As we enter the Top 20 we no longer see players who have so-so ceilings or little likelihood of reaching the majors. Most teams can boast a reasonably elite Top 20. The Mets are not as elite as some and their lack of depth is visible if you compare them to the deepest farm systems but rest assured that nobody in the Top 20 is a “Bad” prospect. In fact we start seeing a number of players who can be of impact on the major league squad in 2017.
#20 Eudor Garcia, 3B: Last year we raked Garcia 12th and despite some extenuating circumstances, he finds himself sitting on the very fringe of the Top 20. Garcia, of course, was suspended for his use of Performance Enhancing Drugs and as good as his 2015 was, we all had to eat a little crow on his account. The switch hitting third baseman managed a .783 OPS in 2015, playing for the offensive wasteland of Savannah. He returned for the second half of 2016 and proved, to some extent, that his stats had legitimacy. His .426 SLG (brought down, slightly by a batting average 21 points lower than 2015) actually saw an uptick in power from a player now under severe scrutiny. We won’t jump for joy just yet but there is reason to reserve some cautious optimism. (ETA: 2019 Ceiling: Starting Third Baseman)
#19 Matt Oberste, 1B/3B: It’s hard to project Oberste into the starting lineup but it’s equally hard to suggest he will not be useful to the major league club. The big right-handed infielder has the ablity to play at both corners and has a talent for hitting. While he doesn’t appear to have the hitting talent of a Dominic Smith, he does look to be a good candidate to backup and provide some right-handed hitting. Like a number of the better prospect hitters on the Mets Oberste doesn’t have the prototypical power for his position but an ability to hit the ball squarely and solid plate control are often times more important. (ETA: 2017 Ceiling: Corner Infielder)
#18 Tomas Nido, C: Some people will consider 18th a severe slight to Nido, who didn’t rank at all on last year’s list. To say the least, Nido’s 2016 campaign was something to take notice of. His batting line: .320/.357/.459 was heads and tails above anything we’d seen from him before. What accounts for this? Plate recognition, for one. Nido struck out 86 times in 86 games in 2015. In 2016, he struck out 42 times in 90. This leads to Nido getting around 25% more hits and making much more solid contact. If we could be sure that his 2016 was the “Real Deal” then he’d be a Top 5 Prospect. As things stand we’ll have to wait and see. If he can replicate the production in Binghamton we should start getting very excited. (ETA: 2018 Ceiling: Starting Cather)
#17 Anthony Kay, SP: If we go on scouting alone, we could rank Kay even higher but being that Kay will likely not pitch for the Mets until 2018, perhaps we ranked him too highly. Kay is a lefty starter who brings the heat and the Mets were very high on his abilities but the injury leaves us in doubt. It’s hard to rank a 31st overall pick much lower and we’ll hope that Kay can replicate Steven Matz‘s success once he’s healthy. (ETA: 2021 Ceiling: Pitcher)
#16 David Roseboom, RP: If I were asked which Met prospect was most likely to have an impact on the 2017 Mets season, I would likely answer Roseboom. For one, he’s a left-handed reliever and the Mets are seemingly always on the lookout for lefty relievers and for another he’s ready to step into the majors as soon as there is an opening. Roseboom’s 2016 was spent in AA Binghamton where he served as the team’s closer and saved 14 of his 15 opportunities. Over his 57.2 innings he managed 54 strikeouts, a 0.90 WHIP and held opposing batters to a .170 batting average. He will be looked at very closely this spring and might earn his way into a more permanent role before long. (ETA: 2017 Ceiling: Setup Guy)
Nido was drafted with a Scouting Imprimatur of a legitimate hitter. Catching prospect development is always uneven….it’s such a big mental and physical task. Nido seems to have come back to his Bat Rep, and he’s grown immensely as a Catcher. He’s one of their more exciting “watch and see” guys for 2017.
On Kay— the velocity reports have been all over the place—is the mid 90’s a projection, or a pre-injury reality? Most of what I read was that he had a nice mix, 88-91, with good command
Nido splits:
H – .367/.396/.539
R – .268/.315/.372
Nido’s lifetime numbers look an awful lot like his road numbers last year.
I hope I’m wrong but right now I’m not buying into his prospect status.
Lately, i’ve been paying more attention to playing time, and lack of playing time on the field should be cause for concern as well. Also, more often than not, the longer you play during a season, your season rate stats take a dip.
Sure, it’s only his 2nd season in a full season league, but once again he’s failed to top 375 PA and 100 games and he’s “already” 22, which is not exactly the formula to be considered a top prospect and contribute at the major league
Thole at 21 was already at 400+ PA and 500+ if you include him playing winter leagues. Plawecki at 22 was at 400+. Even the injury riddled TDA managed to do that before 22 as well.
Based on playing time, at the present Nido is closer to Juan Centeno than any of those recent Mets catchers i listed above.
You often make me curious enough to go back and look at stats…Socratic!!!???
anyway… Nido’s career splits are generally better away from his home park— wayway better away from Brooklyn when he was with the Cyclones—the other seasons were moderately better away.
I’m not aware that St. Lucie is hitter weighted…and the guy doesn’t seem to have a long term indication that “away is bad”— do you really weigh the ’16 H/A splits so heavily?
Strength at a+ makes him a Watchable Suspect in my book
When someone in the minors has a season so out of whack with what they did previously, BABIP and H/R splits are always my first thoughts.
I hesitate to disagree with you Brian, for obvious reasons.
But I don’t understand why you’d think H/A splits would be particularly revealing when a park shows no decided advantages or disadvantages?
I mean, at Coors, yes, it’s the first thing you look at it. At Vegas, yes. And in the other direction, I don’t trust strong pitching performances in Brooklyn. But at reasonably “fair” parks, wouldn’t any split just as likely be a matter of chance?
I believe there are reasons to wonder about Nido’s future, reasons to not yet be sold on his one strong year (and I do think BABIP can be telling). I just don’t think, personally, that his H/A away splits would be in the top 10 things I’d consider as meaningful.
I really don’t want you, or anyone else, to feel that way. One of the reasons I have numerous writers for the site is so that a number of different opinions can be voiced. There’s no ideology test in order to write here. No one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom.
Chance is always in play.
Prior to 2016, Nido had established a certain baseline level of performance. He did slightly better than that level of performance in road parks last year. But that road performance looks right in line with what he did previously. And then Nido had, for him, an otherworldly performance in St. Lucie. Why did that happen? I don’t pretend to know. Maybe he just saw the ball really well there for some reason. Maybe his friends and family got to see him play and that made him relaxed and happy. Maybe Annie Savoy adopted him last year. Maybe it was chance.
Regardless of the “why” — the overwhelming majority of evidence points to Nido as a sub .700 OPS hitter. That’s what he was in 2015 and 2014 and 2013 and 2012. And that’s what he was in 2016 in road parks. What’s more important — what he did the past four years in the minors and what he did in 11 neutral road parks in the Florida State League last year or his .935 OPS in St. Lucie?
I find it much more plausible that he took advantage of some unknown favorable condition in St. Lucie than he established a new performance level.
But the beauty is he’ll get a chance for regular playing time in 2017 and we’ll get to see if it was SLU or something else entirely.
This conversation cuts to the absolute heart of how to assess talent in the days of abundant metrics widely available and tons of consumer desire. Here in my 50s, I have never imagined we would all know so much about the farm, in such detail, with kids that classify as children in some circumstances.
As far as Im concerned, there is essentially no way to know how to *consistently* predict the professional acumen of most people, except the Ken Griffey Jr and Carlos Correa’s of the world. As far as Nido goes, we have such an incomplete story, that there is a desperate need for scouting narrative to explain the numbers. Nothing in the past predicted this; to my knowledge St Lucie isnt like being in the PCL (although better than Savannah). there simply is no way to know if this represents an anomaly for an otherwise sub .700 OPS player, or a new world by a kid figuring it out. Look at Jake Arrieta. I’ll never forget when Baltimore traded he and Pedro Strope for Scott Feldman. On MLB radio the talk was about what a win for the Orioles this was, and that Arrieta was a spent 4.5 ERA rotation filler guy. There was zero in his track record to imagine he was a 1 WHIP CY winner. And as much as Ive been thinking he fooled the NL, its hard to think its an anomaly.
The reverse are guys like Joey Gallo and Lucas Giolito. Come with endless hope, and cant or dont seem to be able to make it in the Show. Numbers dont help there.
I see player eval as critically dependent on both the numbers and scouting. Both are equally important.
I wrote a long post but decided against publishing it. However, I do want to say that because of their minor league production, I would consider Giolito a “buy” and Gallo a “sell.”
I believe the stat that really sticks out is the K%…. his prior 2 years were at 20%, followed by 25%….2016 was 11%. I believe that’s a Wow Number! A+ St. Lucie is a real league with real pitchers—- this guy made a substantial change in his approach at a big advancement in competition. Home-away, RISP, some of these things can swing and sway—you knock a 25% K rate down to 11% over almost 400 ab’s..???? That doesn’t just happen—this guy moved his approach and his game
Eudor is not a switch hitter