Mets Prospect Profile - Pitcher Luis Moreno

This is the next post in a series intended to bring awareness to some of the lesser-known prospects in the Mets' organization  This series will post a different prospect each weekday at 11:00am EST for the benefit of our fans.

Sometimes with all the scouting reports filling printed and online media with the exploits of a team's best of the best top prospects sometimes the lesser known or heralded youngsters don't get much attention.  It's our goal to show you a little about how the other half has been living baseball-wise and we can then form opinions about their potential to ascend up the ladder towards games being played at Citifield.  

The first name to consider today is pitcher Luis Moreno who unfortunately shares the same moniker with another prospect playing for a different team.  This Moreno is a San Cristobal product out of the Dominican Republic who for better or worse shares stature with former Mets starting hurler Marcus Stroman.  

Standing just 5'8" tall but seemingly beefy at nearly 200 pounds he isn't exactly on paper what scouts envision for a guy who can deceive hitters with a lot of odd motion in the arms and legs.  Consequently on more diminutive pitchers you tend first to look at control to see if he's able to keep runners off base.

Having spent 2020 through 2023 in the Mets affiliates you see a pitcher with a lot of work done but it would appear unfortunately still more to do.  On controlling strikes, he's done better at fanning hitters at a rate of about 1 per inning pitched and preventing players from driving the ball against him with hits per game at respectable levels well below 1 per inning.  

It is, however, that involuntary number of pitches that fall out of the strike zone that's been the big red flag.  While he did have one season in 2022 split between a few levels in which he managed to deliver a decent 3.3 walks per 9 innings, the rest of his career both before and after showed major control issues.  

The WHIP number for his four year minor league career is a mediocre 1.444 though his ability to limit hits and strike out opposing hitters suggests that perhaps a transition from the starting rotation to the relief corps might work in his favor.  

Then again, scouting reports are projecting him for more of the same in allowing baserunners which may indeed limit his success as he attempts to make the big club.  He got as high as Syracuse briefly last year and perhaps there is hope that against a higher level of competition he makes or breaks his potential as a prospect, but with a career ERA of 4.28 and a Strikeout to Walk ration of just 1.82 he may be running out of time.  

He's already 24 years old and not yet solidified his status in the upper minors, so the potential for him is greater to be released or to become part of filler names in trade transactions is likely higher than hope is for him to become a quality major league performer.

There is always room for someone who was not expected to excel to surprise you just as occasionally the guys with flashy minor league numbers can't replicate them at a higher level.  Luis Moreno may be in that first group.