St. Lucie Mets catcher Tomas Nido entered the 2016 season with a career .249 batting average in 748 minor league at bats. The 22-year old was praised by Mets farm director Ian Levin after a great spring training saying he “could be become the next guy”.
The Florida State League All-Star has certainly become a guy to watch out for and currently leads the league with his .310 average. His closest competition for the batting title is the Dunedin Blue Jays infielder Richard Urena who is hitting .305 but was promoted to Double-A earlier in August and isn’t expected back in the FSL.
In 2015, the St. Lucie Mets had three players; Jeff McNeil (.312), Dominic Smith (.305) and Matt Oberste (.301) finish in the top five in the league for hitting. St. Lucie hasn’t had a player win the batting title in the FSL since outfielder Corey Coles did so in 2006 when he hit .341.
Atop of the Pacific Coast League leaderboard are two Las Vegas 51s in T.J. Rivera and Brandon Nimmo battling it out for the leagues best average. Rivera, who’s at .347 right now, is hitting .314 for his minor league career and has finished only one season (.289/2011) hitting under .300. Nimmo is batting .342 for the 51s and is 13 hits short of his career high (130) that he set in 2013.
Binghamton Mets infielder Phillip Evans had a stretch last week in which he went 16 for 23 in five games and is hitting .329 in 310 at bats in Double-A. The 23-year old is having a breakout season with career highs in OPS (.816), home runs (7), doubles (27) as well as his overall .314 average between Bingo and St. Lucie.
Unfortunately for Evans, he doesn’t currently have enough at bats to qualify for the Eastern League batting title. Evans is currently 51 plate appearances shy of qualifying with the B-Mets having 12 games left. The leader right now in average is .332 by Portland Sea Dogs outfielder Aneury Tavarez.
The last Met minor leaguer with a chance at a batting title is infielder Andres Gimenez who they signed for $1.2 bonus last year out of Venezuelan. It’s an outside shot for Gimenez who is batting an impressive .350 but Franklin Rollin, is currently hitting .383 to lead the Dominican Summer League. The 17-year old Gimenez does lead the league with his .469 on-base percentage.
Great articles Michael. Great having a window to how our minor league players are doing and being able to follow them so closely. The minor league reports have become my favorite articles. May have missed it but have not read anything about players signed in the IFA draft this year. Thanks again for the great articles.
There hasn’t been any IFA top prospects signed by the organization. They have signed a few players, but none that have commanded the bonuses that get press. Scouting reports on those players is tough to dig up. Just think of it like this: How many US born HS Sophmores have scouting reports?
Doesn’t mean the players are not any good, just not a lot of info out there in them.
They will continue to sign players as well, since they can’t sign until their 16th birthday. They just won’t be of the high profile variety. My personal opinion on why the gravitation away from such signings is of a few contributing factors:
1. Less space (percentage wise) of the operating budget with a higher ML payroll
2. The departure of Paul Depodesta, who oversaw much of the amateur talent acquisitions
3. Last year of CBA, Wilpons have ALWAYS played within the confines of soft rules, to their own detriment. Even if the rules will be changing.
Thank You for taking the time to pass that information along was wondering why i had not heard anything. Would like to see them sign more top 10 players. Know the wait time is long but in most cases it is worth it. See it like protection if the team has a couple of bad drafts.