big league club.    

TH: That certainly is the philosophy to push guys pretty hard.  This Mets organization really does push guys pretty aggressively, right?

AW: We like to challenge guys, might be the term we like to use a little more than “push.”  We feel if guys are ready, we like to see what they can do ahead and do at a level.  It’s good our guys to face adversity and be in a spot where they have to step up to show us what they can do in a tough situation.  All that really matters is the big league level.  All that matters is what guys are going to be able to do when they get there, and helping out the Mets organization.  We feel like challenging players is the best route to go. 

TH: Where do you go after this?  Fall League, or do you get to shut it down for a bit?

AW:  New York, and then I’ll go down to the Dominican on Thursday to check out the academy before Thanksgiving. 

TH: Give us a sneak peak, of say, some of the young kids from the Dominican, that haven’t appeared stateside that you might be excited about.

AW: There are a good number of guys down there.  We had a real young team in both academies.  There are some good young arms – we brought over a large contingent this year.  The guys that Ismael Cruz and Wilmer Pena signed this year are exciting – guys like Wilmer Flores and Tejada and Marte and Familia.  Those are gonna be nice young players for us to get into the US and watch.

TH: And you did have that shortstop…Tejada, who did transistion to the GCL.

AW:.  Ruben Tejada.  And there’s Miguel Tejada.

TH: Were you talking about Ruben or Miguel?

AW: Miguel was just signed by these guys.  But also Ruben was a great pick up by these guys out of Panama.  Played in Venezuela.  There was some question about whether he was ready to come to the US right away, just because of our depth in the middle infield.  A couple of our rovers went down and they echoed the thoughts of our international scouts and our international staff.  Kevin Morgan, in particular, spoke about Ruben.  He said, “this guy can play in the US right now.”  So we went ahead and applied for his visa.  Let him play in the VSL while he was waiting for it.  Came over and played great in the Gulf Coast League.  I think he got a little tired at the end, otherwise he would have been playing at Brooklyn down the stretch. 

TH: And what can you tell us about his game?

AW: Great instincts.  Good approach at the plate – you can see that in his walk totals, but also just watching the at bats he puts up – professional at bats.  He can work counts, and he’s not afraid to hit with two strikes.  Real smooth in the field.  Definitely can play shortstop.  ….

TH: Adam Wogan, thanks for your time.

AW: Thanks, Toby.

PS: I wasn’t expecting to see him at the ballpark, and hadn’t spent time preparing, so I certainly felt like I could have asked more focused questions.           

Toby Hyde has written Toby’s Mets Minor League Report since 2004.  Please pass this along to friends, family, co-workers, enemies and most importantly Mets fans.  To subscribe to the email newsletter, sign up here: http://groups.google.com/group/mets-minors?hl=en.  Archives are available at http://metsminors.metsblog.com.