Mack’s Top 2015 Prospect List - #34 - RHSP Chris Flexen

My rankings is solely subjective and based on nothing more than what is in my head at time I’m writing this. I’ve followed the Mets minor league players for many years and I feel I can recognize talent at various levels of their development. What I have failed at is how to determine when this talent seems to diminish. It’s amazing how many first round picks never make it in this game. 

I’m old school, so you won’t seem much SABR-discussion here, I do research and, when I find a good quote or two, I’ll add them to my analysis, but, like I said in the beginning of this post, most of this us subjective.

Let’s get started.

# 34 –

RHSP Chris Flexen  -  age: 20 -  6-3, 215

        Drafted in the 14^th round of the 2012 draft

                                                     No college – Newark Memorial H.S. (CA)

                                                       2012: K-Port, 7-G, 6-ST, 5.63, 1.63, 32.0-IP, 26-K

                                                    2013: K-Port, 11-ST, 2.09, 0.94, 69-IP, 62-K

                                                    2014: Savannah, 13-ST, 4.83, 1.62, 69-IP, 46-K

Flexen was another of the highly projectable high school pitchers that the Mets scouted through the west coast in 2011. His being drafted so late was due to his demands for second round bonus money, which the Mets did eventually pay.

Like most high school players, Flexen struggled in the first year of ‘the grind’. The Mets stuck with him and it paid off with a sterling 2013 season.

Once again, in 2014, Flexen struggled, but did rebound in his last five starts in June (2.57). On July 21, 2014, Flexen underwent Tommy John surgery and had bone chips removed from his pitching elbow.

I had the pleasure of sitting behind the radar guns on two of his starts last year and the two nicest things I could say was he struggled to find the zone, but kept his fastball velocity throughout his problems. His fastball sits in the 94-96 range and is backed by pretty decent slider. It’s an excellent 1-2 combo when on, though I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing it firsthand last season.

Speculation:  The first thing Flexen has to do is heal. He could start off the 2015 season in Savannah, or move on to St. Lucie, but both rotations are bloated with 9-10 projected starters on each team.

Because of his age, I’ve  return him to Savannah and build a rotation around Marcos Molina, Casey Meisner, and Logan Taylor.

Past that, I believe Flexen has the makings of a very successful back end reliever, but that will come in time.