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| Image from Zimbio |
Re-ranking the Top starting pitchers within the Mets farm system now
that Steven Matz and Noah Syndergaard have graduated.
Coming
into the 2015 season, the Mets farm system was a consensus Top-5 system in the
majors thanks to some high-end talent at the top, but they’ve graduated several
top prospects, including their top-2 starting pitching prospects, and figure to
take a hit in those rankings this offseason. That’s not a bad thing though,
because it means that the Mets are starting to improve from within, which is
the purpose of a farm system. Also, it means that the door is open for the next
crop of prospects to emerge, and the Mets still have some starting pitching
prospects with major league upside worth keeping an eye on.
For
this list, I have limited myself to full-season starters, because we still know
relatively little about the short-season pitchers, and those guys are far from
helping away. Notably absent from this list is Marcos Molina, because he’s too
much of an unknown at this point. He would easily rank among the top 2-3
starters left if healthy, and he’d probably be #1 if he could pitch like he did
last year in Brooklyn without the scary mechanics – everyone who saw him last
year said the same two things: he has great stuff, but his mechanics are big
red flags. But, he’s not pitching right now because of a forearm strain, and
he’s not having Tommy John surgery either, so what are the Mets getting when he
returns? Will he have the same mechanics? If so, why should we expect him to
stay healthy? If not, will his stuff be as good? Either way, this is looking
like a lost season for Molina, and we still have to wait-and-see if this injury
carries over to next season.
Gabriel Ynoa
Ynoa
has been one of the bigger disappointments in the farm system to this point,
but he’s showing signs of coming out of it lately, with a 1.17 ERA/.426 OPS
allowed over his last 4 starts (30.2 IP). Although he’s struggled this year,
the scouting report on him hasn’t really changed, and I don’t think we should dismiss
him after one bad half. He still throws a low-90’s fastball with some run, he
still has a slider that needs work, he still has a nice changeup, and he still can
get all 3 pitches into the strike zone with consistency – it looked like he was
throwing an effective curveball in his last start, although it could’ve just
been his slider getting slurvy.
He’s had a few wild games, and
hasn’t been inducing swinging strikes, which is a bad combination anywhere. Considering
his control problems earlier this year, I was wondering if he might be hiding
an injury, but the Mets kept running him out there, and now he’s only walked 3
batters in his last 7 starts (1.6% walk rate). An alternative to the injury
theory is that the Mets could have had him working on something, either
mechanically or with respect to his approach, that we just haven’t heard about
because he’s a minor leaguer.
Ynoa has already been passed on the
Mets starting pitching depth chart by several prospects this year, but there
isn’t much else coming up behind him, so I don’t think a move to the pen is
coming this year. He’s still ahead of guys in the 51s rotation like Tyler Pill,
Matthew Bowman, Rainy Lara, and Darin Gorski, and he’s probably still next in
line if a spot opens in that rotation. While he’s durable enough to start, his
lack of an out pitch will leave him relying on his defense too often, so it’s
hard to see him as more than a backend of the rotation starter. Although I
haven’t heard him there this year, his fastball has been clocked as high as
96-97 in the past, so there’s always the chance he gains a few ticks in a
reliever’s role, and a mid-90’s fastball with his control and changeup should
be a useful pen arm for the Mets.
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