Photo by Ed Delany
There is no getting around it that through graduations, trades and injuries that the New York Mets farm system has certainly taken a hit and is in the bottom tier of baseball.
The two big names that were atop the Mets prospects lists going into the 2017 season were shortstop Amed Rosario and first baseman Dominic Smith, both of whom are no longer considered prospects after passing the 130 at-bat threshold.
Here is the Top 10 that Baseball Prospectus came up with:
- Andres Gimenez, SS
- David Peterson, LHP
- Mark Vientos, SS
- Justin Dunn, RHP
- Thomas Szapucki, LHP
- Tomas Nido, C
- Peter Alonso, 1B
- Desmond Lindsay, OF
- Chris Flexen, RHP
- Luis Guillorme, SS/2B
Couple of things that jump out to be are having Nido ahead of Alonso which I don’t personally have on my top 10 and having the 17-year-old Vientos that high six months after he was drafted. Guillorme in the top 10 over someone like Marcos Molina or Corey Oswalt is a mild surprise.
Other than that, this is a pretty standard list for the Mets current system. It’s very likely that shortstop Ronny Mauricio (Mets record $2.1 million IFA signing bonus) will be on this list next year, I already have him in my top 10.
Im happy to see Dunn still getting top 5 love despite his 2017 stats.
Obviously he’s a Lucie guy and my bias yada yada but I saw the potential of his arm, FB and slider. Hope he puts it together next year.
Good to see that about half of this list will be in Vegas at some point this year.
Perhaps. But its also disturbing – very disturbing – to see that the majority of the list will be at A or below, ad how many fo them have barely begun their professional careers.
I think these baseball bibles should consider making two separate lists – one for advanced prospects, and one for players below advanced-A. Its just completely ridiculous to rank a short-season player as a “top” anything given how far they have to go and how very low the success rate is for players at these levels.
Wasn’t Luis Carpio on this list a year or two ago? Jhoann Urena, Wuilmer Becerra, heck, we can go back to Wilfredo Tovar and Aderlin Rodriguez.
Vientos is far away, but Giminez might start the season for St Lucie, which could get him to AA at some point in 2018. Peterson is going to move quickly thru the system. I have no idea on Lindsay or Szapucki. We will have plenty of prospects in Vegas that can at least help the Mets in ’18 and ’19 then the next wave should be very good.
I would include – David Thompson, Corey Oswalt, Jhoan Urena – and remove Flexen, Dunn, and Vientos.
Those are all very, very optimistic views. Not impossible. But optimistic and less than likely.
It’s hard not to be optimistic about about Giminez and Peterson. I guess it is possible that they keep Giminez in the FSL all season, but not if he rakes.
Peterson is an experienced arm and , if healthy and effective, no reason he won’t move quickly thru the ranks.
Its one thing to be optimistic, and its another to go overboard with optimism. Everyone loves Gimenez, and for good reason. Very few players do what he did – go from DSL to full-A in one quantum leap and manage to hold their own. But that’s all he did: hold his own. He did NOT excel. he did not outperform that level. He had a low OPS, and did not drive the ball for extra bases very much. He is under-aged and undersized. So what basis is there for just assuming that he will rake at the higher level this year? He still has some catching up to do at mid-A. So its a stretch to suggest, let alone presume that he will easily pass through two MORE levels this year. You can’t keep force-feeding him up the ladder and putting the burden on him to play catch-up all year long each and every season. At some point, they have to let him settle in and outperform at some level before moving him on to the next. And this year certainly seems like the year to do that, given how many levels he’s skipped already and how much younger he is than his current level.
There is one caveat, and I’ve said this several times before: with kids this young, you never know which year they will show up at spring training being 15 lbs heavier and stringer than last year. If he fills out over the winter and starts driving the ball all over the place in spring, then maybe he goes to Lucie and does well right out of the gate. But even then, they might choose to be patient with him and let him dominate for a full year before moving him up.
Do you think he will begin the year in the SAL? I guess it’s possible.
I think its 50-50 right now. Its only his age 19 season. Having him split between SAL and FSL still makes him one of the youngest players in either league and well ahead of the vast, vast majorities of prospects his age.