WHO IS WORTHY OF A BRIEF MENTION THESE DAYS?
July is really put up or shut up time for prospects.
Maybe you struggled for a few months.
Put up some gaudy July numbers, though, and you may get to change people’s opinions, etc.
Well?
WHO GOT IT DONE, DOWN ON THE FARM, IN JULY?
I am a little loose with sticking with just July here. I wanted to stray a bit, to point out the PERFORMERS, both in July and in the near term outside of July.
AAA
Nick Morabito - on base % over .400 in July, and spanning June and July, for that matter. Steals lots of bases. Rarely caught. 10 HRs.
- waiting for a phone call.
Ronny Mauricio - hitting bombs since he returned from his reckless injury.
- waiting for a phone call.
Nate Lavender - dominant in July, almost as dominant in June.
- waiting for a phone call.
Jon Santucci - back-to-back strong months in AA. Just bumped to AAA!
- he fanned 7 in 4 innings, but walked 5 in his Saturday AAA debut.
Jefry Yan - Killing hitters with Ks. In June and July, 38 Ks v. 11 BB in 17 IP.
- waiting for a phone call.
AA
JT Schwartz - After an eternity of bad hitting in 2025 and 2026, JT hit .286/.395/.492 in 18 July games through July 28. He needs a lot more of that to change minds. But, you gotta start somewhere, and so he did. All 10 of his his HRs have come since May 19, a span of just 49 games.
- apparently, he was moved to the Development list with a wave of hot bats arriving to the shores of Binghamton.
Corey Collins - a recent promotee from Brooklyn, he hit over .300/.430/.480 in June and July. I detect a strong pulse there.
Remember, though, that almost the entire 2026 Binghamton hitting squad has been mediocre to putrid. At the same time, 5 rusty MLB Rehabbers - Robert, Taylor, Polanco, Semien, and Lindor - went 13 for 28 in AA.
Conclusion? Binghamton has had many bad hitters. But suddenly improved.
Pitching? I don’t like sushi, but I love Santucci.
Dude was fine in June and July, and deservedly just bumped to AAA.
Newly acquired Billy Amick homered in his debut Saturday, and had a fine slugging July before the trade to the Mets, coming to the Mets, along with Bruin Agbayani, for A.J. Minter.
HIGH A
Mitch Voit and Daiverson Gutierrez, and Corey Collins, all swung sweet bats for Brooklyn in June and July.
Daviel Hurtado, Bryce Jenkins, and Channing Austin have dealt masterfully from the hill. Austin has moved up to AA, and been holding his own over 9 innings.
FULL A
Elian Peña, Trey Snyder, and Randy Guzman swung potent sticks when healthy. Keep a close eye on all 3.
- Guzman was just promoted to High A, with a 7 for 17 roaring debut.
- Snyder can’t be far behind. Slow 3 for 18 High A kick-off.
Julio Zayas gets on base, drives in runs - and catches.
- 122 RBIs in his first 693 pro ABs.
Antonio Jimenez (just back up to Brooklyn) hit .300 in July thru June 28.
ROOKIE
Vladi Gomez has excelled, and has just gotten re-promoted to St Lucie.
- .322/.421/.427, 35 steals this season? OH VLADI, OH VLADA!
DSL
I will pass. Too many downright poor pitchers in the DSL to get a good read on how hitters are really doing. Seems the hitters to watch are Cleiner Ramirez, Wandy Asigen, and Jonnhan Sanchez. The first two, the Mets spent big bucks on.
ANOTHER METS ORGANIZATION PROSPECT BAFFLER
I reminded people the other day that former high-up Mets prospect Alex Ramirez hit an awful .215 in the Mets minors in 2023-25, but is hitting a resurrected .280 in AA with power this year in his new organization.
Then I mentioned ex-Mets prospect Jeremiah Jackson in a comment.
Jackson hit .205 as he repeated AA for the Mets in 2024.
Baltimore picks him up in 2025, and he immediately jumps 108 points to .313, then gets promoted.
In 384 MLB at bats in 2025 and 2026, in the town that Brooks Robinson built, he is hitting a highly respectable .260.
Considering these 2 “I-left-the-Mets-turned-success” stories, it leads me to ask:
WHO IN THE METS MINORS ARE THE METS NOW SCREWING UP?
That is, if they were to move elsewhere…as 3 examples…
WILL RONNY MAURICIO GET DEALT, OR CUT, AND BECOME A 35 HR GUY?
WILL CLIFFORD AND HOUCK BECOME IMPRESSIVE CONTACT HITTERS?
(I gladly note that Houck went 6 for 12 with just 1 K in his last 3 games thru Friday. Maybe he made a needed adjustment).
And please, remember, Jake Mangum, a speedy defender who the Mets never gave a MLB sniff to, is a friggin’ THREE HUNDRED HITTER in 680 career MLB at bats, while the similarly “unsniffed” former Mets prospect Carlos Cortes is hitting .280 in 319 career MLB at bats.
That for those two Mets discards is 1,000 combined MLB at bats at a .295 batting average pace. To put that in perspective, who hits .295 anymore?
Answer: the two discards, and a few other guys. Juan Soto? Just .283.
Boy, some talent evaluators and developers in this organization, huh?
FROM DEAD IN THE WATER TO TREADING WATER
Simon Juan was an international bonus baby ($1.9 million) Mets signing a few years back, who has never put up big offensive numbers.
This year, in St Lucie, repeating the level, he did this in April and May:
APRIL: 17 games, .175/.224/.254, with 26 Ks.
MAY: 19 games, 175/.188/.333, 27 Ks.
Man, those are “dead as a doornail” numbers. Brutal. Zero pulse. Toast.
But improvement finally came:
JUNE: 20 games, .224/.244/.364, 21 Ks.
Still weak, but gotta start somewhere, and those #s were much improved.
JULY: 16 games, .257/.379/.444, 16 Ks.
Another solid leap. If he had hit .257/.379/.444 all year, we’d feel hopeful.
2 games left in July as I write this.
I have to say like the sharp drop in his K rate (1.50 to 1.00)in June and July.
His task, should he choose to accept it, is to accelerate the upward trend.
And the righty hitter needs to learn to hit lefties.
7 for 47, 4 walks, 20 Ks this season. Brutal.
Just as brutal vs. lefties last year: 11 for 65, 28 Ks.
Suggestion: Hire lefties to pitch to him. After all:
Righties hitters need to eat lefties for lunch.
This is year 5 for the still-young, just-turned 21 year old.
Treading water is OK. Now, learn to swim.
8 comments:
A different spin on the Friday Prospect Report
I think the minors bats will impress in August. Best month of the year, offensively.
Very interesting post. Also confounding. I just don't know what to think anymore about the developmental strategy in the minors. There are a lot of just natural ebbs and flows with any player, but part of the skill set of coaches, one assumes, is seeing beyond that, helping players make sustainable adjustments, etc.
I have a 'radical' idea based on my own experience as a player and a coach albeit in other sports but baseball as well. It's this: What is the right strategy for choosing coaches at different levels in the minors? What is the actual practice of doing so? Here is my working belief to be tested against actual practice: At the lower levels you want the best coaches with regard to the following attributes: 1. foundations/mechanics; 2. communication skills; 3.creating optimal learning and player discovery environment.( discovery because for a lot of players, they need to develop agency over their outcomes and path, otherwise they will be forever limited).
Hypothesis about actual practice. Ex players and lifers looking to work their way up the chain are assigned to the lowest levels and thus it is more. likely than not that the most valued prospects at their most vulnerable stage of development are turned over to the least experienced coaches getting their feet wet, etc.
Let's get some research done on that, Mack, and if my hypothesis is confirmed by the evidence, turn the results over to Steve Cohen who will find it interesting I bet.
At the very least, someone in our organization should be scouting coaches at all levels of the minors from other teams. They are probably the most undervalued asset class. And a related point. The obvious, but most foolish, strategy to adopt to variance and uneveness in quality of coaching especially at developmental stages is to a adopt a 'unified/universal blueprint strategy.
In golf we call those 'models', and it creates coaches who are not the inventors or creators of the model, but are authorized instructors under the model creator, who then teach it to all their students, the vast majority of whom are biomechanically, intellectually and otherwise absolutely incapable of performing it. Thus they never get what they need most.
Some of us spend most of our early hours with our clients doing the exact opposite, i.e. helping them learn about themselves, their natural inclinations, etc. I ask every person I teach golf to to show me how they walk and how they throw a baseball from 2B to SS for a double play or force out, from 2B to 1B, from right field to 3B, from CF to home, from OF to cut off man. And I show all the vids I take of those motions to them.
More advanced, and still without ever swinging a golf club, I ask them to jump up, jump left, jump right, to slide like a speed skater, to move their body like a Ferris Wheel and to move it like a carousel.
All this movement information, helps me shape how I should approach working with them. And I bet something very similar can be developed and should be for baseball. You see enough of these and trust me, you see patterns that will fit some but be disastrous for others. The number of people you see who could succeed with a wide range of patterns is very small. Then you fine tune much later after the person learns the fundamentals of a pattern that works for them.
The key to all pattern work is not to connect learning the pattern with particular outcomes; but you hopefully begin to see correlations ultimately with the main goals a hitter, pitcher, golfer, has to accomplish to be successful.
If someone in the Mets organization asked me what I would be doing in terms of a developmental program, this would be at the heart of it. Not a model or a print out.
Let me add one more thing that is incredibly underappreciated. Every sport has tools that are used: a bat, a glove, spikes, a ball, a club. In teaching golf, for example, i can assure you that almost no one at any level comes to play understanding how the relevant tools work or are designed to work. And how can you improve their ability to perform tasks that involve the use of the tool without them knowing how the tool is designed to work. And the truth is, in my experience, most people, even those who are very good at golf or throwing a ball (from a biomechanical point of view) are more often than not working against, rather than in concert with, how the tool is designed to work. Really.
A great comment that won’t be remembered tomorrow. I say that not to mimics the comment, but because it’s hard to find another person or two that feels managers and coaches are important.
As I’ve written, the Mets are playing better baseball now and it shows. The worst move of the winter wasn’t on the field but in the dugout: bringing a dead fish like Mendoza back. Too, they lost Antion Richardson for now reason. Edgardo Alfonzo was a respected and guiding manager that they don’t want. Showalter was a teacher by his own words and they pushed him out. I never like to lose people that are assets, but in baseball you only want people who don’t have an opinion other than your own.
Great points. But cerebral is a big part, too. On the many at bats Clifford fans on, he is hitting .000. Hitting .000 screams for strategic adjustments.
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