CLEVELAND — The possibility of no longer being a Met, the team he had joined out of high school just months earlier, struck Jarred Kelenic last fall as he dined at a Port St. Lucie restaurant.
“I looked up at the TV, and my name was up there as a rumor,” the outfielder, now in the Mariners system, said Sunday at Progressive Field. “And I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Is anyone else seeing this?’ ”
Half a year later, Kelenic can rest assured: Everyone is seeing this. Everyone is seeing all of this.
Of all the indignities that have befallen the Mets since they foolishly decided to hire agent Brodie Van Wagenen as their general manager, the meteoric rise of Kelenic, who will turn 20 next week, might top the chart — no small feat. That he and trademate Justin Dunn played here at the Futures Game while Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz will be nowhere near the All-Star Game festivities speaks to the horror of this deal that has heavily impacted two franchises in dramatically different ways. And let’s not even mention that veteran Jay Bruce, who accompanied Dunn and Kelenic to Seattle and quickly got traded again to the Phillies, now has four homers against his old team.
“It stinks. In all honesty, I wish it was a win-win for both, I do,” said Kelenic, who started in left field for the American League and went 0-for-3. “I mean, the season’s not over. It’s halfway over yet. It’s still early. I’m just kind of trying to stay out of it, because there’s nothing I can do, you know?”
Added Dunn, a righty pitcher who pitched a shutout second inning on Sunday: “I mean, that’s baseball. Who would think that Robinson Cano would be doing what he’s doing? And Edwin Diaz, you look at this stuff, it plays off the chart all the time.
“This is a game of ups and downs. It’s a game of failures. You could look up after the second half, and then come out and be the best players, and then this conversation is irrelevant. It’s a great trade.”
Could be. Probably not, though. Actually, the fact that both Kelenic and Dunn handled this sensitive matter with such aplomb, artfully integrating honesty and diplomacy, offers further evidence that both men would’ve been mighty fine fits in New York.
The primary evidence would be their talent. Kelenic, the sixth overall pick of the 2018 amateur draft, crushed it at the Single-A South Atlantic League, hitting .309/.394/.586 with 11 homers for West Virginia, and that earned him a promotion to the higher Single-A California League. He has hit a more modest .265/.315/.494 with four homers for Modesto, although he has picked it up after a rough beginning that he says emanated from a sprained right wrist. MLB.com most recently ranked him as the 25th-best prospect in all of baseball.
“There’s definitely times I can sit back and look at what I’ve done and what I’ve continued to do, and I never would have thought I’d have 15 home runs at this point,” Kelenic said. “I didn’t even know if I was going to have 15 home runs on the year. I only set a goal that I was going to hit 10. So now, when you smash that goal, now 20, and then 30.”
Dunn, a 23-year-old native of Freeport on Long Island, owns a 3.82 ERA at Double-A Arkansas, with 96 strikeouts, 23 walks and only six homers allowed in 15 starts totaling 75 ⅓ innings pitched.
“I’m pounding the zone better,” Dunn said. “My strike rate is up, top to bottom, with all my pitches. And I’ve added a new weapon to the arsenal, the changeup, something Frank Viola and I worked a lot on last year (when Viola worked as the pitching coach for Double-A Binghamton) and kind of getting that feel back now, and really starting to use it a lot more.”
Dunn offered high, humorous praise for Kelenic, saying, “That kid is special. And he knows it, too.” He also divulged his dinner plans Sunday night with his old Mets pal Pete Alonso, whom he described as “my big little Teddy Bear” and “my best friend.”
The muscular Kelenic, meanwhile, offered, out of nowhere, “It’s unfortunate the Mets didn’t work out right away, but who knows? I could always come back there. I never want to burn any bridges there.”
What a dynamic 1-2 punch to the Mets’ gut. If Kelenic and Dunn keep climbing at this rate? Everyone will see this even more.
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