MACK - MY TUESDAY OBSERVATIONS

 

Good morning

 

I hate writing smack.

I always try and make the darkest cloud, at least, cloudy. Don’t say “he sucks”… say “he’s having a bad day” or some shit like that.

And then there is this year’s version of Brett Baty.

This is the fourth year Baty has tried to crack the Mets starting lineup. Results?

2022 – .184

2023 – .212

2024 – .229

This season – too low to even write it.

He has a CAREER:     -0.9-WAR.  

He has defensively converted to second, but that isn’t going to be enough to pay the freight.

The options are playing LuisAngel Acuna full time, waiting it out until Jeff comes back, going to the church and lighting candles every night praying that Ronny Mauricio will be back soon, or promoting D.A. Castillo from Syracuse, who is also hitting below the Mendoza line this season. No Tom… it’s too early for Jacob Reimer.

The Mets pitching is currently carrying the ghost bats on this team and nowhere is this more apparent than second base. Something has to be done here. Now.

As for Baty, he doesn’t even line up as a viable piece in a future trade.

I loved this guy in school. I loved him when the Mets drafted him. I loved when he was given the honor of being a regular for the Mets. But I really don’t care if a future decision is made to release him comes back to bite this team in the ass. 

Sometimes decisions have to be made to send a sign to the rest of the guys busting their as on your team. I believe it is time to do that once you figure out who is going to be given the honor next to be the regular second baseman.

TJStats - MLB Top 50 Pitching Prospects: Spring 2025

tjstats@substack.com  

16) Brandon Sproat

Sproat took Hi-A and AA by storm last season, exhibiting top-end velocity and a wide array of secondaries. Sproat altered his slot to be more ¾ which has translated his pitches to be more North-South, particularly his fastball. This change has also added depth to his trio of breaking balls. 

His 4-Seam Fastball sits 94-96 and has yet to reach triple digit. Its shape isn’t ideal, especially for his slot, as it demonstrated dead-zone-like movement. Without his typically high-end velocity, the offering’s grade degrades to an average offering. Sproat wields 3 breaking balls: a cutter, slider/sweeper, and a curveball. 

Each offering has its own distinct movement profile at varying velocity bands. His changeup is the pitch to watch as Sproat readies up for his MLB debut. It sits at 88-90 MPH with 15” of arm-side movement and reaching over a foot of vertical separation from his fastball. 

It is currently a plus offering and has the potential to be one of the best changeups in baseball. Maintaining his improved strike throwing ability this season will go a long way as he projects to be a mid-rotation starter.

I asked Mets Prospect Group who he thought was the top Mets prospect catcher. I told him I thought it was Ronald Hernandez:

       “ He has very good bat to ball skills , seems to be a solid defender. Power isn’t there yet , but that’s not a bad guess, very underrated. Yovanny Rodriguez has the total package, but we’ve yet to see it, now with the injury he’s further delayed. Daiverson Gutierrez really had a surprising 2024 ,  I think he grades out as a solid backup or a starter on a 2nd tier team”

MPG - Simon Juan and Willy Fanas both hitters went a combined 0-8 with 7K… I won’t be surprised when Fanas is released  at the end of the season .. Mets spent $1.5M on him in the 22 IFA Class after the Anaheim LA Angels walked away from a deal they had with him

            Mack – Care to elaborate?

            MPG - Fanas just has been a big disappointment and hasn’t shown anything to justify the $1.5M Bonus. With MLB cutting down on Roster sizes it’s hard to justify - 486 AB .230/.304/.337  140K/48BB  34XBH

Weird & Wild ways the season’s first week surprised

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6254249/2025/04/04/mlb-season-first-week-weird-facts-trivia/

Juan Soto on his first Opening Day as a Met: struck out to end the game with the tying run on base.

Juan Soto last year as a Yankee: never struck out to end any game with the Yankees.

Juan Soto in his second game as a Met: got the only hit in a one-hitter.

Juan Soto in 936 games for teams not named the Mets: never got the only hit in a one-hitter for any of his previous three squads.

Twelve Mets prospects to watch early in the minor-league season

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6253398/2025/04/04/mets-prospects-minor-league-season/ 

OF Carson Benge, Brooklyn (No. 5 in organization)

Like McLean, Benge is an Oklahoma State product ditching life as a two-way player; he’s just going the other way, dropping his time on the mound to focus on hitting.

Benge will start the year with High-A Brooklyn, which comes with a warning from the front office. Do not, under any circumstances, pay attention to your results while hitting on Coney Island in the early part of the season. 

Maimonides Park is difficult on all hitters but especially on lefty swingers with power, whose well-struck fly balls are generally no match for the spring winds coming off the Atlantic Ocean. That’s why Ryan Clifford’s slugging percentage was .304 in Brooklyn last season and .457 at Double-A Binghamton.

Keep this in mind when checking in on Benge and a potential breakout candidate in Brooklyn who also swings from the left side, shortstop Boston Baro (I wrote a bit about Baro back in March). Both players are trying to add power to their approaches by pulling the ball in the air; the results of that adjustment will not be tangible for the first six to eight weeks of the season.

 

RHP Blade Tidwell, Syracuse (No. 14 in organization)

Whereas Sproat labored in his first outing of the season, Tidwell cruised. He allowed one run on one hit in five innings for Syracuse.

That continued the positive momentum Tidwell’s been building since late last season. He was very good in his final two starts for Syracuse, then impressed at times in spring training, even throwing an immaculate inning.

After years of adding to his mix, Tidwell has reached the point of refining.

 

IF Jett Williams, Binghamton (No. 2 in organization, No. 61 in MLB)

When Williams made a cameo at Binghamton at the end of the 2023 season, he appeared likelier to start 2025 in the majors than back in Double A. But thanks to wrist surgery, 2024 was a mostly lost season for the top prospect, who played in only 33 games.

While Williams returned last season after surgery, even playing a few games at Syracuse, he never quite felt like himself. So his focus all winter and into the spring was finding his swing from a breakout 2023. He used the Mets’ hitting lab in spring to compare his current swing to his 2023 form, and he was confident by the end of camp that he was on the right track.

Prospect Parade: AAA Opening Week

Thomas Nestico

Blade Tidwell

Velocity is the name of the game for Tidwell through 2 AAA starts. After sitting at 94-96 MPH last season, he is now averaging 97 MPH on his heater while maintaining its shape. Zoning the offering continues to be an issue, but its better attributes has helped it miss more bats. 

His improved velocity has also transferred to his sinker and changeup. Both pitches not sit squarely above average on the tjStuff+ scale and gives Tidwell better weapons against RHH and LHH respectively. Tidwell has also shrunk his arsenal after seemingly scraping his cutter and curveball.

Tidwell’s cleaner 5-pitch mix looks fantastic and makes me confident that he can develop into a formidable MLB starter. Refining his command is the next big step before he eventually makes his Mets debut.

 

Twelve Mets prospects to watch early in the minor-league season

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6253398/2025/04/04/mets-prospects-minor-league-season/

 RHP Brandon Sproat, Syracuse (No. 1 in organization, No. 30 in MLB)

Sproat made the biggest leap in the Mets’ system last season, evolving into a top-100 prospect in the sport and the consensus No. 1 prospect for New York. He excelled at High-A Brooklyn (1.42 ERA) and Double-A Binghamton (2.45 ERA), earning a promotion late in the summer to Triple-A Syracuse. Once in Triple A, Sproat experienced his first adversity in pro ball, pitching to a 7.53 ERA over seven starts.

Brandon Sproat’s fastball is dominating enough that the Mets want him to attack the strike zone in search of quick outs. (Jim Rassol / Imagn Images)

Sproat’s first start for Syracuse this year was more of the same: He allowed four runs in two innings. The Mets want to see Sproat attack hitters aggressively in the strike zone, since his stuff should be able to play at this and any level. The right-hander has also added a sinker to his mix that could lead to earlier weak contact and lower pitch counts.

As an aside, the jump from Double A to Triple A has proven challenging across the sport, and especially for New York’s pitchers of late. Since 2023, Mike Vasil, Dom Hamel and Blade Tidwell have all struggled much more at Triple A than at the lower levels. The transition is difficult for a few reasons.

First, while the opposing hitters in Double A might have more potential than those in Triple A, Triple-A hitters typically have big-league experience and a better grasp of how to work a pitcher. Second, Triple A uses a different baseball than Double A, and it often takes time to adapt. Third, the implementation of the automatic balls and strikes system in Triple A changed how the strike zone was called. (In the past two years, half of Triple-A games used ABS to call every pitch; in the other half, a challenge system was used.)

You can scratch the third one off the list. Triple A has moved to a challenge system for balls and strikes, which should depress the run-scoring environment again.

 

RHP Jonah Tong, Binghamton (No. 8 in organization)

Tong came out of the chute last April, throwing darts, moving swiftly through St. Lucie, up to Brooklyn (3.71 ERA in 19 starts) for most of the year and finishing with a two-start cameo at Binghamton, where he’ll begin this season.

Tong’s offseason focus was on adjusting his slider to keep its movement profile more consistent. 

Almost every pitcher in the Mets organization spent time this spring talking about “attacking hitters.” That’s especially important for Tong, whose step forward in 2024 derived partly from more than halving his walk rate, from 22 percent to 10 percent.

 

RHP Nolan McLean, Binghamton (No. 4 in organization)

McLean gave up on the dream of being a two-way player midway through last season, and the 2023 third-round pick is concentrating solely on his work on the mound now. Once he halted hitting a season ago, he pitched to a 3.00 ERA in his final 12 starts for Binghamton.

“He didn’t have a lot of miles on the tires from a pitching perspective, which also means not a lot of reps to improve,” said Mets SVP of player development Andy Green. 

“He can do things with a baseball that very few people can do. He’s going to get to more swing-and-miss, and that’s where his challenge resides going into this year. He’s learning to harness some really impressive stuff, and as he learns to harness it, he will start to eliminate hitters a lot quicker than last year.”

Mets may have a deep bullpen

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6251622/2025/04/02/new-york-mets-pete-alonso-bullpen/

The depth of the Mets’ bullpen may depend on just how good Reed Garrett, Huascar Brazoban and Max Kranick are.

In Houston, the Mets didn’t intend to put Garrett and Kranick in pressure-packed situations to start the season. It’s just how it unfolded. They both came through for the Mets in big spots. They then continued to look good in Miami.

Though Kranick didn’t rack up swings-and-misses, he pitched three scoreless innings Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, Garrett provided 1 1/3 scoreless innings in relief of Clay Holmes, who failed to get through the fifth inning (a long third inning in which the Mets failed to make plays contributed to the short outing). Kranick and Garrett have each made two appearances.

Brazoban, meanwhile, has already appeared in three games, looking sharp in each outing. Perhaps his best performance happened Wednesday, when he recorded his first career save. In relief of Danny Young, Brazoban recorded the final two outs, stranding runners on first and third base by attacking the strike zone.

“Huge,” Mendoza said.

The back end of the Mets bullpen features Diaz, A.J. Minter, Ryne Stanek and Jose Butto. Dedniel Núñez is working his way to full strength in Triple A. The Mets pretty much know what they’re getting from that group. Garrett was strong in the first month-plus of last year but then faded. 

Kranick and Brazoban were the last relievers to make the roster (both pitchers had stellar springs). If Garrett, Kranick and Brazoban emerge as reliable contributors or become anywhere close to how good they’ve looked early, then the Mets boast some depth.

The ability for each of those three relievers to go multiple innings also helps the Mets, considering the state of their rotation. Frankie Montas (strained right lat) has started throwing, but Sean Manaea (oblique) had a setback in his rehab and won’t throw for two weeks.

Jim Koenigsberger        @Jimfrombaseball

"My father loved baseball so much he had nine kids. When the DH was introduced, my mom left town."

Mike Veeck (son of Bill Veeck)