The Mets’ Double-A home for over 40 years has been in Binghamton, New York. The Rumble Ponies play in Mirabito Stadium and the dimensions seem fairly normal. It’s 330 feet down both lines and 400 to center field. Overall, it’s a slight pitchers’ park in a pitchers’ league, although there’s quite regularly a hitter who enjoys a tremendous boost from playing their home games there.
While he didn’t have a ton of playing time in the Mets’ system, top prospect Drew Gilbert had a 1.248 OPS in BNG, compared to a .706 in road parks after the trade. In 2016, Dominic Smith had a .981 OPS in BNG, compared to a .677 mark in road parks. It’s happened often enough that the phrase “Binghamton Bump” is a regular part of my top prospect updates.
But today, let’s focus on the pitchers who appeared in Binghamton in 2023. The conventional wisdom is that the Mets don’t have any great pitching prospects. But there were several pitchers who had nice overall lines while in Double-A. Were they just benefiting from their home park? Let’s look at H/R splits, with the numbers coming from MiLB.com, which has splits on their individual team pages.
Dominic Hamel
H – 57 IP, 4.26 ERA, 71 Ks, 1.40 WHP
R – 67 IP, 3.49 ERA, 89 Ks, 1.15 WHIP
Christian Scott
H – 31.2, 1.72 ERA, 45 Ks, 0.77 WHIP
R – 30.2, 3.33 ERA, 32 Ks, 0.91 WHIP
Tyler Stuart
H – 23 IP, 2.35 ERA, 17 Ks, 1.09 WHIP
R – 12 IP, 6.00 ERA, 11 Ks, 1.50 WHIP
Joander Suarez
H – 11 IP, 0.00 ERA, 15 Ks, 0.55 WHIP
R – 7.0 IP, 0.00 ERA, 4 Ks, 0.15 WHIP
Blade Tidwell
H – 18.1 IP, 5.40 ERA, 23 Ks, 1.64 WHIP
R – 16.0 IP, 3.94 ERA, 18 Ks, 1.19 WHIP
Mike Vasil
H – 23 IP, 4.37 ERA, 29 Ks, 0.74 WHIP
R – 28 IP, 2.89 ERA, 28 Ks, 0.93 WHIP
Unfortunately, only Hamel had a reasonable sample of innings. But we see he pitched noticeably better in road parks. A lot of people were higher on Hamel than me when the season began. My take was more bearish given his age. But then a funny thing happened, Hamel was outstanding the second half of the season. And my opinion of him went up, while it seems he dropped in the estimation of others. Go figure.
In his last 14 games, split evenly between home and road contests, Hamel had 74.1 IP with a 2.66 ERA. Opponents had a .300 BABIP against him in this stretch but only a .608 OPS. Furthermore, Hamel had 96 Ks, 27 BB and 5 HR allowed. It’s difficult to imagine what else people wanted to see from him.
Meanwhile, Hamel has been blown past by Scott, with Baseball Prospectus just ranking Scott as the fifth-best prospect in the organization. We see that Scott was good on the road and outstanding when pitching in Binghamton. Stuart was also much better in his home park but in a smaller sample than Scott.
Tidwell and Vasil joined Hamel in being better on the road. Tidwell had eight appearances in Double-A and he was very good in four of them and pretty bad in the other four. There was no pattern to his effectiveness, as he had good and bad outings both at home and on the road, as well as early and later in his tenure at Double-A.
In his four good outings, Tidwell had 23 IP, 2 ER, 3 BB and 28 Ks. In the other four, it was 11.1 IP, 16 ER, 14 BB and 13 Ks. It’s next to impossible to draw any conclusions from Tidwell’s performance. When drafted, he was considered a first-round talent who fell to the second round because of injury concerns. Perhaps the best thing about Tidwell’s season is that he stayed healthy. And we certainly saw dominance from him, with his closing kick at Hi-A (a 1.56 ERA with 85 Ks in his final 63.1 IP) and half of his outings for Binghamton.
Finally, what an end of the year performance by Suarez! In addition to his three scoreless outings for Binghamton, Suarez threw six shutout innings in his last start for Brooklyn. In his final four games, Suarez allowed just four hits in 24 IP, with 6 BB and 25 Ks. And zero runs. Included in this stretch was a 7 IP no-hitter. Suarez was eligible for the Rule 5 Draft and was left unprotected by the Mets. He went unclaimed.
Here’s video of him striking out the side, courtesy of MiLB.com
You can see from the video that Suarez has good movement with his breaking ball but that fastball is very straight. The scouting report is that the fastball is in the low-to-mid 90s. The Venezuelan native has a full repertoire, with both a slider and a curve, along with a splitter and a sinker.
Suarez was not on the radar of very many people coming into 2023, as TJ surgery limited him to just 46 IP in the 2021-22 seasons, which came on the heels of a lost 2020 due to the Covid epidemic and no minor league season. But it’s safe to say he’ll be on expanded top prospect lists, if not necessarily in the top 10 for those who do ordered lists.
Brian, this is a great article. Thanks for sharing and Merry Christmas.
I am really high on two players. I really like Christian Scott and Jett Williams. Having these two players pan out would provide a huge boost to the team. Maybe we get to see them both at the end on next season.
I am still high on the Mets being competitive as long as we can another starter, DH/3B Justin Turner and some relief arms. 88 wins and a wild card spot. As long as they can get through the first round in the playoffs, they can be ready to meet the Dodgers who mortgaged their future and the way that baseball goes, it may not pan out.
Merry Christmas Brian and to all of us here.
I cannot understand how Suarez went unclaimed, but I’m not complaining. He seems to have very good arm speed – which camouflages the breaking stuff well. But, the fastball seems to play off the off speed stuff and look faster as he pitches backwards. His control needs to be very good in order to succeed like that, but he can.
Yeah, my belief is that poor teams don’t take advantage of the Rule 5 Draft enough. I’m not sure if Suarez is the best example – he might be – but some perennial 90-loss team can’t find anyone worthwhile unprotected to stash for a year?
The scouting report I read said Suarez had a sinker, so he can mix and match that and the breaking stuff and the straight fastball. Clearly he had it working down the stretch.
Nice analysis of the Binghamton arms. Do we see Hamel and Vasil taking the drive up Rt 81 to play in Syracuse to start the season? Got to love the stats on Suarez but this 23 year old has much more to prove at this level before he gets moved up. Interesting that despite what seems like pitcher park dimensions, some of our prospects played better in the road. Reminds me of the days when the Mets seemed to struggle at home prior to moving in the fences a bit. Looks like Santa forgot to put something under the Mets Xmas tree, unless it was the gift of smarter baseball management, more efficient spending of our billionaire owners cash, and the continued development of the total organization. Or is that way too much to ask for?
Vasil was already in Syracuse and my guess is that he returns there. And I’m not sure what Hamel has left to prove in Double-A. To me, the question is if any of the other guys join them. My guess is it depends on organizational needs more than individual needs. If Syracuse needs a SP, I could see Tidwell going there. But I’m not going to be disappointed if he opens the year back in Binghamton.
Allow me an opinion on this: Suarez being 23 years old can be pushed, if there’s room. Scott can move up also as he has proven consistent enough. The rest could be in Binghamton at least to open the year.
I agree with you on principle. However, the Mets moving a SP to Triple-A with just three starts at Double-A would be hyper aggressive for them. If Suarez begins 2024 in Syracuse, we’ll know that Stearns has brought new procedures to the table.
That being said, if Suarez has a strong first few starts, I could see an early promotion.
Scott with 12 strong starts in Double-A has a much better shot than either Suarez or Tidwell in getting the higher early assignment.