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Alvarez, Baty, and Mauricio Find Themselves Within ESPN’s Top 25 Prospects

By Joseph Langan

August 6, 2021 No comments

Brett Baty, Photo by Dan Fritz

As the Minor League Baseball season reaches the halfway mark, Kiley McDaniel of ESPN recently published his mid-season top 50 prospects update. In this edition, three New York Mets top prospects are named within the top 25 in all of baseball. With impressive seasons, Francisco Alvarez, Brett Baty, and Ronny Mauricio each turned enough heads to jump in the ESPN polls significantly.

ESPN’s number 25 prospect, Ronny Mauricio, has received much praise for gaining weight and building his body to play the shortstop position during the year off. According to McDaniel, Mauricio “looks physically and in pregame as good as a shortstop can look.” As this season has unfolded, Ronny has undoubtedly seen a power spike, but he still lacks in the discipline department. He has only worked a walk in about 4% of his plate appearances.

In the past 28 days, Mauricio has found some success at the plate due to selectiveness and tweaks to his complex swing, hitting .290/.330/.484 with an OPS of .814 and five home runs. During his time with Brooklyn, he’s been very impressive on defense, showing his superb athleticism and cannon of an arm on a nightly basis. Being only 20-years-old, Mauricio still has some maturing to do both physically and mentally. With that being said, he seems to have all the makings of a big-league shortstop. 

Number 18 prospect Brett Baty is nestled right behind St. Louis Cardinals third base prospect Nolan Gorman, who McDaniel draws comparison to in the article. She says, “he has a similar skill-set to Gorman, with good enough D and 30-homer power.” After crushing at the High-A level with the Brooklyn Cyclones, Baty has recently been promoted to Double-A Binghamton.

Starting slow with the Ponies, Baty has come around in recent weeks, hitting .351/.422/.676 with an OPS of 1.098 and three home runs in his past 10 games. Brett is a very patient hitter at the plate, waiting for a pitch to do damage on. He possesses the power to hit the ball out to all fields, proving it this season with multiple home runs to the opposite field. Baty has a bright future with this New York Mets organization and proves that being an older prep-school hitter doesn’t matter in the long run. 

Last but not least, Francisco Alvarez, ESPN’s number eight prospect, finds himself in front of 2020’s number one draft pick Spencer Torkelson and Orioles pitching phenom Grayson Rodriguez. Alvarez’s most significant question mark going into the season was carrying the “bulk of performances” with this Cyclones staff.

Performing admirably behind the dish, Alvarez is also showing up big time at the plate, clobbering thirteen homers and posting an OPS of .905 on the season. ESPN categorized Alvarez as one of the biggest risers during their mid-season ranking, even claiming “there’s still room to move up the list.” As a 19-year-old, Alvarez has already cracked the top ten for ESPN, making it very possible for the catching phenom to move into the top five in the near future. 

Mets’ number seven prospect Mark Vientos, who has crushed in Double-A this season, did not find himself on ESPN’s top 50 list. 

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