Every year some of the MLB’s best young talent, and potential future superstars, gather together in Arizona to play a short season’s worth of baseball to prepare themselves for the next step in their professional careers. The Arizona Fall League, owned and operated by the MLB, mostly consists of players who finished the year in (AA) or (AAA) and is considered to be a final polishing stage before a player reaches “The Show”. That said, there are no longer restrictions on sending players from below the AA level.

This year’s Mets prospects will once again be a part of the Scottsdale Scorpions team. They will be teaming up with top prospects from the Atlanta Braves, Philadelphia Phillies, Toronto Blue Jays, and San Francisco Giants organizations. Some of the most notable guys from those teams include MLB.com’s No. 20 overall prospect C Joey Bart (SFG), No. 35 3B Alec Bohm (PHI), No. 51 OF Heliot Ramos (SFG), No. 89 RHP Spencer Howard (PHI), and former #1 overall draft pick OF Mickey Moniak (PHI).

The Syracuse Mets Hitting Coach, Joel Chimelis (serving as a bench coach), and Brooklyn Cyclones athletic trainer, Vanessa Weisbach, will also be members of the team this year.

The 30-game season begins today on with the Scorpions traveling to play the Mesa Solar Sox. Due to renovation construction, at Scottsdale Stadium, the team will share the Salt River Fields with the Rafters. In addition, the Scorpions will also play four of their games as inter-winter-league contests between the AFL and the Mexico Pacific Winter League (LMP). For the Mets, the following players will be participating this season.

SS Andres Gimenez (MLB.com #93 prospect)
2019 Stats: (AA) .250 AVG, .695 OPS, 9 HR, 37 RBI, 28 SB, 21.3% K, 5.0% BB

After an incredible 2018 season that saw him climb all the way up to Binghamton as the second-youngest player in the Eastern League, Gimenez’s 2019 performance was a huge disappointment. His return to (AA) saw his average drop 30 points, his OPS drop 61 points, his K rate rise by 3%, his BB rate drop by 1.2%, and his stolen base success rate drop from 73% to 64%. While a wrist injury he suffered during the season can be blamed for some of his struggles, a change in his approach and his swing path are likely bigger culprits of the poor performance as he was inconsistent offensively from week to week.

Gimenez is still only twenty-one years old so there is certainly still plenty of time to right the ship and reclaim his top prospect shine. Despite a number of other Double-A shortstops on the roster, he should get plenty of playing time at shortstop with others such as Toronto’s Kevin Smith and Philadelphia’s Nick Maton splitting time at second and third base.

IF Luis Carpio
2019 Stats: (A+/AA) .282 AVG, .740 OPS, 4 HR, 34 RBI, 4 SB, 16.8% K, 9.9% BB

After setting new career highs for Isolated Power (0.145) and Fly Ball rate (50.2%) in 2018, Carpio’s batted ball profile returned to normal this season with the ISO dropping back down to 0.098 and the Fly Ball rate falling to 42.1%. Despite the metric declines, Carpio actually posted his best minor league season stat line since his age 17 season with (Rk+) Kingsport. Even though the Rumble Ponies struggled mightily towards the end of the season, Carpio was one of the few guys who consistently performed well hitting for a .288 AVG/.752 OPS across 42 games after the Eastern League All-Star break.

Carpio is no stranger to winter league baseball having trained and been on the league roster for Venezuela’s Leones del Caracas over the last few years. He was actually expected to get quite a bit of playing this season for the Leones before the MLB imposed a suspension on player involvement in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League. Instead, Carpio will get his first taste of the AFL and should serve as a primary back-up middle infielder.

C Ali Sanchez
2019 Stats: (AA/AAA) .261 AVG, .648 OPS, 1 HR, 33 RBI, 1 SB, 17.5% K, 7.8% BB

The light-hitting, defensive-minded catcher carried over some of the contact improvements he made in 2018 and was able to repeat them in 2019, albeit, he did it with far less power. However, despite the lack of home runs, Sanchez was able to provide league average production for catchers in the Eastern League (99 wRC+) while providing superior defensive value behind the dish. He out-paced the league average Caught Stealing Rate (34%) by throwing out 42% of would-be base-stealers plus an additional 5-out-of-8 during his 21 game cup of coffee at the (AAA) level.

This will be Sanchez’s second straight season in the AFL as he played in eleven games as part of a three-man catching rotation last year. This season he will likely serve as the primary back-up for the MLB’s top catching prospect Joey Bart.

C Patrick Mazeika
2019 Stats: (AA) .245 AVG, .738 OPS, 16 HR, 69 RBI, 1 SB, 19.3% K, 8.0% BB

Repeating (AA) in 2019, Mazeika finally tapped into some of the raw power he’s displayed since being drafted in 2015. Mazeika finished Top Ten in the Eastern League in Home Runs, RBIs, and Extra Base Hits while leading all qualified Eastern League catchers with a .738 OPS (116 wRC+). It’s the type of offensive output that would usually make talent evaluators gush over the potential MLB prospects, however, his catching skills lag far behind his offensive output. While his throwing arm was about league average (33% CS vs league average 34%), in his 52 games behind the plate, Mazeika allowed fourteen passed balls and committed seven errors. Both marks were actually worse than last season, despite playing 20 fewer games at catcher, and at 25 years of age, there isn’t any reason to expect any further improvement.

Mazeika split his time at catcher, first base, and DH in Binghamton and it should be expected that he will do the same for the Scorpions with more games being at 1B/DH with his teammate Ali Sanchez serving as the primary back-up to Bart.

LHP David Peterson
2019 Stats: (AA) 3-6, 4.19 ERA, 1.345 WHIP, 9.5 K/9, 2.9 BB/9

With Anthony Kay having been traded to the Toronto Blue Jays as part of the Marcus Stroman deal, Peterson is the now the organization’s top pitching prospect closest to joining the MLB rotation. While the ERA doesn’t seem all that impressive, Peterson did strike out more than a batter per inning while generating a solid above average 13.7% Swinging Strike rate.

In what seems like an odd outlier, after allowing a combined ten home runs in the last four years (388.1 IP) pitching for the University of Oregon, Brooklyn Cyclones, Columbia Fireflies, and the St. Lucie Mets…Peterson allowed nine home runs in his 116 innings for Binghamton. His 3.19 FIP and 2.91 xFIP for the season both paint much rosier pictures.

Generally speaking, the Mets usually do not send their starting pitching prospects to the AFL. However, in Peterson’s case, his starts were regularly limited to 80-85 pitch outings which led him to only accumulate 116 innings pitched this season which is actually twelve fewer than last season. Look for him to add another 25-30 innings across five or six starts in the Scorpions rotation.

RHP Ryley Gilliam
2019 Stats: (A+/AA/AAA) 5-0, 3 Saves, 6.05 ERA, 1.552 WHIP, 13.0 K/9, 4.2 BB/9

Always known as someone who could reach the MLB quickly, Gilliam was well on his way to reaching the MLB as he powered through the (A+) Florida State League and the (AA) Eastern League with ease striking out 37% of the batters he faced along the way. He hit a wall though once he reached the (AAA) International League as he allowed fourteen runs to score on nineteen hits in only nine innings before being placed on the MiLB seven day injured list. Fighting through an injury could certainly explain why Gilliam’s success came to such a screeching halt but, as we heard from Anthony Kay recently, coaching driven mechanical adjustments could have been to blame too.

Whatever the reason was, Gilliam seems healthy again and the Mets will probably want him to add another ten innings or so in middle to high leverage situations in order to get him prepped for a 60+ IP workload in 2020.

LHP Blake Taylor
2019 Stats: (A+/AA) 2-3, 10 Saves, 2.16 ERA, 1.095 WHIP, 10.0 K/9, 3.2 BB/9

After working the last two seasons as a starting pitcher, the Mets moved Taylor to the bullpen full-time in 2019 and it has resulted in him having one of the best reliever seasons in the organization. Across 40 games pitched between (A+) Port St. Lucie and (AA) Binghamton, Taylor held opponents to a .201 AVG/.558 OPS while striking out 27% of the batters he faced. He was also equally tough against right-handed bats as he was against lefties holding both to OPS marks under .570 OPS.

Taylor is eligible for minor league free agency this offseason but could possibly help the Mets bullpen in 2020 so his work in the Arizona Fall League will be closely watched in order to help the team determine if they should add him to the 40 man roster this off-season. Look for him to get about 10-15 innings of work in both medium and high leverage situations for the Scorpions.

RHP Jordan Humphreys
2019 Stats: (Rk) 0-0, 4.50 ERA, 1.500 WHIP, 9.0 K/9, 4.5 BB/9

Humphreys was quickly rising up prospect boards in 2017 as he dominated the (A) South Atlantic League to the tune of a 1.42 ERA with a superb 10.3 K/9 and an equally impressive 1.2 BB/9. However, after being promoted to the (A+) Port St. Lucie Mets and making two starts, Humphreys became another victim of the ever prevalent Tommy John Surgery. The recovery would cost him his entire 2018 season but he was expected to return this year until February when we learned that he required ulnar nerve transposition surgery, the same surgery that Jacob Degrom and Steven Matz both needed in earlier years.

Due to the surgery, Humphreys ended up missing out on pretty much the entire 2019 season (only tossing two separate one-inning stints in the GCL in June and August) but his assignment to the Scorpions is an indication that he is finally ready to return in full capacity, although, it’s unclear what his role on the team will be.