This is the 10th entry in our prospect series, where we’re counting down the top 50 prospects for the Mets. Four people were involved in this project and what you see is a group consensus, not the results of one person. You can view 50-47, 46-43, 42-39, 38-35, 34-31, 30-27, 26-23, 22-19 & 18-15 if you have not already seen it. Here are the next four:
14. Corey Oswalt – One of the tough things with judging pitchers in the lower levels of the Mets’ system is that they favor pitchers. Brooklyn is a friendly environment for hurlers and Savannah is a notorious pitcher’s park. So, it’s easy to look at Oswalt’s lines the past two years and not be overly impressed. But last year for the Sand Gnats, Oswalt did his best pitching in road parks, where he went 7-1 with a 2.57 ERA and a 1.185 WHIP. In his last six starts of the season, split between home and road games, Oswalt had a 1.69 ERA with 1 BB and 29 Ks in 32 IP. He limited batters to a .559 OPS despite hitters registering a .312 BABIP in this span. Oswalt passed the full-season test with flying colors but he is not overpowering and will have to prove himself at every level.
13. Chris Flexen – He looked ready to climb prospect lists after a dominating season in the APPY as an 18 year old back in 2013. But he came down with elbow problems the next year, which required TJ surgery. Flexen returned to the mound in under a year from going under the knife and pitched for three levels, finishing the season at Savannah. In six games with the Sand Gnats, he was 4-0 with a 1.87 ERA with a 4.71 K/BB ratio and 33 Ks in 33.2 IP. It was thought he might not pitch at all in 2015, so the fact that he did, and did so well, is a great thing.
12. Eudor Garcia – Few people were aware of Garcia coming into the season, which makes his placement so high on this list so very surprising. A 2014 fourth-round pick from a junior college in El Paso, Garcia had a solid but unspectacular pro debut, posting a .674 OPS in the APPY. Moving to full season ball in 2015, Garcia had seven hits in his first two games and kept hitting all year long. In neutral road parks, he posted a .308/.349/.473 line and hit 7 HR away from Grayson Stadium. He ended the season with a flourish, posting a .925 OPS In his final 25 games of the year. Garcia’s unexpected breakout helped soften the blow of the down year by fellow 3B prospect, Jhoan Urena.
11. Luis Guillorme – The Mets are so deep in SS prospects that a guy who posted a .391 OBP in a full-season league barely gets mentioned. Guillorme may be behind three or four others in name recognition but he’s still someone to keep an eye on. He hit over .300 both home and away last year, as well as against lefties and righties. He has essentially no power but that’s not a deal breaker for a shortstop, especially one who hits from the left side of the plate. In addition to hitting for average, Guillorme has a good eye at the plate, as he posted a 10.3 BB% for the Sand Gnats. After making 15 errors in 482 innings at Kingsport in 2014, Guillorme made 15 in 1,012 innings at Savannah in 2015.
Note – For the final 10 prospects on our list, we’ll take them one at a time.
Luis Cessa who was just traded to the Yankees would have fit right in here. Let’s see where the Yankees system leaves him.
Guillorme has his fans — the glove is supposed to be very good — but I have a strong disposition against zero power guys. He may walk down there, and in the MLB a pitcher would be crazy to walk him — unless they wanted to get to the pitcher.
I do think Flexen is interesting.
One quibble, but I wish we got to see a standard stat line, rather than one that’s cherry-picked to make a case (Garcia, for example). And when it comes to pitchers, I’d love to see some mention of “stuff” rather than just statistical results.
You can click on their name and that will take you directly to their B-R page where you can see their stat line.
Ah, thanks.
Doesn’t help with “stuff,” however. For young, developing pitchers, it’s such an important detail. Some guys are raw, and struggle with the numbers, but have the ML arm. They project well. Other guys may succeed with savvy and maturity, but I’m generally not sanguine about a RHP who can’t throw 90. A matter of how far up is the ceiling.
Again — not picking on you, specifically — but this is my big complaint about the plethora of prospect lists we see nowadays. Everybody feels they can do it. Tom Brennan does one over at Mack’s Mets, and I don’t think he’s personally watched any of those guys. It’s all based on stat sheets and, to my mind, extremely dubious. I value the eyes on the player.
Here’s where I stand:
The further you are away from the majors, the more important scouting information becomes. Obviously, the best thing is to be able to say with confidence which pitches a player throws and how good each are. But there’s confusion over the pitches a guy in the majors throws, so it’s never going to happen at the minor league levels. And guys add/lose velocity and add new pitches and junk old ones all of the time before they reach the majors. Scouting information can be like new car values, with heavy immediate depreciation.
You hear the phrase, “Don’t scout the stat line” frequently. And there’s value in that statement, without a doubt. At the same time, one of the core beliefs of this site is that you can use minor league numbers as long as you apply proper translations and include other things in your determination, including the best scouting information out there.
If all you use are numbers on a stat sheet, you’re going to over-rank a lot of older guys succeeding against less-experienced competition. If you ignore stats, you’re going to wind up over-ranking toolsy guys. Scouts dream on players and look for the things that you can’t teach. During last year’s top 50 rankings, probably no guy was more hotly-debated than Champ Stuart. He was the classic case of athlete over baseball player and he came with speed off the charts. Even though we rated him higher than I wanted to, we still had him far, far lower coming into 2015 than any other site that I’m aware of.
A simple glance at his stat line showed a guy with a .370 BABIP and only putting up a .680 OPS because he had little power and struck out 30% of the time. What was going to happen if the hits didn’t fall in? Well, we saw exactly that this year. He only had a .287 BABIP, wound up with a .513 OPS and I’ll wager everything I own that Kiley McDaniel doesn’t consider him a top 20 prospect anymore, even with the attrition the farm system suffered from trades and promotions to the majors.
I want the scouting reports. I want to know the best knowledge we have of what the guy throws or if he has great bat speed or if he has the arm and footwork to stay at his current position in the field. That stuff is great.
But you need to both know what you’re looking for and to see a guy again and again and again for that information to be valuable. No doubt there are guys who it’s painfully obvious if you see him a couple of times you’ll know if he can stick at SS. But the average person can’t do that for everyone. I don’t care if Mack’s guys haven’t seen the prospects in person making a list. I care that they’re open to taking on every piece of information they can get and interpreting it correctly and giving it the proper weight.
I don’t care whose prospect list you use and what criteria they use to rate guys — none of them look perfect with the benefit of hindsight. But hopefully everyone looks back on what they did, see what they got right and what they got wrong and adjust accordingly.
You saw guys in the 11-20 range on our list this year who didn’t have great scouting buzz but who produced on the field. You’ll see guys in the top 10 who didn’t have great on-field results but who have great scouting profiles. Hopefully we do even better this year than we did last year.
I find the prospects lists pretty entertaining. It is a source of delight through the dreary times of what used to be the winter season, and now just extended fall where I am at. Sadly it makes me pine for baseball all the more.
I think the best part of the ranking exercise is that it forces people to look the pipeline over in a high level of scrutiny. I dont think there is a ton of meaning in most of the rankings because the ranking positions change as a result of actual play from year to year. Worse they mix players of vastly different levels, which makes comparisons all the more complicated.
We have some many SS stacked up and coming through the pipeline. Makes you wonder why FO gave Cabrera a 2 year deal with Cecchini and Reynolds at AAA next year and Flores and Tejada at the ML level? Brian, Any thoughts . Seems Cabrera money should have been used on a CF.
Just what was on the major league level made the Cabrera signing a head-scratcher.
I don’t think Reynolds factors into the equation in any significant way.
The rumors are that Cecchini may not have the glove for the position. If that’s the case, and I’m not convinced it is, then we have to wait for Rosario, who is at least two years away.
But at the end of the day, this front office prefers to avoid using rookies unless there are no other options. We saw Conforto come up and succeed given a decent number of consecutive PA. But there’s no way on this earth he gets those if Cuddyer didn’t stink up the joint for four-plus months first.