Attempting to project how Matt Reynolds 2014 numbers might look at the
Major League level as a function of BABIP.
 |
| Image from of a Jay Horwitz tweet |
Despite
being a second round draft pick in 2012, Matt Reynolds has seemingly come out
of nowhere this year to become one of the more interesting prospects in the
upper levels of the Mets system. A third baseman for most of his tenure in
college, the Mets have used Reynolds almost exclusively at his original
position of shortstop – he’s played 256/277 games at short in the minors, only moving
over to 2B occasionally in 2014 for the superior defender Wilfredo Tovar at
Bingo, and to keep Wilmer Flores fresh at shortstop when he went back to Las
Vegas. Defensively, while his range might still be a little light for
shortstop, everything else is good enough to stick there, which is something I
didn’t believe to be true back in April. What changed my opinion? If you’ve
seen my site before, you know that I watch every Mets minor league game
available on MiLB.tv, and report on most of them (I will likely report on more
of them in the offseason), so watching him for 58 games at shortstop with Las
Vegas is what changed my opinion. While he might have the glove to play a
middle infield position in the majors soon, it’s his bat that has put the
spotlight on Reynolds this season, as he combined for a .343/.405/.454 slash
line across the top two minor league levels in 2014.
