The Rockaway Wave
Originally published May 19, 2023
The Mets have some of the top-ranked prospects in baseball sprinkled throughout their system. A few of the top ones, most notably Kevin Parada, Alex Ramirez and Blade Tidwell, are currently playing in Brooklyn.
I spoke to Jonathan Mayo, who has been a reporter for MLB.com since 1999, exclusively covering minor league prospects and the draft since 2003, about them. Mayo, along with Jim Callis and Sam Dykstra, is responsible for compiling all the rankings and scouting grades that can be found on MLB Pipeline.
Below, we go through his thoughts on Parada, Ramirez and Tidwell, and take a quick look around the rest of the Mets system. Mayo also talks about his upcoming book, “Smart, Wrong, and Lucky: The Origin Stories of Baseball’s Unexpected Stars,” which will be released in July.
Kevin Parada, Catcher: MLB No. 28, Mets No. 2
2023 stats (through May 17): .255/.357/.445, 3 HRs, 14 XBHs, 28 Ks, 15 BBs Jorge Eckardt: What do you think of Kevin?
Jonathan Mayo: The question for him is will he defend well enough to stay behind the plate? I think he’s gonna hit. I know he’s gotten off to just a so-so, but I’m not too worried about that. I think it’s a steep learning curve, especially for a catcher. But I feel pretty strongly about the fact he’s gonna be able to hit and he’s gonna show some power. And then it’s gonna be a question of how the catching develops. Whether or not he ends up as a catcher — he’d gotten better as time went on and Georgia Tech, so I think there’s some confidence that he’s going to be able to keep up. He may never be a top-notch defender or anything like that, but for a guy who is pretty athletic, he moves decently, I think he has a chance to stick behind there.
JE: What do you think he’s going to have to do and what do you think he’s going to have to improve for him to stick behind there long term?
JM: A lot of it is the arm strength and the durability. He’s got to show that he can handle the workload of catching almost every day — whatever that means these days. There are very few catchers who catch that much, but you know, to be the primary guy, even catch 100 games. And then, the accuracy of his arm is getting better, but he doesn’t have a super strong arm. Now, the way things are now with the new rules, I almost wonder how much that’s going to matter, how often these guys will even have the ability to throw people out. And we’ll see how the pendulum swings in terms of that, maybe it won’t be as as important of a tool.
Alex Ramirez, Outfielder: MLB No. 81, Mets No. 3
2023 stats: .252/.328/.339, 2 HRs, 6 XBHs, 28 Ks, 11 BBs
JE: How about Alex Ramirez? He’s the only one in Brooklyn besides Parada currently inside the top-100.
JM: He’s got some high-end tools, and I think it’s going to come down to the question of his approach and his ability to manage swing-and-miss. But the power-speed combination I think is very real. He can play center field, he can play right field if you needed him to. Some of that depends on once he’s big-league ready, what the big-league outfield looks like. But having the ability to play center, and also the kind of arm strength you like to see from right field, I think it adds some flexibility. There’s some moving parts there, but there were some good signs last year in terms of him kind of simplifying things enough where the swing-and-miss went down. When the swing and miss goes down when you move up a level, then I think that’s always a good sign. He’s gonna add strength and he’s gonna hit for more power. I think that it’ll be interesting to see how much that power shows up when he’s not in places that aren’t particularly hitting-friendly, which is largely where he’s played so far.
JE: He has a pretty good power grade on MLB.com, the power has been kind of inconsistent, and I’m sure some of that has to do with playing at Coney Island, which isn’t a particularly hitter-friendly park. And he’s also only 20 years old. When do you expect him to really fill out that power profile?
JM: That’s often the last thing to come. And he still had 11 homers last year and 48 extra-base hits total between two levels of A-ball, neither of which are good places to hit. And as you pointed out, he just turned 20. You may not see it until next year, or even the year after that, it’s going to take some time. Now, would I have projected that he have more than one homer in his first 27 games? Yeah. At a certain point in time he is going to have to produce, but listen, he could spend all year in Brooklyn and he’s still ahead of the curve age-wise, so I’m not really worried at all. For all I know, he may be focusing on other parts of his overall approach and game plan, and they’re preaching, like a lot of organizations do, to hit first. And then the power’s gonna come, it’s going to come naturally.
Blade Tidwell, Right-Handed Pitcher: Mets No. 6
2023 stats: 23.1 IPs, 6.56 ERA, 1.63 WHIP, 35 Ks, 18 BBs
JE: What about Blade Tidwell, a second-round pick last year, and he’s currently the Mets’ top pitching prospect?
JM: Small sample size so far, so I’m not going to read too much into it. I think it was a good sort-of upside play, but worry anytime there’s shoulder issues. I think that he does have the stuff to be a starter for the long term. He’s got the stuff, the size, I think the ability to throw strikes for the most part, I’m not too concerned about his command overall. Added strength I think is going
to help him in terms of putting the injury behind him. It’s good to see him go out and do it just because he’s had some ups and downs in terms of, he missed so much time in 2022. I think the thing to watch would be the command, which has been rough since he’s entered pro ball. But it’s been what, 10 starts total, not even 30 innings? So I’m not worried about that. Obviously, if that continues, then you start thinking, well, do we need to shorten him up and put him in the bullpen? But we’re a long way away from having to worry about that.
Jett Williams, Shortstop: MLB No. 90, Mets No. 4
2023 stats (Low-A): .225/.423/.325, 1 HR, 5 XBHs, 26 Ks, 21 BBs
JE: What about someone who isn’t in Brooklyn yet but could be here at some point this year, there’s a chance — Jett Williams?
JM: I like guys who can hit, and I think the rest you figure out, and I think he’s really gonna hit. He’s already shown the ability to barrel up the baseball. The numbers in St. Lucie so far this year aren’t anything to look at, particularly, other than the fact he’s drawing a ton of walks, which I think bodes well. I think he’s going to hit for average. We’ll see power but I think it’s sneaky pop, especially for a guy who is not that big. Can really run. We’ll see about shortstop, maybe second base or the outfield eventually, but hitters find a way into big league lineups, and I think he’s going to be one of those guys that you figure out where to put him. There’s so much athleticism, I think you run him out at shortstop and let him work there for as long as possible. Especially because, it’s not like you’re worrying about needing to get that bat to the big leagues. If it gets to the point where the bat is really screaming I need to get promoted, then you worry about where you’re going to play him. But for right now, he can play short. Let him play every day, and let him take his lumps and see how he can keep the game from speeding up too much. And then you never know, when you have that kind of athleticism, then sometimes it can click.
Ronny Mauricio, Shortstop: MLB No. 96, Mets No. 5
2023 stats (Triple-A): .358/.392/.618, 7 HRs, 27 XBHs, 29 Ks, 8 BBs
JE: Is there anyone in the Met system, not necessarily just in Brooklyn, but anyone in the Mets system who you think could start shooting up some of the prospect lists this year?
JM: He’ll probably get to the big leagues before that, but we just re-added Ronny Mauricio back into the top-100 with the update we just did. He’s sort of been an interesting guy who’s kind of ridden a little bit of a prospect roller coaster. The power is very real, and then it’s going to be a question of if he makes enough contact and sees enough pitches to get to it. But, I think he was 20-20 last year in Double-A, he’s raking in Triple-A. I don’t know how big of a leap he can make because he may end up in the big leagues, but he’s also only 22.
Smart, Wrong, and Lucky: The Origin Stories of Baseball’s Unexpected Stars JE: What made you take on this project?
JM: I spent a lot of time talking to scouts, and they’re great storytellers, so that’s sort of where it started. But during the pandemic, I did a story on MLB.com, kind of an oral history, that dug into how Charlie Blackmon was scouted and drafted and signed by the Rockies. And that was a fascinating story about a guy who didn’t hit until his senior year of college, and ended up, at the time I started looking at the story, he was arguably the best hitter in the National League, or at least one of them. I was like, you know what, every scout has stories like this, sort of on both sides of the coin. They all love to talk about the ones who got away or the ones they missed on, they’re kind of a humble group as a whole — but try to sell a book on the guys who never made it. But in this case, it was looking at guys like Blackmon, who were not slam dunk high draft picks, who were underappreciated. Blackmon went the second round, but no one else had him that high. And really digging in and talking to as many scouts, maybe their coaches, and how it was that they found them and ended up with them. Didn’t take into the player development side, it was really just the scouting stories and how they were evaluated. I gave all the scouts an opportunity to say, well, I knew Jacob deGrom was gonna win Cy Young Awards, or that Albert Pujols was gonna be a Hall-of-Famer, but they’re all too smart for that. No one took the bait.
JE: You already spoke about Blackmon, is there another one that really jumps out to you as a really interesting story?
JM: There are two that jump out. Obviously, Albert Pujols is sort of the standard bearer, I couldn’t do this book without shouting out him. deGrom was really interesting because it had a lot to do with scouts communicating with each other, because there was one area scout. He was a shortstop, and he didn’t pitch at all until the very end of his sophomore year. He pitched a tiny bit in relief. And the scout saw him and liked the way his arm worked. He couldn’t really hit. He played a good shortstop, super athletic, the same athleticism that served him well on the mound. And obviously he’s a very good hitting pitcher. But he did not pitch regularly until his junior year, to the point they sent him to play in this summer league. I think it was like the beginning of the Florida Collegiate League. He actually played for Davey Johnson. But he quit. He was willing to pitch, but he wanted to play shortstop and they had another shortstop. So he pitched like twice and then went home. And then, he even started his junior year, he was the closer and he was still playing shortstop. But they were getting beat up too often, so they weren’t even getting to him, and they knew he was their best arm. So they convinced him to start and told him we’ll have to manage you a little bit more, but yes, you’ll still get to play shortstop. We’ll just need like a day off in between. He ended up the Friday starter, he faced off against Chris Sale. But he was throwing like 88-to-90, but he could put the ball on a dime. He was super athletic.
The Mets had a different scout in the spring, and they rejiggered how they chopped up Florida. So he said alright, I’ll give up the area, but you have to promise me that this guy will get seen. So the area was handed off to another veteran scout, and he saw exactly the same thing that the first guy saw in him. He had him crosschecked, and there was maybe one other team that was on him at all, and the rest, as they say, is history. … Now fast forward, and I didn’t dig into the development, and obviously what happened with him was kind of freakish. But both Omar
Minaya, who was the general manager … and then the crosschecker was Steve Barningham, who’s now the international scouting director — deGrom blew out his elbow that first summer — and they both got texts. Fast forward to whatever, a year to recover, the following year, and they’re like hey, who’s this guy you have in Savannah throwing 98, 99? And they’re like who are you talking about? And they’re like deGrom. And they both were like Jacob deGrom? So that’s the lucky part. I love scouts, and I think they’re the most important thing in the game. Without them, there’s nothing, baseball doesn’t exist. What they do is amazing, but it’s incredibly subjective, and they get it wrong sometimes. So that’s my favorite one.
And then the other one, I won’t go into as much detail, but Lorenzo Cain didn’t play baseball until his sophomore year of high school, like of any sort, he never played. And was obviously raw, he was a draft and follow and stuff like that, but to me, that’s the most amazing, sounds like a Disney movie story in the entire book.
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