The New York Mets announced that left-handed pitching prospect Thomas Szapucki underwent Tommy John Surgery yesterday in New York City.
Szapucki, 21, was 1-2 with a 2.79 ERA, 1.17 WHIP and 27 strikeouts compared to 10 walks in 29.1 innings for the Columbia Fireflies this season.
The Mets fifth round pick in 2015, had a breakout season last year when he 86 strikeouts and a 1.38 ERA in 52 innings between the Kingsport Mets and Brooklyn Cyclones.
He missed the start of this season because of a shoulder impingement and was pulled after only two batters on July 6 in his last start before surgery.
Szapucki was ranked out No. 4 Mets prospect here at MMO/MMN before the season started. Baseball Prospectus ranked Szapucki No. 69 in their off-season Top 100 prospect list.
see him in 2019 and probably to the show in 2021.
You may see him in the 2018 AFL. Marcos Molina had his surgery in Aug and made a few appearances in AZ.
Please, slow down with the overhyped expectations. He is single-A.
No matter how well he plays in A-ball, no one at that level is an automatic to make the show at all, much less in two short years. There’s just no point in making such lofty projections so early.
When he comes back, he’s most likely to start in Columbia again. They’re not going to start him off at a higher level than he’d ever pitched before after a 1+ year layoff. So you’re basically taking it for granted that he passes through two levels of A in 2019, then BOTH levels of the upper minors in 2020. Thats a tall order for any player. Very few move that quickly, and those are usually very, very elite prospects, guys taken near the very, very top of the first round.