With few fans on hand at Citi Field last night and presumably few people watching on TV, in a meaningless game against a terrible team, Nick Evans seized his opportunity for some rare Major League playing time and smacked a home run. It looked like this:
I bleat on about this endlessly: Too often under this regime, the Mets have overpaid free agents to fill out the margins of their roster instead of developing in-house options to fill useful, albeit unheralded, roster roles. It appears that in 2011, more out of necessity than design, they will not be able to repeat that.
Evans is 24 now and will be 25 when Spring Training rolls around, and it sure doesn’t seem like the team considers him much of a prospect anymore. But before he gets cast into a Mike Hessman mold, some Minor League masher doomed to dominate Triple-A pitching for the next decade, perhaps the Mets will provide him an opportunity to serve a valuable role as a righty corner bench bat in the bigs.
Evans, after all, crushed pitching at the two upper levels of the Minors to the tune of a .317/.371/.536 line this season, and boasts a career Minor League split of .314/.391/.572 against left-handed pitching.
At this point, it doesn’t seem like carrying Evans on the Major League level — even with limited at-bats — would amount to hindering his development much. Though for some reason the Mets didn’t let him play the outfield spots this season, he can man all four corners and provide a bit of pop, as a few of us saw last night.
In short, Nick Evans is probably ready to be a Major League guy for several years on the cheap, and the Mets could use those.
Tedquarters 
I’m with you 100% on this one, and we’ll hopefully see Daniel Murphy as his left handed compliment off the bench.
“I’m not your guy, buddy.”
Maybe the next manager will treat him better. It seems like young players don’t always get a chance to play under Jerry Manuel. I wonder how much input Manuel has had in promoting young players such as Evans?
I had to laugh watching Jerry on the post-game talking about how he’s known for years that Evans had this kind of power.
Then why was he buried behind Cory Sullivan and Jeremy Reed last year?
At the end of last year, someone asked Jerry why Evans was getting ABs. Jerry’s response:
“I really don’t know how to use him.”
‘Nuff said.
I’ve always liked Evans. He did pretty well every step of his minor league career at the right age. If a guy like Miguel Cairo can have a long Major League career, why can’t someone like Evans.
Well we could use those, but then how would we free up roster spots for all the club house guys/veteran leaders??
Also it’s a very small sample size but he also had a .318/.375/.509 major league line in 119 PA’s, vs lefties. Obviously I wouldn’t expect him to sustain it, but I don’t see why he couldn’t be a cheaper version of what Frenchy should have been.
I was so mad last year when the mets screwed over Nick for Sheffield. It was a disgrace and they repeated it this year with failcoeur.
He shouldn’t get a single important plate appearance against a righty, but I believe he could smash lefties off the bench. This year, he had an MLE of .874, last year it was a more pedestrian .790 and even in ’08 it was .820. In his 120 PAs against lefties in the bigs he has a .884. He could easily be a Matt Diaz-type, and if you pair him against lefties with Duda against righties, I think you have some good offense off the bench.
I keep thinking that Evans, Duda and Murphy would make for a good bench, but then you need a back-up catcher and the last man would have to be an Alfredo Amezaga-type that could play both everyone and preferably well. Where is Amezaga anyway?
Nick Evans was probably a better pick for this year’s Opening Day roster than Fernando Tatis. Hopefully they’ll give him a shot to win a job next spring.
If not, won’t Evans need to clear waivers to be sent back to the minor leagues? At least maybe he’ll get a shot somewhere in 2011.