Reese Kaplan -- Not All Minor League Stars Can Take it to the Majors

If you think back along your lifetime as a Mets fan you surely were rooting for prospects who flourished in the minors to make their way up the ladder and convert bush league success into major league productivity.  We all had picked a favorite player were absolutely sure would face the higher level of competition, adjust to it and become the player envisioned when he was originally drafted.  

It's a sad tale to go through the list of the number of times each of us have been wrong.  I know that many felt pitchers that retired batters with ease and showed solid control couldn't possibly fail higher up, right?

Unfortunately that same flawed evaluation of pitchers carries over to hitters as well.  There are guys mashing against whomever takes the mound only to find as they get promoted higher and higher, the fastballs dance around the plate and arrive at higher velocity, the curves and sliders have movements that they had not previously experienced, and they find pitchers don't necessarily aim for the middle of the zone, but work in, out, up, down and intentionally out of the zone to try to bait the hitters into taking wild swings that make little to no contact. 

Even skills that seem irrefutable like stellar defense and blazing speed don't always translate to the major leagues.  Some guys who make highlight reels for what they do covering their territory, making accurate (and sometime unbelievable) throws and who support their pitchers to the best of their ability often find that they overemphasized the defensive side of the game at the expense of putting the ball into play.  

Baserunners who relied primarily on speed later discover pitchers who know how to hold on runners, catchers who don't lob the ball lazily nor inaccurately, or hitters who have not mastered how to work the plate and stand semi-obstructively to render the catcher's job much more difficult at attempting to nail the attempted steal.  

Years ago when evaluating pitchers the main metrics examined were velocity and strikeouts.  The overly simplistic thinking was that if you threw the ball hard enough that hitters couldn't get around then you would be a success in the upper levels and then the majors.  What was discovered is that while you can't necessarily make dramatic shifts in speed without wrecking your arm, it turns out that throwing harder in and of itself is not enough.  

Do you remember a pitcher named Jack Leathersich?  He posted cartoon-like strikeout numbers throughout his ascent up the ladder.  His strkeouts per 9 innings pitched ran from the mid teens to as high as 18.2 in his initial rookie minor league campaign.  That kind of success made pitching coaches and managers drool in anticipation of him taking the hill.  His ERA was not commensurate with what you'd expect from that kind of fireballer and his arm injuries forced him off the prospect page.  

He's done parts of three seasons in the majors for a total of just 24 innings pitched (with a shockingly good 2.70 ERA, but he's not the pitcher he once was.  His WAR numbers reflect it in the minors, too.  

Just as the stat metric of WHIP has arisen as perhaps the be all and end all of pitching evaluations, the OPS number for hitters has taken precedence over mere totals of HRs, RBIs and batting average.  There are guys today who achieve high OPS numbers as a result of their overall contribution to advancing runners and hitting effectively even if the batting average at first glance is nothing to celebrate. 

Who here remembers sluggers who became fanning machines at the plate or singles hitters who found out that tapping a ball past a struggling AA or AAA infielder wasn't as likely to happen in the majors? 

Right now the Mets are riding high with some of their top minor league talents.  Sometimes they do indeed progress nicely like Amed Rosario and Andres Gimenez for the Guardians, Michael Fulmer for the Tigers or Nolan Ryan for everyone outside of New York.  

The problem is that even solid players (not All Stars) are few and far between.  That makes you wonder once again what is the major league future for Ronny Mauricio, Brett Baty, Mark Vientos or even Francisco Alvarez?  Will they be the next generation of young talent that some franchises like Houston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and others seemed to crank out year after year, or will they be the next coming of Benny Ayala, Alex Escobar, Fernando Martinez, Eddie Kunz or Lastings Milledge?  That is the question for the front office of the Mets and would-be trade partners to evaluate at mid-season and off-season when discussing possible trades to New York.