It can be fun for me to look back and see what I thought of current stars like Pete Alonso when they were toiling in the minors.
Few had Pete as their Top Mets Prospect back at the end of 2017, due to his fielding woes, but guess who did?
(I had 2022 MLB Cleveland star Andres Gimenez as my # 2, just in case you were wondering.)
Not to quell reader enthusiasm, I have to disclose that Bleacher Reports recently ranked the Mets’ farm system 27th out of 30 teams, with ZERO Tier 1 prospects – and that was after acquiring half a dozen hard throwing relievers in salary dump trades of several of the team’s quality, uninjured veterans to cut payroll.
The Yankees, whose system pretty recently produced current major league uber-power hitters Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez, is nonetheless ranked 3rd, with 7 Tier 1 prospects. To say we are behind the 8 ball vs. them is an understatement.
So it is what it is. Bad drafting (among other things) leads to fewer elite prospects.
For this article series, Dominic Smith and Amed Rosario will have too many at bats to qualify as rookies, and are virtually guaranteed to start 2018 on the Mets’ opening day roster, so they drop off the prospect list.
Chris Flexen has really struggled after his rushed promotion due to injuries, and he likely will exceed rookie pitching limits also, because they need all live arms on deck. So although he may well start 2018 in the minors, and perhaps stay there most of the season to refine his repertoire to make it more hitter-resistant, I will leave him out of this list too.
I will do 30 individual articles on my # 1 through # 30 prospects, and then do 4 more articles addressing the # 31 through # 50 prospects 5 at a time.
The prodigiously pounding 1B played in High A and AA in 2017, after a great 2016 with Brooklyn was cut well short by a broken hand and his early 2017 was interrupted by another broken hand injury. Give me a break, will ya?
He scuffled in 2017 in relatively few at bats - he was hitting .160 on June 18. Starting on June 19, once the rust was shed, he put up the following awesome numbers the rest of the way in about half a full season’s worth of games:
Wow. Can we have a few of those sorts of players, please?
Strikeouts for him are in a decent range. Good.
Fielding is, charitably, a work in progress – 19 career errors in 110 games at first base is pretty poor, and has to be significantly improved. Painfully, he seems to be a first baseman only as is Dominic Smith, so something will have to give by opening day 2019 at the latest, unless one of the two shows a sudden propensity to play, say, 3rd base.
But the Alonso bat is producing average and power numbers like no Mets minor league bat since perhaps David Wright. So Alonso is my # 1 Mets prospect. You are entitled to be wrong and disagree with me if you’d like!
P.S. BACK TO 2022….
Of course, last night’s 7-1 drubbing of the Mets by the Podcasts in the first game of the best-of-3 moved the Mets to the brink of elimination, so very quickly. Will the season abruptly end tonight?
Will they win the next 2? If they can’t, just lose tonight and get it over with, so fervent fans can go to church on Sunday, and pray for a more successful 2023 (and of course for little things like no nuclear war).
This brings me back to a subject I raised on more than one occasion in my columns during 2022…why are the Mets playing the 99 win Yanks 4 times inter-league, and not instead some bum team like the Detroit Tigers. Might, I posed then, losses to the Yankscause the Mets to possibly miss the Division title by one game, and as a result cost them a deep run into the playoffs?
Well, fairy tales can come true…it can happen to you…if you’re dumb at heart.
22 comments:
Cant stop thinking about Alonso taking pitch almost middle middle.
Alonso can’t put too much pressure on himself. Pressure can backfire.
Flexen ain’t been shabby with Seattle in 2021-22, though. Unlike Max, he still has his youth.
22-15, 3.65 in 2021-22 for Flexen. Jake has won 12.
Hard to be optimistic these days.
Wow that was ugly and yes Pete taking that meatball for strike 3 kind of epitomizes the night and of course is it now Max's oblique? The FO now has to work on getting younger on the mound but I get it was worth a shot and wonder if were out this weekend whats in store for 23'. Question: guys if Jake opts out can we put a QOer on him? 101 win season shouldn't end like this but if anything it proves the long ball beats small ball in a short series. Look I get thats its not over yet but if Max is no longer our Superman then even if Jake is Batman it won't get us through LA. Back to back fails thru Atlanta and now SD at home for our Dynamic Duo isn't encouraging short or long term but miracles do happen and maybe we can swap out Gore for Mookie but I'm still with LGM!!
Gary, if Max is hurting, I don’t know why he would not have gone Sunday. Bassitt was fine for Fri nite. This not winning the division took away healing and rest time.
I am optimistically pessimistic. In other words, a typical Mets fan.
If Jake craps the bed tonight, Mets have to let him walk
I have no inside info, but my gut is telling me that Max isn't 100%.........I don't think he is injured to the point that he shouldn't pitch, but if he is only 90%, he goes from immortal, to.......last night.
That and you know the Padres were pissed coming into this series. Darvish was completely ignored by the media, instead, you only heard about the Mets' aces and how they should be dealt to maximize our chances against the Dodgers in the next round! I know that I would be incensed as a player and the best way to prove it is on the field (like they did).
Oh and with last night's win, the Padres have taken five out of seven against us this year (regular season and playoff game). The Mets have scored 2 or fewer runs in five of the seven.....can you guess which ones they lost?!
Going to be tough tonight.......Jake needs to step up and reward the faith we all have in him.
Offense, offense, offense. You cannot win a game without scoring runs. Max was uncharacteristically poor last night, but if the were a bit better I than 1 for 11 w RISP, particularly in the first couple innings, it could have been a different game. My same complaint as the Braves series.
Why is there continuing conversation about playing the Yankees four times a year? Playing the Yankees never lost us a division. Sine interleague play began, the Mets and Yankees are dead even - both have won the same number of games (this year it was 2-2). I complain about the letdowns against the lesser clubs. The snooze the took when Chicago came to their house was the division killer. That and the fact the Braves played .700 ball for nearly 4 months.
Shawn B, I did not know your point about 8 vs. just 3. It makes me ask, “why us”?
Mike, I always respect Darvish highly, and their other two top starters are no picnic.
Bill, if we played Detroit instead of Yanks, we might have won all 4. The last 2 Yankee losses pulled the Braves closer to us. It does matter. The Chicago losses hurt, of course, but part of that was Marte was missing. The 2 losses to the 99 win Yanks were damaging.
Mets score, or they go home way too early. There should be a rule…you win 100 or more, but not your division, you get an automatic bye. The lowest division winner that would have gotten a bye instead gets a wild card slot.
And why would we play Detroit? The regional matchup was created for fan interest; I like seeing the cross-town rival a few times. Baseball, like life, isn't always fair.
The only thing I could do better with the seeding system for playoffs is to seed in order of record and forget about the division winners. The Mets would have had the 3 seed instead of fourth, but I can't argue for an automatic bye for a second place finish in the division
Any one game along the way would have changed things, of course. BUT, the biggest thing that cost us the division was losing 6 of 7 down the stretch to Atlanta……. Win just one of those and we are resting right now.
Agree we need to show up tonight with the bats, or we go home.
Mike, it was a poor job vs. Atlanta, for sure,
Well, a fine win yesterday. Kudos to Jake, Nimmo, Pete and others.
19 guys on base in 8 IP? Let’s do that again today.
Look to me losing Marte cost us the Division title pure and simple because we had no one to replace him. But I'll also admit the DH position was abysmal and surely cost us games as well. Last night though we returned now lets finish this LGM!
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