This is the final post in a series intended to bring awareness to some of the lesser-known prospects in the Mets' organization This series has run each weekday for three weeks at 11:00am EST for the benefit of our fans. We covered 15 different prospects that were not "household names" (yet). Hope you enjoyed it!
Junior Santos is not in most lists of the top Mets prospects. He has been in the minor leagues for five seasons (did not play in the 2020 pandemic season) at levels topping at AA. His numbers are not the spectacular ones that jump off the page and make people write about him. But there is something there that is worthy of note so I chose him as the final writeup.
Santos is an imposing 22 year old 6'7" 244lb right-handed flame thrower that was born in the Dominican Republic. He was signed as an undrafted free agent in 2018 for $275,000.
After signing on, he played on the Mets' rookie league team in the Dominican Republic before moving to the Mets' Golf Coast League team later that year. In 2019 he played the full season with the Kingston Mets in the Appalachian League. After the 2020 minors season was scrapped, he picked back up in 2021 with the low-A St. Lucie Mets, played in 2022 with the high-A Brooklyn Cyclones, and then spent 2023 with the AA Binghamton Rumble Ponies.
Santos has compiled a 19-33 record with a 4.68 ERA and a 1.48 WHIP over the course of those five seasons. His ERA has hovered in the 4.5-5.0 range most of the time and in Binghamton against some better bats he recorded a 5.94 ERA in 97 innings.
So with such pedestrian numbers in a game full of high performing prospects, why is Paul writing about Junior Santos? Well, the eye test said something different. I watched him last year completely dominate AA lineups the first time through the order. Then the second time around he got hit - hard. To me, that is some sort of adjustment; either another pitch to keep them guessing, or a mechanical change to keep "slider" from becoming "spinner", or just a mental approach change.
This is a big, imposing guy that throws a mid-90's fastball and a 2300 RPM sinker that averages 16-29 inches of horizontal and 11-20 inches of vertical movement. Here is what the scouts say:
Fastball has slight arm-side movement but more importantly he can sink it. He was at 94-95MPH in 2019 but lost velocity in 2021, then recovered to 93-96.
The right-hander has become more confident with the sinker, and his ground ball rates have steadily increased from 29.4% in Kingsport (Appalachian league) to 58.7% with the Cyclones in 2022.
Complementing his fastball are a slider (77-86MPH) and a changeup. The changeup lags behind in development as highlighted by the high variance in its movement.
As you can see, this still-young pitcher has a lot of talent and a need to develop it more to realize its full effect. If he continues to dominate the first time through the lineup and suffer later, then he may be a better fit as a reliever. With his stuff, that could be a very effective role. Watch this guy in 2024.
4 comments:
Paul, if he can be a real Dellin Bettances for the Mets, then he will be really happy. Great writeup. Have followed Santos from afar for a few years.
After his very promising 16-year-old debut, his walks and hits parenting average over 1.5. He’s not a big, strikeout guy, and his splits for Work are really not good. Fortunately, he’s not yet 23 years old. We keep saying the word, Lab Over and over again, but he’s got to do something differently if he wants to make the big leagues. Given his stature, it seems like it would be a shame if that didn’t happen. I believe in his modally career he’s given up 438 hits and 400 innings. That is about 100 too many for that number of innings. This is the year for him to break through if he’s going to.
Parenting = per inning.
Betances as a Yankee was a beast, 100 MPH and that sick slider. Unless Santos finds more velocity, he’s no prime years Dellin.
That said, he did throw a strong 2 innings this spring. Let 2024 be the year he puts it all together.
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