Mack – Catching, J.T. Benson, Anderson Severino, Channing
Austin, Zach Thornton, Randy Guzman
(stats
through 5-20-2026)
1. We
need to talk catching. I think all Mets fans are starting to realize that Francisco Alvarez is never going to be the catcher
they wanted him to be. At the same time, astute Mets followers are also
starting to realize that the FCL catcher, Yovanny
Rodriguez, (2026:
2026: AA-Binghamton - 98-AB, .184
AAA-Syracuse - 7-AB. .429
I have lost confidence in Parada. He has serious holes in his defensive game and I believe this bat surge in Syracuse is temporary.
Binghamton catcher, Chris
Suero (2022, $10,000 IFA bonus) couldn’t possibly be having a worse
start of a season, though he seems to be finding his batting skills this past
week. Still, his batting average is far too low (2026:
Brooklyn catcher, Daiverson Gutierrez ($1,9000,000 IFA bonus 2023), is starting to look like a real bust. (2026: 117-AB, 1-HR, 6-RBI, 15-BB, 29-K, .162/.300/.231/.531).
Brooklyn catcher, Ronald Hernandez (2021 trade with Miami), has the highest BA of these four, which isn’t saying much (2026: 116-AB, 4-HR, 18-RBI, 25-BB, 38-K, .198/.340/.371/.711).
Yovanny is 19 years old and currently leading the FCL in homers. Oh, Power. Does the Mets need this? Sure. He’s too young to play Queens, but this guy does need to be fast tracked. I strongly suggest the Mets get him to Brooklyn by the break, if for no other reason Reyes can breathe and get to play every day at his natural position.
People always ask me why the Mets keep signing top catchers internationally. I remind them that this is the hardest position to find a top talent. Look at all the money spent over the past six years and they are still stuck with the walking wounded plus two bats with huge holes in them.
2. On 5-18-2026, undrafted outfielder J.T. Benson was promoted to A+ Brooklyn. At that point, he led all Mets minor leaguers in wRC+ (143) and triples (5) and was tied for the lead in doubles (10). He’s had a .800+ OPS since 2023, which includes three years for the University of Louisville. He’s 24/years old so he should be able to handle the bump up to Brooklyn. Benson looks like one of those rare UDFA finds that could, at the least, develop into a functional utility player; however, like many before him, he is off to a slow start at the elevated level: Brooklyn:
Don't sweat it. JT will work this out.
3.
It’s
too early to start calling up relief pitchers. They simply need to get more
games and innings under their belt. Most people speculate that Dylan
Ross (2026:
4.
Let’s
face it… there hasn’t been that many bright lights in the chain this year. That
being said, Channing Austin is one of them. The
6-3 undrafted righty joined the Mets in 2024 after going 6.28 for Southern
California. Nothing to get excited about, right? Last year, he went a combined
4.38 for St. Lucie/Brooklyn. Still no biggie. But this season, after (I assume)
considerable time in the pitching lab, he has turned out remarkable numbers for
the Cyclones.
On Wednesday, Austin put up another remarkable outing (6.2-IP, 0-R, 8-K, 1-BB) and made a strong case for an early promotion to AA-Binghamton. His current 2026 stat line is: 8-ST, 2-1, 1.17, 1.09, 38.1-IP. 48-K, 22-BB. He has allowed only two runs since April 21st and leaded tge SAL in ERA. His repertoire is impressive: mid-90’s fastball with movement, three breaking balls, a fading change-up. What he needs to do is keep refining it.
5. On Friday, May 15th, Zach Thornton made a statement. He pitched six scoreless innings for AAA-Syracuse, giving up only three hits, walking one, and striking out nine. This couldn’t have come at a better time what with the Jonah Tong blow-up, Sean Mataea and David Peterson repeated disappointing starts, and the Clay Holmes foot breakage. This resulted in a promotion to Queens and an outing on Wednesday (-0.1-WAR 0-1, 8.31). The good news is all the bad was in the first two innings that he pitched and he finished strong.
Helium Alert –
The Mets own
the ballplayer that just hit the fourth hardest ball in baseball this year.
117.6 mph. He also leads the Mets
affiliates in home runs and runs batted in. I’m talking about 21/year old St.
Lucie 1B/LF/RF, Randy Guzman. He first
impressed us last season when he went .302 for the combined teams of the FCL
Mets and St. Lucie. This year, he’s a little short in BA (.231), but the 44-K
in 145-PA is livable while the .816-OPS is impressive. We will keep an eye on
his and my hopes is he can improve to around .250, while hitting 20+ home runs
this season.
Randy Guzman in St Lucie has hit .250 in April, and .250 in May. Consistent. But those Ks are too high at that level. Gotta fix that.
ReplyDeleteChanning Austin stories are nice, but I hope we can fix some bats in the lab, too.
Catching talent is tough to find. Here is a puzzler, Mack. Big time college power hitter Kevin Parada has no homers this year in 123 PAs. What have they done to this guy?
Which is why I go back to 2023, when I campaigned to keep Gary Sanchez, when seemingly everyone else disagreed. Well, what has he done after the Mets let him go?
656 at bats, 40 HRs, 122 RBIs. I guess…I was right.
Speaking of alumni gone good, Carlos Cortes now playing daily for the As. .346/.423/.540 this year. Career .329. How did the Mets braintrust miss THAT?
I took pictures of sitting around the boardroom, saying, now this guy is Potential, so we should let him go and keep the guys that can’t hit.
Zach will be fine - and I hope Tong gets a call up this weekend, too.
Severino? Be nice to have another one.
You can't keep crying over spilled Corteses. Shite like this happens to every team.
DeleteWhat's the solution? So and so consistently underperformed so we are going to keep giving him a roster slot?
Not “I took pictures” but I could picture the braintrust sitting around the boardroom, saying, now this guy has Potential, so we should let him go - and keep the guys that can’t hit.
ReplyDeleteYou promote the guys that are CURRENTLY over producing at their current level
DeleteUnfortunately, the Mets are screwed if that is the criteria.
DeleteGood piece Mack and right on about Alvarez and catching generally. Hardest position in baseball for a number of reasons. most uncomfortable physically, greatest risk of ongoing injuries; and extremely demanding defensive skill set. The defensive wear and tear also impacts offensive performance.
ReplyDeleteThank you Jules
DeleteMaybe there is a reason the Mets now seem to be targeting the IFA market to fill future needs at this position
I have no idea about what is going on in hitting development in the minors. I get to use as much technology in my coaching and the majority of the same equipment, and I do know that only disaster awaits when applying the data without understanding the underlying forces that create the movement patterns. And even more important are all the cognitive skills required and how to translate technical development into performance. In everything involving sports movement there is so much to success that has so little to do with getting workable mechanics. On the other hand, if your mechanics are unworkable, as they are in Alvarez, all the stuff that is involved in taking it from the lab to the field will be of no use whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteI hate to be so hard on someone so likeable and energetic, but he is simply not good enough at either the mechanics or the translation.
I question his ability to adjust his game... meaning..
DeleteOne general point about physical excellence at an early age. You can overwhelm your opposition because people develop at different ages to different degrees. This means you can succeed with poor mechanics for a surprisingly long period of time. But over time, your opposition gets better and better as the funnel narrows down who makes it to the next level. This should be obvious. Your physical excellence differential narrows dramatically, and if you were never taught the proper movement pattern, it becomes easier and easier to beat you, not because the opposition is physically more overwhelming, but because as a hitter, say, your limits and holes are so obvious. It's not strength on strength very often. It is knowledge plus capacity to execute on intentions that wins out. And the more people who have that advantage over you on the other side, the less successful you will become. This is not rocket science. But seeing it clearly for what it is and how to gain the advantage, and most importantly, learning what is necessary to create that advantage, is everything.
ReplyDeleteJules, you just described my basketball career. Was tall early & dominated, then the guards grew & I stopped. My career ended at JV
DeletePeople who get to play with the tools of technology all too often think that the numbers on the screen are revealing something about the underlying mistake or problem, but the numbers aren't doing that at all. The numbers are themselves just different ways of capturing outcomes. They are not the underlying causes. So what happens is that you end of treating symptoms when you think you are treating causes and you are NOT. you need a map and understanding of how it all works in the body to get to the underlying cause. You need a global mapping.
ReplyDeleteMe?
DeleteI've never hit a ⚾️ with a 🖥
Scary thing is, in the entire Mets minors right now, there are NO over-producing hitters who are not veterans…and really not a single hitter after Ewing’s promotion that had WOW numbers. Morabito #s were solid, but not WOW.
ReplyDeleteNO ONE ELSE IS EVEN SOLID!
Elian Peña, you say? Well…he is .155 in 15 May games.
So, not one solid young hitter…anywhere.
So true. Look at the BA’s across the chain. So many insert ir at .200 level. Pathetic
DeleteThere is one, hitting .322/.468/.576 in the minors in May in the high minors. Jett Williams. Oh, yeah, I “forgot”, they traded him.
ReplyDeleteSTOP
Deleteyou tend to forget that the Mets have already promoted their best bats... Benge, Ewing, Morabito
DeleteTo me, Lindor not stopping on that run around the bases on that injured calf is the season destroyer. I read, “Was still not running as of a May 21 update. Won't have a concrete timetable until he can restart baseball activities.”
ReplyDeleteThe protracted absence of his bat is a season killer.
I still speculate that if he had stopped running at second base, he’d already be back playing. Maybe he would have missed two weeks like Soto.
What a difference that would make. He has already missed a month. My guess is another 6 weeks.
And thank you, Ronny Mo, for flushing your golden opportunity down the toilet with your reckless play. Another potentially helpful bat missing in action.
Not to beat a dead horse on Cortes, I just wonder if it was him, or bad coaching, and I wonder that also with Parada and Clifford and Reiner now.
ReplyDeleteThe Mets have an outsized number of players on the current roster were home grown. Commendable. Vientos, Baty, Ewing, Morabito, Benge, Alvarez, .McLean, Peterson, (maybe Thorton and Tong as well, with other pitchers to follow including my favorite, Santucci). We could also Mauricio to the list. So the farm system in that sense has done quite well in producing major league talent.
ReplyDeleteI think the concern is two fold: the obvious one is how good is this group, or better, which of this group will be the core going forward: the second question is the more difficult one: who's next and when will they be ready. This is the first year in a while, where, to this point, no one seems to be grabbing the baton. And I think that makes people worry about what is going on in the developmental processes. There isn't even a sprinkling yet. There are the teaser performances now and again by the likes of Cuero or Clifford or Reimer, of those higher up among the affiliates. But let's see how the season shakes out for those in the minors. We are thin now because of all the promotions, but the dropoff to what is left is the source of reasonable concern.
Agree
DeleteTom beats dead horses. Owns and operates a glue factory in Little Neck
Tom, your concerns are not unwarranted. None of us has transparency into what is being taught or learned at the minor league level. I certainly would like to know more in part because teaching and coaching has been my career for over 40 years; and I've worked in learning theory, cog sci, and taught courses on causation and correlation in the foundations of the social and natural sciences. So I am curious as all hell. But I have also seen great coaches who never saw a technological device and I've seen terrible coaching by people who don't know how to get ideas across, and I've seen great teachers who have done everything right have great success with some players or students and no success with others who were in many ways equally talented. There is so much involved, so much pressure to find 'the right way' (there is no one such way). There are as many ways as there are people. There are a few global principles that apply in all sports that share certain features. hockey, tennis, golf are all played mostly to the side of the object you are trying to make contact with. That means they will share some universal principles. not all, golf and hockey have something at the end of the stick at an angle to the stick; they will share some things that don't necessarily apply in tennis or baseball. but the thing at the end of a golf club is very different in weight than the thing at the end of the hockey stick so the physics will be impacted in terms of controlling the 'face' of that thing. But tennis also has a thing, but it is not at angle to the handle, that baseball does not. All of these things are relevant for creating the global mapping for each sport and for the sort of movement patterns that are optimal, which then have to be adopted to the different bodies of the athletes. It is damn hard. The job of the coach is to know all this shite and to help the player develop a pattern that works so they don't have to tinker with it all the time, which is even more important in sports like baseball and tennis which are all reactive motions. This is a difficult activity, but the thing I am worried about is that the folks who look at data all day and devise hitting plans and approaches aren't nesting what they do in the full body of information and knowledge -- from the sciences, to the biomechanics, to the learning theory, to deliberate practice models, to cognition, to a dozen other things. They can't know it all, but they can be in an environment in which they do their work surrounded by others who know this other stuff. Isolated without the full range of knowledge is equivalent to knowing just enough to be dangerous, only in this case, it is knowing only one part of a web of connected materials. And the ultimate damage can be much worse as a result.
ReplyDelete