A man
named John Sickles use to have a great series of top 30 prospects for all the
major league teams. For some reason, the feature was discontinued.
John
would rate the players with the A through F system, using A as a can’t miss
prospect, B a probable, C a possible, and F… well, you can figure out what F
meant.
The last
top Mets prospect list he had led with a sub-headline of “ if you love C+
prospects than you are going to love the Mets.
Nothing
much has changed. We have a couple of A/A- guys, a handful of B+/B/B- players
and the rest are C+.
Was John
right? Well, he did not have Jeff McNeil’s name come up until he ended the
series with players in one paragraph entitled ‘honorable mention’.
Here’s my
current list of my top 25. I will post this in five separate posts, starting
with numbers 21-25:
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| PC - Ed Delany |
25. SP Harol Gonzalez –
If this isn’t a rags to riches story than what is? Gonzalez started out as a
‘blue’ prospect in 2016 as a ‘blue’ prospect when he went 7-3, 2.01 for
Brooklyn, Then, he pitched for three different teams and went 1-16. This past
season, combined stats for Bing/Cuse for 12-4, 3.01 with a fantastic stat line
of 6-0, 2.68 for Syracuse in 8 games, 7 starts, Harol’s listing here is a
combination of his return to relevance plus the decline of Mets starting
pitchers.
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| PC - Ernest Dove |
24. 2B Carlos Cortes –
I wasn’t that high on this guy when he was signed out of Gamecock U. Still, I
pulled back and watched what he did this season. You have to get past his
batting average to appreciate what he did this past season for St. Lucie. He
was 12th in the league in slugging percentage and 11th in
OPS.
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| PC - Ed Delany |
23. C/1B Patrick Mazeika
– Tom Brennan is making his list also this month and I have a funny
feeling he will have Mazeika ranks higher than I do. My love for Patrick has
been tempered with the his sub-par .231-BA for Binghamton in 2018 and .245 this
past season for the same team. I once had him as a sure fire top 10 prospect,
Now, he’s barely hanging on to this list.
22. RP Stephen Nogosek –
There are Mets fans that only follow the parent team that will think I’m nuts
when they read his name listed here. Nogosek was ready to pitch at the major
league level after going 0.95 in 11-appearances for Binghamton this past
season, and an insane 0.00 in 23 games for Syracuse. But his 7 appearances for
the Mets and producing only a 10.80-ERA puts him now in that category that many
in the past fell in.
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| PC - Ernest Dove |
21. SP Kevin Smith –
Like Gonzalez, Smith has quietly become one of the top starters in our system.
He’s a 6-5 22/yr. old lefty that had a stat line for combined St.
Lucie/Binghamton of 23-starts, 8-7, 3.15, with 130-K in 116.1-IP. Smith may be
the breakthrough starter in 2020.
4 comments:
Sickles writes for The Athletic.
Texas
Does he still write this series there?
Not sure Mack. I enjoy his stuff when I find it, and I know he still does rankings, but I usually don’t check the apps but rather web sites, so I don’t usually remember to look for him.
Thought I posted earlier...
Good write up, Mack.
I dropped Mazeika prior to the Arizona Fall season out of my top 25 - he did not prove me wrong hitting .171 there.
I had Nogosek and Smith much further up, Nogosek due to his stellar minors pitching in 2019 and Kevin Smith for vaulting nicely up to AA in his first full season.
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