The Rockaway Wave
Originally published June 30, 2023
In mid-May, a few hours before an away game vs. the Hudson Valley Renegades, Cyclones pitchers Daniel Juarez and Wilkin Ramos were getting ready to be interviewed for The Brooklyn Cyclones Report.
Kevin Parada, the team’s primary catcher, had just left the dugout and was heading down to the visiting locker room located down the right-field line. While walking past Juarez and Ramos, he stopped, and with a big smile on his face says to the two pitchers something along the lines of “Do you want me to translate?”
He laughed, Juarez laughed, Ramos laughed, and then the three exchanged a couple of quick jokes before Parada continued to the locker room.
It was just a joke from Parada, someone else acted as the translator for the interview. However, it was a joke based on some truth — Parada has been learning some Spanish.
“Dominican, Venezuelan, all the different dialects of Spanish are a little different, so you just try to pick up on words and different things,” Parada said. “They’re obviously trying to learn English just as much as we’re trying to learn Spanish, so it’s a cool interaction when the both of us can feed words off of each other and try to understand.”
Cyclones hitting coach Richie Benes said Parada has been learning how to talk to Spanish- speaking teammates who are fellow position players about things like movement and pitch shapes as well as learning to communicate with the pitchers.
As a catcher, that’s especially important. There won’t always be someone available to translate. Sometimes, pitchers and catchers need to have in-game discussions without a coach coming out for a mound visit. To do so, they need to be able to communicate.
“It’s baseball talk,” Parada said. “It’s nothing crazy, we’re not trying to have a high school debate or anything. So even if it’s broken English or broken Spanish, it’s pretty easy to convey the message that you’re trying to convey.”
Ranked No. 1 in the Mets organization and No. 43 in baseball on MLB Pipeline, Parada is the new top dog in the Mets farm system after the graduations of Francisco Alvarez and Brett Baty.
“He’s a professional,” Benes said. “He knows his stuff, he knows his swing. He’s open to ideas. He has a lot of good ideas. He pays attention to other guys at-bats as well, so very impressed with how he carries himself. It’s clear to see why he’s a top prospect.”
He has been Brooklyn’s best hitter through the first few months of the 2023 season, hitting .268/.352/.447 with seven home runs, three triples and 14 doubles — all of which lead the team. His OPS is just a shade under .800 for the season, which is impressive considering Coney Island is not a particularly hitter-friendly environment. As it stands right now, his .799 OPS would be the second-highest of any qualified Cyclone since 2019, only trailing Alvarez’s 2021 season.
“Just swinging at good pitches,” Parada said. “Even though my approach hasn’t really changed all year, but it’s just coming to fruition. Started off a little cold, but right now it’s I’m seeing the ball well, doing the same exact thing that I’m trying to do, and results are happening.”
He has been especially good lately, absolutely tearing it up in June. In 19 games this month, Parada is hitting .309/.364/.531 with four long balls, including a two home run showing on June 23. One of those two home runs was an inside-the-parker that hit halfway up the wall in left- center field.
“We got the oxygen tanks ready for him, I don’t think he’s run that far in his entire life,” Cyclones manager Chris Newell said. “But hey, the only way that happens is getting after it right out of the box, and that’s what pros do. He brings it every single day, you’ll never see that kid not hustle.”
He followed up that two home run game with his second triple of the month the next day. The first came just a few games prior when he smacked a game-tying three-bagger through the fireworks like a scene straight out of “The Sandlot.”
“That was such a weird feeling, I’ve never done that before,” Parada said. “And of course, the finale was happening right as my at-bat’s going. It was kind of surreal. And then obviously, I hit the ball right into the fireworks … it was super cool. That’s what makes Coney Island Coney Island, very different from a lot of ballparks and a lot of places you’re gonna play, and it’s fun.”
Selected No. 11 overall in the 2022 MLB Draft, Parada went to Georgia Tech for college and spent two years there. He hit really well his freshman year, batting over .300 with an OPS over .900, but his sophomore year is when he really exploded.
In 60 games, Parada hit .360/.452/.709, good for a 1.161 OPS, with 26 home runs. He struck out just 32 times in 358 at-bats and was a unanimous First-Team All-American.
A Southern California product, Parada went to Loyola High School of Los Angeles, and his coaches could tell right away he had a future in the sport.
“Obviously, you can never project too much, but just seeing his size and strength and just his athletic ability, there was definitely going to be something special there,” Sean Buller, Parada’s
high school baseball coach, said. “… we knew he was going to be successful and it was just a matter of how far he was gonna be willing to go.”
Nicknamed the manchild for how old he looked for his age, Parada didn’t immediately catch for Loyola as a freshman. Loyola already had a catcher, so Buller said Parada was the Varsity team’s starting right fielder. He played an “unbelievable” outfield Buller said, helped out by a combination of his athletic ability and unteachable instincts.
He got to catch his sophomore year, and split time, catching two of the three games they played a week. Parada didn’t like it, Buller said, but he wanted to save his knees and not make him catch all three games every week.
The biggest change though, Buller said, was between his junior and senior years. Parada hit .500 and was known all throughout the area as a stud, getting a knock or walking every time he got up to the plate.
“He got his butt handed to him that summer when he went out and competed against everybody else in the nation,” Buller said. “They were all their own city’s, their own state’s Kevin Paradas. So it was one of those things that as he realized … this is the time everybody’s good. You have to step up and be able to stand out with that. He really matured with that. Not making the USA team, he could have totally folded with it. He had the best attitude ever of hey, this is the time to get back, get ready for school, but at the same time I’m going to prove to everybody why I should have been on that team.”
He then moved on to Georgia Tech, and then the Mets, and is now maybe the highest-profile minor leaguer in the system. Everybody wants to talk to Kevin Parada.
“It’s just part of my job,” Parada said. “I still gotta compete and do what I gotta do with the goal of making the big leagues and playing there. We’re in New York, and obviously it’s a different animal, but again, the media, the attention, everything, it’s just part of your job.”
There isn’t a clear picture of his future with the organization. At the major league level, he appears blocked by Alvarez. There are always at-bats to be had at DH, and teams have sustained a DH-Catching platoon recently, most notably the Atlanta Braves.
For now though, it’s not something the Mets have to worry about, and Newell and Benes both said his name being thrown out in the media as a trade chip because of Alvarez hasn’t fazed him.
“You don’t get to the level that he’s gotten with the success that he’s had by letting outside noise influence you,” Newell said. “He doesn’t give a s**t what they think or what they say. He knows what he’s capable of. He knows where he’s gonna go. And he knows how he’s gonna get there. And it’s gonna be fun to watch and it has been fun to watch.”
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