Photo Credit: Allen Greene Photography

Baseball America is in that time of the year where they began naming their Top 20 Prospects for each league in the minors. These lists are made from talking to the managers in their perspective leagues and a player must play at least one-third of the season in that league to qualify.

Mets lefty pitching prospect Thomas Szapucki was ranked the 8th best prospect for 2016 in the Appalachian League where he played for the Kingsport Mets to start the season.

Szapucki, the Mets 5th rounder in 2015, went 2-1 with a 0.62 ERA, 0.86 WHIP and struck out 47 batters in 29 innings for Kingsport before earning a promotion to the Brooklyn Cyclones. The hard throwing lefty then went 2-2 with Brooklyn while striking out 39 more in 23 innings including three straight double digit strikeout games to end the season.

Unfortunately, the 20-year old had his season end early because of back soreness after his start on April 12th. Here at MMN, we ranked Szapucki the Mets 7th best prospect in our midseason list.

During the chat discussing the list, writer Hudson Belinsky mentioned outfielders Ricardo Cespedes, Jose Medina and right-handed pitcher Jordan Humphreys as Kingsport players he considered for the Top 20.