MACK - MY Sunday Observations - Where Should The Prospects End Up At The End Of The Season – Catchers - Jeff, Tong, Ewing, Trade deadline, MLB Baseball

 

Where Should The Prospects End Up At The End Of The Season – Catchers 

Yeah, the Mets are still trying to find a solution here. Patience for Francisco Alvarez continues to diminish while many have advised the Mets to do D with this position and bring back up Hayden Senger to play along side Luis Torrens. Alvarez has an option. Use it. Give him a timeout in Syracuse to get his game together. That’s me.

Past that… the Mets were supposed to have a solution to this problem if it ever happened. Kevin Parada. Instead, they have a minor leaguer that hits long home runs while doing basically nothing else right, either offensively or defensively. Crowded House was right. This dream is over.

But there are three lower-level catcher worth keeping an eye on and two more further on down the road (that’s a Clapton song, not Crowded House).

Ronald Hernandez is a 21/year old that was obtained in a trade with Miami for rental pitcher David Robertson. He is currently holding his own in Brooklyn and is currently going through an uptick of hitting after a slow start earlier on. Hernandez also is a capable backup first baseman.

Also in Brooklyn is 21/year old Chris Suero. Suero is showing more power than Hernandez and also plays first, but his additional value as a corner outfielder makes him a more valuable future piece to consider.

At least one of these two should finish this season playing AA ball. Maybe both. They could continue to platoon behind the place and either play first, left, or DH on other days. Both ETAs could be 2027.

Past that, there is a million dollar ($1.9mil) plus IFA that’s currently hitting the snot off the ball in St. Lucie… 19/years old Daiverson Guiterrez. The boy has a 55 grade in power and is currently earning his bonus. Wasn’t when the season started. Is now. My money is this guy though it is far off.

One more… 18/year old Yovanny Rodriguez. Y-Rod received the largest IFA bonus that the Mets have ever given out… $2.85mil in 2024. Advanced bat-to-ball skills. Defensively, a ++ defensive catcher with a power arm. The good news… he’s hitting .500 for the DSL Blue Team. The bad news… he has two at-bats due to being on the IL.

MACK – a lot of raw talent here and there is a great chance that, at least, one of these catchers will become a major league starter. Torrens is nice, and Senger is kewl, but neither hold down all-star creds. It’s up to Alvarez to stay the lead dog here or someone will eventually push him aside.

Jeff McNeil

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6426490/2025/06/14/mets-jeff-mcneil-trade-deadline/

The Mets’ roster contains three other players, all much younger than McNeil, capable of playing second base, his primary position (plus more alternatives in their farm system). Each time the Mets have called on an infield prospect, fans on social media have demanded playing time for the flashy newcomer, often at the expense of McNeil, no longer new or flashy. But a funny thing keeps happening. McNeil continues to outperform them.

With a fresh offensive identity based on hitting balls hard that started in the second half of last season, McNeil has increased his value to the Mets in a few meaningful ways, particularly as it pertains to the trade deadline.

It’s not just at second base, because he owns an .889 OPS (.268 batting average) and the trio of youngsters who can man the position — Brett Baty, Luisangel Acuña and Ronny Mauricio — have yet to supplant him, though that helps significantly.

It’s also in the lineup, where McNeil’s hot left-handed bat has come in handy batting behind right-handed slugger Pete Alonso.

And it’s in center field, where, paired with righty Tyrone Taylor, McNeil has helped solidify a platoon that rival evaluators say is surpassing their expectations.

Jonah Tong

https://www.mlb.com/news/top-prospect-performers-for-june-10-2025?partnerID=web_article-share

RHP, Binghamton (NYM No. 4/MLB No. 96)

Tong wasn't unhittable this time, but he still put together another strong start for Double-A Binghamton. The 21-year-old allowed one run and struck out eight while inducing 15 whiffs on 42 swings. It was the seventh time in eight starts the reigning Eastern League Pitcher of the Month hasn't allowed more than one run, dropping his ERA at 1.99. Tong sports a 1.03 WHIP and has fanned 91 in 54 1/3 innings across 11 starts.

Scouting

A.J. Ewing

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6414371/2025/06/10/travis-sykora-carson-benge-scouting-mets-nationals/

Second baseman A.J. Ewing had a mediocre first full year in pro ball in 2024, but after going back to the all-fields approach he showed in high school, he returned to Low A to start 2025 and hit .400/.506/.615 in 18 games. The Mets bumped him up to Brooklyn, and he’s at .321/.400/.435 so far at the higher level, with a strikeout rate of just 19 percent. He didn’t love facing Sykora, with a pair of strikeouts and a broken-bat groundout, but smoked a double off a right-handed reliever (Austin Amaral) with a great swing where he stayed back well and got his lower half into it, driving the pitch to right-center. He then stole third with two outs and Benge up, which I didn’t love — you never want to make the third out at third base, especially not with your best hitter at the plate and your team down six.

Mets trade deadline primer

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6417807/2025/06/12/mets-trade-deadline-primer/

How aggressive will David Stearns want to be?

In his first trade deadline with the Mets, Stearns executed in adding to the margins of the roster without sacrificing much in prospect value. New York brought in a trio of relievers (Phil Maton, Ryne Stanek and Huascar Brazobán), an extra outfielder (Jesse Winker) and a depth starter (Paul Blackburn) — many of whom played key roles in their run in September and October.

There will likely be room for a move or two like those again this year, especially in the bullpen. But Stearns has proven so swiftly adept at adding depth to New York’s roster that it’s not all that easy to find obvious opportunities for upgrades.

Maybe that dynamic, combined with the Mets’ ambitions to advance come October, leaves space for a bigger, more aggressive play. During his time in Milwaukee, Stearns rarely made big swings at the deadline. (The acquisitions of Mike Moustakas and Jonathan Schoop in 2018 are probably the biggest deadline deals he’s made leading a front office.) So there isn’t that track record of, say, Dombrowski or Anthopoulos pulling the trigger to add a talent like David Price (which those two did in consecutive summers a decade ago).

But there’s a good chance the Mets enter the last week of July in a better position than any of those Brewers teams. (New York already has a larger run differential through 66 games than any of Stearns’ Milwaukee teams did a week ahead of the deadline.) This is a team that should harbor real thoughts about winning the World Series, and a big move could prove pivotal in doing so.

MLB’s baseball is behaving differently again

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6422877/2025/06/13/mlb-baseball-fly-ball-distance-drag/

Something’s up with the baseball. Again.

Deep flies aren’t flying as far this year in Major League Baseball, and the league office is acknowledging as much. A review by The Athletic of MLB’s publicly available data shows there has been more drag on the ball in 2025 than in any of the other nine seasons that MLB has tracked it. As a result, equally hard-hit fly balls are coming up 4 feet short, on average.

That indicates that this year’s ball is somehow different than last year’s, but it’s unclear why. When contacted by The Athletic, MLB confirmed the difference in the ball’s performance, including the 4-foot reduction on long flies, but did not offer a specific explanation. The league says, though, that no intentional changes were made to the ball for this season.

“For the last several seasons, MLB has made drag information available to the public online, which is updated daily during the season,” league spokesperson Glen Caplin said in a statement. “We are aware of an increase in average drag this season and have provided information to the Major League Baseball Players Association on this issue as our experts continue to study any potential causes beyond normal variability in a product made by hand with natural materials. There has been no change to the manufacturing, storage or handling of baseballs this year, and all baseballs remain within specifications.”

A potentially tiny change in seam width or height is one theory the league office has identified, according to a league source who was not authorized to speak publicly, but nothing is conclusive at this point. Baseballs are hand-stitched, prompting league officials to point out there will always be some ball-to-ball and batch-to-batch variation. However, something appears to be happening at scale: On all but four individual days this year, there has been more drag on the ball than last season’s average.

The mean drag coefficient this year is .3514. The previous high in the Statcast era was .3462 in 2016. That means that something about the ball is causing it to drag more through the air, which would theoretically reduce how far the ball would go.