BINGHAMTON — Haggard town, run-down ballpark. Fast track.
Offense-deprived organization. Fast track.
Late bloomer. Fast track.
The widely held industry view of Michael Conforto transcends where he plays and for whom he works. It overlooks his personal history — which, if anything, makes the Mets prospect’s rise even more impressive.
Just over a month into his stay at Double-A Binghamton, less than a year since his professional debut, the lefty-hitting left fielder has made the sort of impression reserved for the game’s most touted prospects. And with that impression comes the curiosity over his arrival date.
And with the Mets’ run-production crisis, that curiosity is quite intense.
“Somebody asked me the other day if I’ve seen anybody that’s impressed me,” a scout said, on the condition of anonymity. “He was the name that popped up into my head. He’s probably more advanced than any hitter I’ve seen in the minor leagues this year. He makes a lot of solid contact. He drives the ball.”
Said a second scout who also has seen Conforto in 2015: “The early signs are that he can be a nice-looking bat. The fact that people are looking for lefty bats makes him even more appealing.”
Now that the Mets have remade their starting rotation with young guns, as Long Island native Steven Matz became the last of the heralded bunch to arrive in his spectacular big league debut last Sunday at Citi Field, they hope to infuse their terrible offense with fresh blood in the coming seasons. Conforto, 22, the 10th overall pick in last year’s draft, quickly has become the face of Sandy Alderson’s Phase 2.
Through 30 games at Binghamton (from where the Mets could move their affiliate to Wilmington, Del., next season), Conforto owns a stellar .327/.411/.522 slash line. As a professional, since his debut last July 19 for Class-A Brooklyn, he’s at .311/.384/.472. Reports on his defense are mixed, but most observers believe he can hit plenty enough to justify his corner outfield position. He has been selected to play in the Futures Game on July 12 at Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark.
His rapid climb through the system has sparked the question of just how soon Conforto can help the big league club. On Friday in Los Angeles, Mets general manager Sandy Alderson acknowledged such a notion has been discussed internally. However, Alderson added, “At this point he’s still in Binghamton, and I would expect him to be over the near term.”
“That sounds exciting, definitely,” Conforto said, in an interview last week at NYSEG Stadium, of a surge to the top. Nevertheless, he added, “The front office is going to do what they deem is best for the team. All I can control is what I do on the field and the way I show up every day. That was kind of the attitude I took every day when I was at Oregon State.”
Conforto’s college stop, to him and his inner circle, marked the most important chapter in his journey. To appreciate how he wound up at Jacoby Ellsbury’s alma mater (Conforto met the Yankees outfielder a couple of times on campus), you first must know about Conforto’s family tree.
Conforto’s father, Mike Conforto, grew up in Altoona, Pa., and played linebacker for Joe Paterno at Penn State. Upon graduating in 1979, he packed up his belongings and moved West with his roommate, Craig Coder, who wanted to follow in the footsteps of his older brother Ron, an offensive lineman with the Seattle Seahawks. Though the younger Coder never made the NFL, he and Conforto opened a successful chain of gyms in the Pacific Northwest.
At one of his gyms, Conforto trained a swimmer named Tracie Ruiz, who proceeded to win two gold medals in the 1984 Olympics and a silver in the 1988 Games for synchronized swimming. The pair of athletes married in 1985, and Michael was born in 1993.
https://twitter.com/USASynchro/status/517047301626277888
“I was a football guy first because of my dad,” Michael Conforto said. “I was all sports. I was doing baseball, football, basketball.”
He played quarterback and safety for Redmond Senior High School, and only at the end of his junior year, he said, did he focus on baseball — he played shortstop at Redmond.
“I was raw,” Conforto said. “I could swing the bat hard, and I could throw pretty well. I was an athlete.”
“I think it would be fair to say he was a football player who played baseball, until he got to Oregon State,” the elder Mike Conforto said.
“The raw power was just sitting there,” said Pat Casey, still the head coach at Oregon State. “We liked the makeup and the athleticism. We knew he was never going to be a middle infielder.”
Casey, Mike Conforto said, is “kind of like a football coach who’s a baseball manager. He was a good fit for Michael.”
The younger Conforto credited Casey and his deputies, Pat Bailey (associate head coach) and Nate Yeskie (assistant coach), for improving his swing mechanics, his understanding of the strike zone and his mental approach to the game.
Paul DePodesta, the Mets’ vice president of player development and amateur scouting, doesn’t quite buy into this narrative.
“Maybe he was raw in comparison to the high school kids getting drafted,” the Mets executive said. “He was good enough to go to Oregon State and start as a freshman. It’s not like he didn’t know what he was doing.
“I actually got to see him early on his sophomore year. I looked at him as a guy who had a real good chance of being a high pick as a junior.”
He drove home 71 runs as a freshman, and the next two seasons, Conforto won Pac-12 Player of the Year honors.
When the Mets popped him with the 10th pick last year, “I was shocked he didn’t go before that,” Casey said.
“We were very pleased. I’ll put it that way,” DePodesta said. “Oftentimes, we have pretty good feel for who would be there. In this case, we did not know, but we certainly were hopeful.”
The Mets’ optimism about the player only has increased since they procured Conforto for a $2,970,800 signing bonus.
“He’s been a professional hitter,” Binghamton manager Pedro Lopez said. “He’s able to go out there and lay off some tough pitches, and then whenever he gets a good pitch to hit, he puts a good swing on it. I think that’s what’s made him successful to this point.”
Lopez credited Conforto with the sort of toughness that allows him to shake off in-game failure and still put together good at-bats.
“I had a feeling he was going to be a pretty good athlete, so we talked more about how to be a good teammate,” Mike Conforto said, “to help everyone around you be better and not get overly focused on yourself.”
Said Tracie Ruiz of her son: “He’s the type of kid that will study a pitcher, and he will try to outthink and outsmart them while they’re trying to outsmart him.”
“You could put him in a keg and drop down Niagara Falls, and he’s coming out,” Casey said of his former player. “This guy’s a warrior.”
Conforto grew up as a Mariners fan, idolized Ken Griffey Jr. and attended the 2001 All-Star Game at Safeco Field.
“’01 was a great year, and that was the last time we made the playoffs,” Conforto said, before quickly self-editing with a smile: “They made the playoffs.”
His current “We” faces its own long run of empty Octobers and fields an offense amidst a terrible outage. The Mets want Conforto to be a major piece of a team that starts a new trend the other way. If not soonest, then soon enough.
“You try to find that balance between challenging the player and having them in a spot where he can be successful,” DePodesta said. “The player ultimately dictates that to us. But he’s certainly done very well in the short time we’ve had him.”
“I could see it happening, but I wouldn’t want to see it,” the first scout said. “Let him get his at-bats.”
It’s a decision, and a dilemma — and a player — the Mets are thrilled to have.