Yusmeiro Petit - Ones2Watch™ 2005 Minor League Baseball Players Awaiting the Call to Greatness - MLN Sports Zone

There was the guy who was sure that the Hindenburg was going to blow up. He was an hour late to the field. Someone showed up to Fenway for Game 7 of last year's World Series. Once in a while, you're going to overshoot your mark.

Boy did we with Yusmeiro Petit: Our No. 33 player in the FAB50 from 2004 was going places last year. After our brief Spring Training interview, we had him on our scratch sheets up in the top 12.

The buzz that we got was that he was doing so well, he might make it to the majors by mid-season.

A source inside the organization confirmed that Petit, who struck out 130 batters and gave up only 38 earned runs in 117.2 innings pitched, was a dead-bang lock for a mid-season call up.

If you read the top of the article, then you know that there's a lot of jostling for position in the last days of the lockdown on the list.

Player: Yusmeiro Petit

Position: Pitcher (P)(RHP)

Height: 6-0
Weight: 230

Birthdate: 11.22.84
Birthplace: Maracaibo, Venezuela

Bats: R
Throws: R

Organization: New York Mets

Acquired: Signed by Mets out of Venezuela in 2001

Signed By: Gregorio Machado

Last Ballclub: Norfolk Tides (AAA)

2004 FAB50 Ranking: 33

We took Petit off the list because we believed him to be a permanent call-up at the time that the list locked.

Ooops.

Petit did get the call, but this time to Norfolk, not Shea.

Yusmeiro has only pitched 6 innings of work. He's struck out 6 so far with 3 earned runs. He's upheld his record of striking out at least one batter per inning since he started with the Kingsport Mets of the Appalachian League in 2003, when he was just 18 years old. Yet his ERA is up a bit, indicating that maybe he did need a bit more time to adjust.

There are guidance systems for bombs with less accuracy than Petit, who has been called "Maddux-like" by scouts with whom we spoke this Spring. He has good speed. Not great. Technically, batters should be able to make contact with his fastball. Technically. That would require them, of course, to see it. He has the placement of a surgeon, and the unforgiving stone face of a World Series of Poker player.

His ERA for the K-Mets was 2.32. 62 innings pitched, 65 Ks. His 2003 Brookyln Cyclones assignment? 2.19 ERA with 20 Ks in 44 innings of work.

2004 started much the same way. At Port St. Lucie, he leveled Florida State League batters like a pocket-sized hurricane, with 62 laid low in just 12 innings of work for a freezing cold 1.22 ERA.

He earned a promotion to Capital City where he made the name Bombers mean something: Petit sent 122 batters down with only 22 earned runs in 83 innings pitched!

Tagged as the No.1 or No. 2 prospect in the Mets farm by the pre-season prognosticators, and based on our intake interview in the Spring, notes with folks around St. Lucie, and a few other sources, we had him pegged for ripping right past the Triple A instead of ripping curls from the mound of the Tides.

His stint with the Binghamton Mets seemed to confirm stardom was coming. You don't see too many pitchers who can drill guys to the tune of at least one K per inning.

To the upside, we hear he only gets stronger as he goes along. To the downside, he's gained a fair amount of weight, if MinorLeagueBaseball.com is reporting his Valenzuela-like heft of 230 lbs. correctly, as his Spring numbers and last year's poundage were in the vicinity of 180.

Ask us when the FAB50 rolled out, and we would have told you Petit should already be a big leaguer. We expect him to go through winter ball in Venezuela, and Spring. We'd think (again) that he's a lock for the Mets for 2006. If he's not, though, we promise to take better care of him next year when the MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 rolls around.