Mets Minors: Fixing the system

Is the Mets minor league system broken? That’s hard to quantify. By the only metric that matters, which is players reaching the majors and having impacts, it is not. Brett Baty and Francisco Alvarez have both graduated the minors this year and are entrenched into the lineup for the major league team. Is the Mets minor league system being run well? No.

There are a few major issues with the minor league system and the most glaring is that the Mets have far too many players playing at the wrong level for their age. Besides that issue there are a few cases of players playing out of position or simply not playing positions that maximize their value. Lastly, the Mets 2022 draft didn’t seem to have a gameplan and the Mets missed out on a few extremely notable options who I’d love to have in the system right now.

Aging Out

An actual prospect should be out of AAA and into the majors before the book ends on their 26th year of life Most actual prospects see the majors between 22 and 24 but there are plenty of solid players who took a little longer. Anyone in the system over the age of 26 isn’t really a prospect and doesn’t really have a major league future with the exception of the rare reliever. As a guiding rule, each league sees players through roughly two years of development. With rookie ball and the DSL mostly there to sort out the very young.

● AAA – To 26
● AA – To 24
● A+ – To 22
● A – To 20

Many prospects advance faster than this and should, as Alvarez reached the majors at the ripe old age of 21. By this right, the Mets have a glut of players who are playing at leagues that they should have graduated from both by talent and by age. The Mets, for reasons we cannot seem to divine, seem disinclined to promote players to the level they seem to belong.

Tyler Stuart – The best performing starting pitching prospect in the Mets system has played all of 2023 in High A where he’s enjoyed tremendous success. The 6’9” starter began the year in Brooklyn, justifiably, as he wasn’t regarded as a strong prospect. 11 starts and 55 innings into the 2023 season and there is no reason the Mets should have him pitch another inning in Brooklyn. Stuart turns 24 in October and should have been pitching in Binghamton back at the beginning of June.

Kevin Parada – The top pick from the 2022 draft was assigned to the High A squad but likely could have begun the year in Binghamton if the Mets were inclined to be aggressive. At this point in the season the fact that he hasn’t been promoted is frustrating and confusing on many levels. He’s older than Alvarez and the Mets are holding him in a pitcher friendly park that is sapping his power production.

Stanley Consuegra – The Brooklyn Cyclones will be all over this list as the team is full of players who belong in AA at this point in their careers. A breakout star of the team, Consuegra is 22 and should be in Binghamton because of both his level of play and his age.

Jose Peroza – He has been solid for Binghamton all season and defensively had his position in AAA cleared when Brett Baty was promoted. At 23 there seems no reason of Peroza to still be in AA but again the Mets seem to be attempting to slow down anyone succeeding in their system.

Matt Rudick – With Rudick the success is less realistic and the assumption is that he would quickly come to earth but there seems to be no reason to hold a player in AA when you have players in High A ready to come up and replace him.

Jett Williams – Williams deserves a promotion to High A but I’m fine if the Mets hold on doing that until they move all the other overdue promotions already in Brooklyn.

Jacob Reimer – Like Williams you could hold Reimer in Low A until the ranks of High A are thinned but it seems like the Mets are delaying development for no good reason.

Jorge Deleon – The take here is simple. Deleon has pitched better as a starter in the FCL than any of this year’s starters in Low A. Promote him.

Find Me a Home

The Mets don’t always draft players with strong ideas of where they will play. We’ve seen this with Mark Vientos and others over the years. Some players have obvious destinations and others are 6’3” and struggle with ground balls.

Ronny Mauricio – Speaking of fielding issues, the Mets have had an obvious solution for Ronny Mauricio staring them in the face for years. Maurcio has always been too tall for shortstop and has never been good there defensively. His limitations didn’t make him a good fit for second base either and with Brett Baty looking like the future at third base… the Mets moved Mauricio to second. For seasons, fans have noted that Mauricio should move to the outfield. The Mets got there by mid-June of 2023. Too bad he could have been in the majors and producing at this point if only the organization had been paying attention.

Alex Ramirez – There are few outfielders I’ve seen play who are smoother defensively than Ramirez. He’s very fast and reads the ball off the bat extremely well. What confuses me as a fan is why he’d be playing left field when the highest value outfield position is in center.

Daniel Juarez – Daniel Juarez might have been in AAA by now if the Mets began his year in AA where he belonged but it also seems that the Mets might be doing something creative and right with Juarez. It appears that the team is stretching their reliever out to a starter now that he’s reached Binghamton and he seems to be managing some success with it. The jury is out if this experiment will work and it does seem like questionable logic given the Mets need for quality relievers who are ready to reach the majors but I’ll take this kind of move over many of the others.

Draft Players with Purpose

There is no question that the Mets have a need for pitching in the minors and that Blade Tidwell, while starting to come around, doesn’t look like a future Ace. Now the Mets selected solid players in Kevin Parada and Jett Williams but they also spent a pick on Nick Morabito and failed to sign Brandon Sproat. Ignoring Parada whose value at 11th overall was admittedly hard to pass up lets play some 20/20 hindsight.

Back before the 2022 draft I had listed several players whom the Mets might target in the first round and the two of whom loom largest: Dylan Lesko and Brock Porter. Lesko was selected shortly after Williams and has managed to pitch only one third of one inning in 2023. That didn’t go so great but had the Mets drafted Lesko I would have been over the moon. Lesko was scouted with raw Ace potential and solid mechanics. His shaky start aside, he could still round into an Ace based on the stuff he has.

The other name is Brock Porter whom the Mets passed on multiple times and who wound up being selected 109th overall. Porter has been very good for the Texas Low A squad and would be easily the best pitching prospect in the Mets organization. While Jett Williams does look like he has a major league future, I can’t see him having a ton of star potential just yet.

Then, in the compensation round the Mets selected Nick Morabito. The infield prospect was nowhere near my radar and seemed to serve no function in the farm system. On top of Brock Porter still, infuriatingly, being available, I listed Carson Palmquist, Jonathan Cannon, and Nazier Mule as targets and all of them were still on the board during this selection. The Mets burned this pick on a player who only graded at a 45 in power and had questions regarding his defensive home.

I can only sit and wonder how people would look at the state of the minors if the Mets had come away with Parada, Lesko, Tidwell, Palmquist and Porter in the first three rounds instead of Williams, Morabito and Sproat. Moving forward the Mets need to focus on drafting players who have impact potential in areas of need and shouldn’t burn picks on players with little to no impact potential. Jett Williams has impact potential and I do not consider him a “bad” pick but I cannot say I feel the same for Morabito.