Mack – Top 25 2020 Mets Prospects - # 21-25

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:

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.

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 12^th in the league in slugging percentage and 11^th in OPS.

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.

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.