Hit or Error? Baseball Digest's 2000 Rookie Edition Reexamined

Welcome to the 38th installment of Hit or Error, your weekly time machine powered by optimism, hindsight, and the smell of pine tar. Each week we open up a musty old issue of Baseball Digest and revisit the names that once filled us with hope—and occasionally indigestion.

This week, we turn the page to March 2000. Y2K didn’t crash the computers, but it did seem to crash the Mets’ prospect list. After a dozen rookies were hyped in 1999, the Digest trimmed it down to just six this year. Perhaps the editors wised up—or perhaps they were still recovering from writing blurbs about Rigo Beltrán and Mo Bruce.

Two familiar names returned: Grant Roberts, still teased as the next great Mets arm (any day now!), and Vance Wilson, still projected as Mike Piazza’s backup and spiritual opposite. That leaves four fresh(ish) faces—and we use that term loosely.

First up: Lesli Brea, a right-handed mystery wrapped in a radar gun and a falsified birth certificate. He never threw a pitch for the Mets, but still managed to be part of two franchise-altering trades. He arrived in exchange for Butch Huskey (who promptly mashed in Seattle) and was later part of the infamous Mike Bordick deal—a trade that helped the Mets reach the 2000 World Series while also accidentally handing Baltimore Melvin Mora and years of future All-Star production. Brea’s Mets career exists only on paper—kind of like his real age.

Next, we meet Eric Cammack, a reliever who got a cup of coffee in 2000 and promptly spilled it. He pitched ten innings, walked ten guys, and disappeared into the mist like so many middle relievers before him.

That leaves us with Alex Escobar and Dicky Gonzalez—the crown jewels of this reduced class. Escobar had tools, swagger, and the smoothest path to stardom this side of Lastings Milledge. Dicky? Let’s just say he had a very Metsian career path: high hopes, a few innings, and a future as a trivia question.

So once again, we ask: were these players Hits, Errors… or somewhere in between? And how much does it matter when the trades were more memorable than the games?

Let’s dig in.

Alex Escobar: Power Arm, Thirteen Teams, and a Stand-Up Career

Back in March 2000, the Baseball Digest scouting blurb all but broke into song about Alex Escobar:

“Very exciting young talent. Five‑tool player with good instincts for the game. Can hit the home run or steal a base. Can play either center or right field. He’s overcoming an injury in 1999 but will be healthy to begin 2000.”

It read like the back‑cover copy of a superhero comic—“Tool Man: faster than a speeding pop‑fly, more powerful than a hanging curve!”—and for a while the numbers backed it up. Escobar signed out of Venezuela in 1995, climbed the ladder two rungs at a time, and spent three straight years on Baseball America’s Top‑10 lists. In the minors he flashed 30‑homer power, 30‑steal wheels, and an arm that made cutoff men feel unnecessary. Shea Stadium scoreboards practically sprouted little cartoon hearts whenever his name came up.

Alex Escobar’s big league journey ended up more like a canceled pilot than a long-running series. After finally cracking the Mets’ roster in 2001, the much-hyped five-tool prospect got just 53 plate appearances in Queens before being shipped off in the winter blockbuster that brought Roberto Alomar to Flushing. (Spoiler: Alomar’s Mets career was not worth the trailer hype.) Escobar’s time with the Indians was derailed almost immediately—he blew out his ACL in spring training and missed all of 2002. In 2003, he flashed some of that long-lost star potential in Triple-A, cranking 24 homers and driving in 78 runs. But in the majors, his moments were sporadic. He showed some pop in limited duty with the Indians and later with the Nationals, where he had one final flicker of excitement in 2006, batting .356 in 33 games. Still, the consistency never came. Injuries, strikeouts, and fading opportunity turned what once looked like a feature film into a series of guest appearances. The tools were real. The buzz was real. But as is so often the case in this cruel and unpredictable game, the outcome didn’t match the trailer.

Escobar’s career is the baseball equivalent of ordering a porterhouse and getting a pretty good hamburger: perfectly edible, but you keep staring at the empty side of the plate where the steak was supposed to be. Injuries did most of the damage, but so did our sky‑high expectations. In the end, Alex Escobar lands in that gray area between Hit and Error—call it a Ground‑Rule Double of What‑Might‑Have‑Been.

Dickey Gonzalez: Drafted High, Finished Somewhere in the Middle

Back in March 2000, the Baseball Digest blurb painted Dicky Gonzalez as the thinking fan’s pitcher: “A control artist who sets up hitters brilliantly, already smarter than the average bear, and—bonus points—his fastball has picked up a little giddy‑up the last two years.” Translation: picture Greg Maddux after a couple of Red Bulls, then squint.

Gonzalez’s Mets chapter was short but eventful. Drafted in the 16th round of ’96, he clawed his way up the ladder and reached Flushing in 2001, carving out a 3‑2 record over 59 innings—a respectable cameo for a kid who relied more on guile than gas. But baseball’s carousel spun quickly: that winter he was packaged to Montreal in a swap whose paperwork weighed more than Dicky’s big‑league service time. A season later Boston grabbed him on waivers, and by 2004 he was a Tampa Bay Devil Ray (back when they still answered to “Devil”). The control was still there, the rising velocity… not so much.

And then—plot twist!—Gonzalez took his toolbox to Japan. With the Tokyo Yakult Swallows he found a second wind (and, judging by the box scores, maybe a new arm). After a couple of solid years and one elbow‑in‑a‑sling season, he returned in 2009 with the Yomiuri Giants and morphed into the Nippon League’s answer to Roy Halladay: 15‑2, 2.11 ERA, two complete games, and a starring role in the Japan Series. The man who once painted corners at Shea was suddenly hanging masterpieces in Tokyo galleries, collecting yen like it was frequent‑flier miles. He kept at it into his mid‑30s with stints for Chiba Lotte and even the Puerto Rican winter leagues, pitching wherever someone would hand him a baseball and a jersey.

So where does that leave us on the Hit‑or‑Error scoreboard? In the bigs, Gonzalez was a brief breeze through the Shea Stadium tunnel—gone before you finished your hot dog. But in Japan he became a full‑blown typhoon, blowing away hitters and box‑score skeptics alike. Call him an International Infield Single: not the splashy extra‑base blast we imagined, yet plenty valuable once he took his act overseas. And for a 16th‑round pick who squeezed nearly two decades out of one right arm, that’s a result even an old Mets fan can tip his cap to.

So what do we make of the Class of 2000? In the grand scorebook of Mets history, it's more footnote than headline. Lesli Brea never threw a pitch in Queens, Eric Cammack barely stayed long enough to warm up, and even the crown jewels—Escobar and Gonzalez—shined brightest far from Flushing. But that’s the beauty (and heartache) of flipping through these old scouting reports. They remind us that baseball is less about perfect predictions and more about wild detours, false starts, and the occasional unlikely redemption arc. For every superstar we saw coming, there’s a Dicky Gonzalez reinventing himself in Tokyo or an Alex Escobar giving us just enough flash to keep the dream alive a little longer. The hits may be rare, the errors frequent—but the stories? They’re always worth revisiting.