Mets » Thomas Szapucki

Notes from the Field: Thomas Szapucki’s 2017 Debut

Skyler Kanfer — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 10:00:20 +0000

After entering this season as a top 100 prospect and one of the top three prospects in the New York Mets system, Thomas Szapucki did not throw a pitch in an official game through the first two months of the 2017 season due to a shoulder impingement. On a pre-scheduled trip to Hagerstown during the first weekend of June to watch the Suns take on the Fireflies, I was lucky enough to be in attendance for Szapucki’s first outing of the year and his first career outing in full season ball. Similar to when I saw him pitch last year in Brooklyn, Szapucki featured a plus fastball in the 92-94 range, touching 95 mph, with impressive life. He remained at that velocity level for the entirety of his outing, which is especially encouraging in his first start back from an arm injury. His changeup remains roughly an average pitch with the potential to wind up as an above-average offering in the future. The changeup, which was generally in the 83-85 range last year, ticked up to 85-87 mph in his 2017 debut. He threw both of these pitches to left-handed and right-handed hitters alike and in all counts. However, noticeably absent from his repertoire was his best offspeed pitch, a potential plus curveball.

The curveball, which was his calling card coming out of high school in 2015, was a major reason why Szapucki was able to strike out 86 batters in only 52 innings last year and receive a nice placement on the BP 101 this past winter. For whatever reason, he didn’t throw the curve a single time in his return to the mound this Sunday. While that very well could just be because he’s still building up arm strength — his Single-A assignment was likely because he needed to be assigned to an affiliate with extended spring training coming to a close — it remains worth monitoring if and when Szapucki adds the pitch back into his mix this season.

On the whole, Szapucki looked very much like the athletic arm considered one of the most promising left-handed pitching prospects in all of baseball. While he struggled a bit to repeat his release point in his return to the hill, which affected his control and command at times, he is still a low arm slot lefty who has quality arm actions and mild levels of effort in his delivery. As long as he can remain healthy and eventually reintroduce a curveball to his repertoire, he should have a stake to the claim of being the top prospect in the Mets farm system this winter, assuming Amed Rosario is eventually called up to the majors.

2017 Mets Affiliate Previews: Columbia Fireflies

Jeffrey Paternostro — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 10:00:53 +0000

The Fireflies kicked off their second season in Columbia last week, and it’s a much more prospecty team this year than last—even with Thomas Szapucki on the DL and Justin Dunn skipping the level. The rotation is still pretty interesting, split between young IFA arms and six-figure draft picks, but the lineup is even more intriguing, with three of our Top 20 Mets prospects.
The best prospect on the Fireflies Opening Day roster is 2015 second-round pick Desmond Lindsay (#6). The 20-year-old center fielder has struggled to stay on the field so far in his pro career due to a spate of hamstring issues that date back to his senior season of high school. When Lindsay has played however, he’s looked like the best player on the field despite being younger than the vast majority of his competition. He played the corner infield spots as a prep, but has the straight-line speed and general athleticism to theoretically handle center field. He’s also a more polished hitter than the amateur background and lack of minor league reps would imply. He’s shown an advanced approach, good feel for the barrel, and potentially average pop in my looks at him over the last two years. There’s a potential role 6 center fielder here, if the tools all play up on the grass and at the plate, but the bat might end up a bit light in an outfield corner if the defensive package falls short up the middle. We will know much more about Lindsay after—hopefully—a full South Atlantic League campaign in 2017.
I have been driving the Luis Carpio (#11) bandwagon since I saw him in Kingsport in 2015. I even ranked him over Dom Smith, Desmond Lindsay, and Robert Gsellman on our 2016 Mets Top 10. So that doesn’t look great in hindsight for a variety of reasons, but mostly because he ended up missing almost all of 2016 with a labrum tear in his right shoulder. His arm was already going to be a little stretched at shortstop, so I wasn’t terribly surprised the Mets used him almost entirely at second base when he featured this spring. That dings the projection, but there’s time to remedy that, as he’s still going to be one of the younger players in the South Atlantic League. Carpio brings more polished baseball skills than loud middle infield tools, but I really believe in the bat here, and he’s potentially a plus defender at the keystone. The comp I keep coming back to—admittedly one that will not enthuse Mets fans—is Ruben Tejada, but recall that Tejada looked like an above-average regular before a series of unfortunate injuries sapped him of his similarly limited athletic tools. Carpio won’t move as quickly as Tejada (#OmarsTeam), but I expect him to handle the low minors with sufficient aplomb to maybe even sneak his way back onto the 2018 Mets Top Ten list—I hear the author of it has a bit of a soft spot for him. His ceiling isn’t as high as Lindsay’s, but he’s about as good a bet to have some sort of major league career as you’ll find in a 19-year-old with a modest IFA signing bonus ($300,000).
If you could somehow weld two bandwagons together in some sort of Top Gear-style challenge so I could drive two at once, give me catcher Ali Sanchez’s (#14) as well. When the BP Mets prospect team eventually puts together a house style guide, one of the topline bullets will be: “Catchers are weird, man.” Sanchez clocked in at #10 on our 2016 Mets Prospect List and was in consideration for that spot again, despite only hitting .216/.260/.275 in Brooklyn as a 19-year-old. To be fair, he was dealing with a hand issue last summer, but that’s not the kind of performance that would normally keep you on prospect maven radars. But we don’t scout the statline, and Sanchez is a polished defensive catcher that gets good marks for his receiving and handling of his pitchers. I do think he will hit too; it’s a simple, line drive swing, and he controls the bat well. There will never be a ton of power here, and the arm has consistently popped well-below-average for me despite good caught-stealing numbers in short-season ball—again, don’t scout the statline—so it is a bit of an unusual profile, Or—if you prefer—weird. Because catchers are weird, man. The range of prospect outcomes here is vast, from, say, 2017 Carson Kelly to 2020 backup catcher on the Rumble Ponies, And as long as I am giving Mets fans disappointing comps, the one that keeps jumping to mind for Sanchez is Kevin Plawecki. That seems like damning with…uh…no praise, but there is a universe out there where Kevin Plawecki is a solid everyday backstop with a 55 hit tool, and it actually is spelled “Berenstein” Bears.
Left-handed pitcher Thomas Szapucki (#3) would normally be the lead for this preview, but he is on the shelf with a shoulder impingement. Every shoulder is its own beast, but the same injury cost Logan Verrett about two months of his A-ball season back in 2012. Szapucki was throwing on the minor league side by the end of spring, so he could be back in time for me to see him in Lakewood in the middle of May. That would put him on track for around 100 innings in his first full-season assignment. This isn’t ideal, but if the potential plus stuff is still there come June 1, I don’t think we’ll mind too much. This does make two straight abridged seasons for the young lefty—he missed the last month of 2016 with some back stiffness—and that, combined with his funky delivery, may give him the dreaded “reliever” tag. Now, I generally think almost everyone is a reliever, but I see a potential plus-plus fastball and plus breaker here, and there is already some feel for the change. I’d give him every chance to start, but it would be nice to see him on a mound for a full season at some point soon. None of us are getting any younger, including Szapucki, who was an older prep pick. Anyway, a lot of these concerns can get papered over with another few months of 15 strikeouts per nine. He certainly has the stuff to do that in the South Atlantic League.
With Szapucki on the shelf, the best pitching prospect in Columbia will be Merandy Gonzalez (#20). Gonzalez saw his velocity jump in 2015 in Kingsport, and he maintained it during a strong 2016 Brooklyn campaign. The 21-year-old righty can reach back for 95-96 with the four seamer, and the pitch can show late life at times. The two-seamer is more 91-94 with some weight to it, but both fastballs are a bit straighter than you’d like. On the plus side, he can hit all four quadrants with it and elevate it for a strikeout when he needs to. So there should be more than enough fastball here to handle South Atlantic League hitters. The curveball is his best secondary, and while it is inconsistent at present, it will flash plus. He will slow his arm speed and guide the pitch at times, and that version gets soft and slurvy in the upper-70s. When the armspeed is there and he really breaks it off, it’s a hard 11-5 offering in the low-80s that he can spot, bury, and even backfoot to lefties. The change was pretty crude in my looks last summer, which leaves him a two-pitch guy who lacks ideal size—he’s listed at 6’1,” 195. Add in that he’s already stocky and close to physically maxed, and well…yeah…like I said, I generally think almost everyone is a reliever. Gonzalez could be a major league one though.

Short Hops

The other Gonzalez in the rotation, Harol Gonzalez, is a joy to watch, with four pitches he can throw for strikes, and good feel for all three secondaries, the best of which is a slider with late cut. The fastball tops out at 90 though, and he has trouble holding even that velocity later in starts. There is enough pitchability here to beguile A-ball hitters, but it is tough to see a major league arm here without a significant velocity and stamina jump. The mini-Pedro aesthetic is fun though…The Mets tweaked 2016 third-round pick Blake Tiberi’s swing during his first pro summer, and that may have contributed to his short-season struggles. When his swing was right, the Louisville third baseman looked like the best hitter on that Brooklyn team. Expect plenty of Daniel Murphy—pre-Kevin-Long—comps if that happens more often in 2017…Jordan Humphreys is the less-polished version of Merandy Gonzalez, with a tick less velocity and a more inconsistent curve…shortstop Milton Ramos got $750,000 as an overslot third round pick in 2014 on the strength of his shortstop glove, but he struggled at the plate in his first go-round in the South Atlantic League, and may be stuck in a middle infield rotation with Carpio and 2017 fourth rounder Michael Paez…lefty Blake Taylor, who you may remember from the Ike Davis deal, will look to prove he is healthy after a 2015 Tommy John surgery. I liked what I saw in 2014 a bit, and he’s somehow still only 21.
Photo credit: Reinhold Matay – USA Today Sports

Ten Prospects We Want to See in 2017

Jarrett Seidler — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 13:29:56 +0000

Over on the main site, the BP prospect team runs themed Monday Morning Ten Packs this time of year, picking 10 prospects who fulfill some criteria or another. Our BP Mets prospect team of Jeffrey, Skyler, and I decided to blatantly rip this off and write a “ten pack”-style article on the ten Mets prospects we’re most looking forward to seeing in 2017. We ran the gauntlet from a guy who made the national 101 to a guy that didn’t make our system top 30 on this one. In no particular order, here are ten Met farmhands we want to see in 2017, and why we want to see them.

Thomas Szapucki, LHP

As a live-armed prep pick in the mid-single digit rounds, Szapucki’s 2016 wasn’t totally out of nowhere. But the jump from low-90s and a promising curve to mid-90s with sharp action and a wipeout curve is pretty huge, and the numbers Szapucki put up in both Kingsport and Brooklyn were absolutely staggering. A back injury ended his 2016 slightly prematurely, and while we don’t believe it to be a serious injury, back problems and pitching prospects don’t always go well together. If Szapucki continues to progress his stuff, and if he continues to run strikeout rates into the mid-teens per nine, our ranking of him as the 69th-best prospect in baseball will no longer seem nice by this time next year. He’ll probably open in Low-A Columbia as part of the traveling Tim Tebow Circus, but High-A and even Double-A are within reach for later in the season. — Jarrett Seidler

Andres Gimenez, SS

I got a question in a BP chat recently asking me to compare Kevin Maitan and Andres Gimenez. Sammy in Connecticut seemed a bit skeptical that there was really that big a gap between them as prospects. I’m fairly confident that Maitan’s surfeit of offensive tools is enough to make him a Top 101 prospect before he ever takes the field for a professional game, stateside or otherwise. I get the premise though. Gimenez was very highly rated in the 2015 July 2 class, and we have reports on him from actual games, granted ones from the Dominican Summer League. It’s all data of course, but the best data can be found behind home plate, which is why I will be trucking to whatever short-season affiliate he ends up at this year to find out if we were in fact a year too late on him. I expect to find a polished shortstop and an advanced hitter for an 18-year-old, like if someone used the upgrade meme on Luis Carpio. But I suspect Gimenez has the capacity to surprise me as well, which is why I keep gassing up the car for East Tennessee every year. And speaking of Carpio … — Jeffrey Paternostro

Luis Carpio, SS/2B

We ranked Luis Carpio as the third-best prospect in the Mets system heading into the 2016 season. We ranked him ahead of Dom Smith, Desmond Lindsay, and Robert Gsellman. (I say we, but I was driving that bandwagon, and my byline is on the list.) Then Carpio tore his labrum in the Spring. See, it’s not just pitchers! It was an aggressive ranking at the time for a kid that spent most of the 2015 season as a 17-year-old, but it’s rare to find that level of defensive polish and advanced hitting ability at any age in the short-season leagues. The injury was to his right shoulder, and his arm was already maybe better suited to the right side of the infield, but I’m antsy to check in on the still-only-19-year-old. He made quite the first impression. — Jeffrey Paternostro

Tyler Bashlor, RHP

The Mets turned some heads in 2013, when they handed a $550,000 signing bonus to their 11th-round pick, junior college reliever Tyler Bashlor. After signing with the club, he pitched in 13 games for Kingsport that year, but then didn’t throw another professional pitch until 2016, losing two full seasons after undergoing Tommy John surgery. In a 2016 season that was spent primarily pitching out of the bullpen for the Columbia Fireflies, Bashlor showed why the Mets believed in him enough to give him more than half of a million dollars three years prior, posting a 12.16 K/9 and 2.50 ERA at the level. His fastball, which sits in the mid-90s and touched as high as 98 mph in 2016, is a legitimate swing-and-miss pitch that should carry him to Queens. The bigger questions for Bashlor are his secondary pitches and control. His command and control should figure to take strides forward in 2017 as he is another year removed from surgery. His slurve, which currently sits in the low-80s, is a pitch that could be improved upon (attn: Dan Warthen). If Bashlor is able to progress enough with command and the breaking ball, he will find himself on the fast track to pitching out of the Mets bullpen before too long. He figures to open this season in the bullpen for either St. Lucie or Binghamton. If all goes well, he won’t finish the season with the same affiliate that he began the year with. — Skyler Kanfer

Marcos Molina, RHP

The continuing saga of Zack Wheeler reminds us on a near-daily basis that Tommy John surgery is still anything but routine. Yet Marcos Molina has had, well, the “routine” recovery, popping back up about a year out from surgery. He used the Arizona Fall League as something of a rehab stint, throwing short outings and flashing the premium fastball/slider combination that made him one of the system’s best pitching prospects two years ago. With violent mechanics, a TJS in his background, and durability questions even before that, Molina still might be a reliever in the end, but 2017 represents his shot to get back on the fast track as a prospect. He could open as high as the Double-A Binghamton Rumble Ponies, and a pitcher on the 40 in the high-minors is of course only a phone call away from The Show. — Jarrett Seidler

Andrew Church, RHP

The 2013 second-round pick spent years in the wilderness bouncing around the lowest levels of the system as an oft-injured project, largely falling off the prospectdom map. In a tale that’s been around as long as there have been pitching prospects, he showed up in 2016 a new man, coming out of extended spring in May to shine for Low-A Columbia, mixing in a fill-in stint in High-A Port St. Lucie and a late-August emergency appearance for hometown Triple-A Las Vegas. Once again touching the mid-90s with his fastball and featuring a promising slider, Church could start back at High-A or get a bump to Double-A, where I think I have a pretty good chance to see him in Binghamton’s late-May/early-June visit to Trenton. A full year of effectiveness should get him in strong consideration for both a spot on both the 40-man roster and high up on next year’s prospect lists. — Jarrett Seidler

Desmond Lindsay, OF

Beyond the trio of Mets prospects who made the BP 101 list, there is not a prospect in the Mets farm system with more upside than Desmond Lindsay. Lindsay, the organization’s top draft pick in 2015, is a centerfielder with all the raw tools that any scout would fawn over. In 2016, Lindsay’s performance represented his skillset, as he posted a .297/.418/.450 line with the Brooklyn Cyclones, including a .344 True Average*, 14.9 percent walk rate, and 19.4 percent strikeout rate. Unfortunately, since his senior year of high school, Lindsay has had considerable hamstring issues. They kept his sidelined for most of his draft year, which caused him to fall to the Mets in the second round, and they have continued to hamper him since signing with the club. Recurring injuries for a teenager could very well be the sign of, well, more hamstring injuries, or it could be something that a player as young as Lindsay, just 20, could outgrow. In the near-future, Lindsay could very easily be a guy who is being talked about as the next uber Mets prospect—or, in other words, the Amed Rosario of two years from now—or he could be a guy who is being talked about as the new Reese Havens. His performance and health in 2017, where he most likely will open in Columbia, will tell the story. — Skyler Kanfer

( * – Editor’s Note: For those of you curious, those numbers indicate that he hit about as well compared to his league as Joey Votto did compared to MLB.)

Tomas Nido, C

The ride hasn’t always been smooth for the 2012 eighth-round pick, who prior to 2016 had never posted a minor league OPS higher than .660. However, over those first few years of his minor league career, his defensive game advanced from raw at best to his calling card. Due to his overall strong catching ability and above-average arm, he was able to open the 2016 in St. Lucie at age-22. Last season, his bat finally started catching up to his glove. In a full season in the pitching-friendly Florida State League, Nido posted a .320/.357/.459 line with seven homers and a .294 True Average in 370 PA. He more than halved his strikeout rate, going from a 25.7 percent clip in Savannah to a very respectable 11.4 percent in 2016. If he is able to combine his developed defensive skills with his newfound hitting ability, he has a chance to be a starting catcher. Nido, who was praised when he was drafted for having plus raw power, still has plenty of room to turn that power into game power. Doing that, in addition to potentially increasing upon his 5.1 percent walk rate from 2016, could make him a viable long-term answer for the Mets behind the dish. I look forward to watching Nido play in person in Binghamton starting this April. — Skyler Kanfer

Luis Guillorme, SS

If you are reading this website, you don’t need to be told that Amed Rosario or Justin Dunn or Desmond Lindsay are worth the price of admission. The implication in all these entries is that we want to see something new. There are guys here with 2016 breakout seasons that we didn’t get enough reports on. There are injured pitchers on their way back who have flashed major league stuff in the recent past. You want a sleeper or you want to know if the breakout guy is real. Prospects can change a lot from year-to-year, but I don’t expect I will be updating my priors much on Luis Guillorme. If anything, I worry a bit about his bat against Double-A velocity. But goddamn am I happy to have him within driving distance again. Rosario has the louder defensive tools and is a plus shortstop in his own right, but there is no one I would rather watch at the 6 than Guillorme. His defense has an ineffable quality to it. Immanuel Kant would suggest that’s his glove is far too functional in scope to have true aesthetic beauty, but I part ways with the German on that. Kant more famously wrote that one should “live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.” Guillorme’s actions in the field set the bar too high for every other shortstop I’m afraid, but I am happy to see him synthesize utility and art in the infield as often as possible this year. — Jeffrey Paternostro

Tim Tebow, QB/OF?

Tim Tebow isn’t a real baseball prospect. He’s probably not going to make the majors, and if he does it’s likely to be in a cameo that he won’t have earned based on his own merits. But he is an elite athlete—a player so uniquely talented at football that he was a first-round quarterback despite a known and near-complete inability to make pro throws—and his transition to baseball will be nothing if not fascinating. Can he compete even at the lowest levels? He’s currently expected to open at Low-A Columbia, which is an appropriate level for what we suspect is his baseball ability, but a level where he’ll be about a decade older than the real prospects. Both Jeffrey and I are preparing for the circus for when Columbia comes to Lakewood early in the season. (We totally didn’t throw Tebow in down here because we were dividing a list of ten between three people and had one slot left over, no sir.) — Jarrett Seidler

Photo Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports