Harol Gonzalez, RHP

The trend of my only seeing the best Harol Gonzalez starts continues. I watched him almost toss a perfect game in Kingsport a couple years back, then he spun six hitless frames last summer in Norwich. This time, despite getting knocked around more than I expected so far in the South Atlantic League, he cruised through seven innings, carving up the Lakewood lineup and featuring improved stuff across the board. Gonzalez has filled out some since my wife confused him for a ball boy in the Appalachian League. He’d still generously be referred to as an undersized righty, but the added bulk—and a couple mechanical tweaks—has given him more velocity, and he’s holding his stuff deeper into games than I’ve seen in the past. He touched 93 a few times and sat 89-92, which is a couple ticks higher than the past two seasons. He held the low 90s velo through 100 pitches, and the heater has more plane than I’ve seen in the past. I think it’s possible they’ve tweaked his armslot up to high-three-quarters, but I don’t have any video to check this theory against. Regardless, it’s a much better pitch now and his above-average command is still present.

Gonzalez has a full repertoire of offspeed pitches. The change is still his best secondary offering. He’s thrown a distinct traditional change and split before—and I believe he still does—although they bled together more than they have in past looks. The cambio ranged from 81-84 with the split action showing at the upper range of the velo band. Overall, the pitch shows good sink and fade and he maintains his arm speed well. He added a cutter/slider type thing, which sits 86-87 and features good late tilt, last year in Brooklyn. There is above-average command here too, and it works especially well off his sinking fastball. The curve is tighter that what he’s showed in past years, but it’s still a bit of a big, loopy breaker. He’s usually shown a tighter 12-6 ones in warmups, and this outing broke off a few of those in game action as well. He can keep the tight shape when spotting it for a strike, which is unusual at this level.

So the stuff has improved across the board. Gonzalez’s prior calling cards are still here too: advanced pitchability and the confidence to throw any of his pitchers in any count or game situation. There’s potentially four average or better offerings here now and plus makeup/mound smarts to help the arsenal play up.. Still, it’s a difficult profile: he’s a short, lean righty who has to make it as a starter to have a real major league role, as there isn’t an obvious bullpen fit for this profile. In the past I have pegged him as one of my acquire 3s, but that feels light now.

Desmond Lindsay, OF

There have been some furrowed brows and tweets of concern from #MetsTwitter about Lindsay’s slow start, but he looks like the same dude we ranked #5 preseason for good and for ill. The most important thing for Lindsay is he looks healthy. He moved well in center field and on the basepaths. When I saw him last season in Brooklyn, he was clearly compromised by his hamstring issues so it was difficult to get a feel for the athletic profile, although he *ahem* certainly looked the part. But now he looks like a decent bet to stick in center with more reps, and his jumps and routes compared well to his up-the-middle counterpart in Lakewood, Mickey Moniak. I didn’t get a useable home-to-first dig, but he’s clocked as a plus runner for me before and I have no reason to think that isn’t still the case. At the plate, he has quick hands that generate plus bat speed, although his eventual over-the-fence power may be limited by minimal loft and an all-fields approach. He is a strong kid though, and should yank enough mistakes to find 10+ home run power at his peak due to his average raw pop. Lindsay struggled with the more polished breaking stuff you see at this level, but overall I liked the plate approach. What he needs now more than anything else is pro reps, and I could see him having a decent second half as he continues to adjust to a full-season assignment, even if the final stat line—and don’t scout the statline—is unlikely to look too shiny given his slow start. I don’t see a reason to downgrade him at this point, although he is remains a very high risk prospect.

Luis Carpio, IF

My fondness for Carpio is well-documented. Labrum surgery derailed his 2016 season save for a few August DH appearances. He’s playing mostly second base now, and the arm was going to be stretched at short even pre-surgery. He might be a plus second base glove though, due to his excellent instincts and smooth, quick actions. The move to the right side of the infield puts more pressure on the bat though, and the early returns were a little disappointing. He’s just a bit over a year removed from going under the knife, but while his strong approach and contact skills are still present, the ball doesn’t jump off the bat the same way it did in Kingsport, and the bat speed looked fringy. That may come back, but it may not. There’s less physical projection now too as he’s filled out in the last two seasons. He’s quite young for the level, and I still think he’s the kind of polished player that will do enough at every stop to keep you dreaming on a major league future. But until the line drives get louder, Carpio looks more like a fringe utility guy than the potential regular of two years ago.

Blake Taylor, LHP

The player-to-be-named later in the Ike Davis deal—a trade that feels like it happened three full lifetimes ago for Mets fans—Taylor is still somehow only 21. In the interim, he’s struggled with performance and injuries, lost a year to Tommy John surgery, and finally made it to full season ball four seasons after being drafted. There isn’t much projection left at this point; Taylor has a mature frame with thick legs, but there’s enough stuff here at present to at least be intriguing. He sat 89-91, but he can cut it a bit, and it has some life up in the zone. His command of the pitch has improved, and he had success running it in to righties and splitting some lumber. His upper-70s curve had a nice shape to it, although he would cast it at times. It is a potentially average offering. He still throws a very forgettable cutter/slider thing, and I think I saw two changeups. There’s some deception in his delivery, and everything is very compact and repeatable. You are probably looking at a standard issue two-pitch lefty reliever here, but hey, that’s a major league role too.

Ali Sanchez, C

If Carpio was a little disappointing this week, Sanchez was very disappointing. I have advocated for him since the GCL—and yes, catchers are weird—but if I didn’t have better priors on Sanchez, I’d be tempted to call him a non-prospect. That is a pretty harsh grade for a catcher, as it doesn’t take much to be a viable emergency third catching option. So what’s changed? Despite pedestrian numbers in the complex and downright bad ones in Brooklyn, I’ve been fairly bullish on Sanchez’s bat. The swing I saw this year just had no oomph. He doesn’t use his lower half at all anymore, and while there is still enough feel with the barrel to make contact, it’s mostly bad/weak contact. There’s 20 power now, and the good contact tends to be short line drives up the middle or to the opposite field. The defense behind the plate was fine, but a little indifferent. He didn’t have to make any throws, but the reports are the arm is markedly improved at least. I have no special knowledge here, but Sanchez looked like a player struggling with a back or lower body injury right now. If he isn’t, well that non-prospect possibility looms a little larger.

Short Hops

LHP Jake Simon has room to grow into his wiry frame and an advanced curveball for the level, but there’s a lot of effort in the delivery at present and he was topping out at 90. OF Ricardo Cespedes underwhelmed again. The swing is mostly arms, all slash and chop and there isn’t much power there for how long it gets. He’s probably a corner outfielder long term too. C Brandon Brosher has 70-grade raw power and a plus arm, but the defense is still very rough, and he may not get the power into games enough to survive a move to one of the corners.

Photo credit: Reinhold Matay – USA Today Sports

21. Chris Flexen, RHP, Age 21 (St. Lucie)

The least-heralded prospect the Mets added to the 40-man this offseason. Flexen is honestly about as close to a generic assembly-line good-but-not-great right-handed pitching prospect as there is, right down to the Tommy John surgery in his recent past. 2016 was his first full season back, and he was middling in High-A, but his velocity did largely come back. The Mets have done extremely, extremely well maximizing this profile into major-league success, and Flexen will start 2017 in Double-A and on the 40-man, so this could all come together quicker than you’d think. Whether or not that future is in the rotation or bullpen remains to be seen.

22. Andrew Church, RHP, Age 21 (Columbia/St. Lucie/Las Vegas)

2013’s second-round pick emerged from years of erratic and unspectacular performance in the depths of short-season ball to put up an impressive half-season split between A-ball levels. There isn’t a lot differentiating him and Flexen, honestly—touching 95, good breaking ball (curve for Flexen, slider for Church), change that needs some work, a lot of time missed with arm injuries, unclear whether either will fit in the rotation or the bullpen. Flexen being a spot higher is more that we’ve seen him pitch more and better through the years, despite the TJS in his background, but consider these guys fairly interchangeable.

23. Phil Evans, IF, Age 23 (St. Lucie/Binghamton)

Evans opened 2016 as a High-A extra infielder and ended it as a Double-A batting champion. He was originally notable as one of the first markers that the new regime would be way more aggressive in the draft, signing as 2011’s 15th-rounder for a $650,000 bonus. Of course, draft bonus pool caps came just the year after, and nobody could be particularly aggressive after that. Evans bounced around the system until this year, emerging as a hit-tool first second base option in much the same way T.J. Rivera did at Triple-A and in the majors.

The Mets exposed Evans to Thursday’s Rule 5 draft, and he’s been widely talked about as one of the more likely players to get popped. It’d be more of a loss if the system didn’t already have Wilmer Flores, Gavin Cecchini, and Rivera as young RHH utility options that can’t really play short.

24. Anthony Kay, LHP, Age 21 (DNP)

As ESPN’s Keith Law noted at the time, Kay’s usage at UConn this past spring was suspect at best. Surprise surprise, Kay’s physical with the Mets showed significant elbow damage, costing him many hundreds of thousands of dollars of bonus money. MLB, through the bonus pools, made it up to the Mets by allowing them to sign Cameron Planck. Nobody will make it up to Anthony Kay–not UConn or the NCAA or the AAC.

This ranking is pretty much a shot in the dark; Kay would’ve made the top ten if healthy, but won’t throw a meaningful professional pitch until his age-23 season in 2018. As with Marcos Molina, we’ll probably have a much better idea how the recovery is going in a year, even if he probably won’t make it back before the end of the MILB season.

25. Cameron Planck, RHP, Age 18 (DNP)

Do you like playing the lottery? Well, here’s a pair of prospects for you. The Mets went through quite a saga to acquire Planck, originally offering to cut a pre-draft deal with him for somewhere in the mid-high six figures, to be drafted in the third or fourth round. Planck turned them down. The Mets took him in the 11th as a backup plan, and ended up having a bunch of leftover pool money when Kay took a far lower bonus than expected. Planck signed for $1,000,001.

He’s yet to pitch as a professional. He throws in the mid-90s. We’re ranking him around where we’d rank a generic third-round prep arm because, well, for the purposes of rankings, he’s sort of a generic third-round prep arm. And as you see with Church upstream, it’s not always clear for a number of years which way these things are going to go.

26. Gregory Guerrero, SS, Age 17 (DSL)

Gregory Guerrero is most notable as Vladimir’s nephew, trained by Uncle Vlad at the Guerrero Academy. He signed for $1.5 million as one of the reported best players in the 2015 international class. And that’s where it about ends for now—Guerrero was adequate in enough in the Dominican Summer League, but doesn’t get the kinds of great whisperings Andres Gimenez has, at least not yet. He’s likely to be way up this list after a summer in North America, or off it entirely.

27. Nabil Crismatt, RHP, Age 21 (Brooklyn/Columbia/Binghamton)

Crismatt put up one of the more spectacular ratios in the system in 2016, striking out 74 and walking only 7 while rising from extended spring all the way to a spot start in Double-A. He’s already being used in a swingman type role and is very likely headed to a future in the bullpen. As a fastball/change guy with a fringe breaking ball, it’s easy to think Akeel Morris. He’s a few years away from any sort of major-league role, and was subsequently left off the 40, where he should be among the lower risks among the significant prospects to be taken in the Rule 5 draft.

28. Kevin McGowan, RHP, Age 24 (St. Lucie/Binghamton)

Of the prospects the Mets exposed to the Rule 5 draft, McGowan is probably most ready to contribute to a major-league team. Jeffrey and I talk quite frequently about “95-and-a-slider” guys in the context of generic perfectly acceptable relievers, and after converting to relief in 2016, McGowan is basically already there. He could be this year’s Erik Goeddel in contributing decent innings to the major-league club from off the radar, or he could be this year’s Matt Bowman in contributing decent innings to someone else’s major-league club.

29. Jake Simon, LHP, Age 19 (Kingsport)

The Mets gave Jake Simon $400,000 in the 11th round in 2015 because he was a projectable lefty, and early signs are promising. His velocity ticked up in 2016 while pitching adequately in the Appy League, a perfectly respectable assignment for his age and advancement. These profiles can come together quickly—we’ll note that this is about the same point where we’d have had Simon’s teammate Thomas Szapucki last year, and with broadly the same profile. Simon will be headed for a higher-profile assignment in either Brooklyn or Columbia in 2017.

30. Ty Kelly, IF/OF, Age 27 (Las Vegas/New York)

Ty Kelly deserves to be higher than this, as he’s not more than a shout off of T.J. Rivera, but this is what happens when your authors end up counting service days by hand and realize he is eligible at the last second. He’s a present major-league role 4, a perfectly good utility guy, and honestly most of the players behind him are future 4s, so here he is. I guess this serves as a reminder that more guys are still “prospects” than you’d think.

THREE MORE WITH A SHOT:

• P.J. Conlon, LHP, Age 22 (Columbia/St. Lucie): A small, soft-tossing lefty from Northern Ireland who has dominated the low-minors to the tune of a 1.47 career ERA. This profile often implodes in Double-A, but he could carve out a MLB future in some role.
• Paul Sewald, RHP, Age 26 (Las Vegas): The best pitcher for the 2016 Las Vegas 51s, and overqualified for a MLB long relief type role with a chance for more. Could be selected in Rule 5.
• Jeff McNeil, IF, Age 24 (Binghamton): The former golfer missed nearly all of 2016 with lower-body injuries. If his athleticism and hit tool remain intact, he has a chance at a long career as a utility player or even fringe starter. Also exposed to Rule 5.

Photo Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports