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New York Mets Top 10 Prospects For 2017

By Benjamin Chase

Feb 23, 2015; Port St. Lucie, FL, USA; A view of the ball bag during spring training at Tradition Field. Mandatory Credit: Brad Barr-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 23, 2015; Port St. Lucie, FL, USA; A view of the ball bag during spring training at Tradition Field. Mandatory Credit: Brad Barr-USA TODAY Sports /
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Mandatory Credit: Brad Barr-USA TODAY Sports
Mandatory Credit: Brad Barr-USA TODAY Sports /

After a run to the 2015 World Series, the New York Mets fell back some in 2016. Do they have the players in their system to bounce back in 2017?

An Introduction

Our minor league top 10 series is coordinated by Benjamin Chase, one of our contributors at Call To The Pen.

He has poured over thousands of minor league games over the course of the year via milb.tv along with speaking with a number of team and independent scouts. These lists are based out of those conversations.

Each system will have prospects from 10 to 1, and then finish with one newcomer to the system that is worth keeping an eye on that is not in the top 10 at this time.

Conversations are certainly encouraged in the comments section on each system as we go along!

the Mets need to focus on winning while they have the arms in house and cheap as they just don’t have the talent in the pipeline to keep it up

Mets System Review

The New York Mets have used their minor league system to feed their major league club extremely well with arms in the last few years, whether it was directly to the starting rotation in guys like Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard (originally acquired in trade, but developed in the Mets system), Jacob deGrom, Zach Wheeler (see Syndergaard), or Steven Matz, or even fill in guys like Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman, the Mets have had an abundance of arms.

Heck, the team has even been using arms as currency in trades in the last few years, trading away such arms as Jon Niese, Akeel Morris, John Gant, Robert Whalen, Michael Fulmer, Matt Koch, and Luis Cessa to fuel their runs just in the last two seasons.

Now they look forward after the team faced what often happens with arms, injuries, to many of their top guys in 2016. There are guys who can come in and be back-end filler of a rotation, but they just don’t have that Harvey/Syndergaard type coming along, unless Zack Wheeler can return from two years off for Tommy John pitching to key their 2017 rotation.

On the hitting side, there is some very exciting ceiling on a number of low-level prospects, but the Mets really have a very top-heavy system in prospects. After their first three overall prospects, there is a significant drop off as far as combination of floor and ceiling that those three possess and among the rest of their prospects, they tend to have a large mix of high-floor or high-ceiling guys that begin to really thin quickly on a list. Those places putting together top 20 or top 30 lists for the Mets will be featuring a lot of org filler types that could be guys who get a major league inning or two along the way, but will primarily end up riding a lot of AAA to MLB planes in their careers at best.

What does this mean for the big league club? In short, the New York Mets need to focus on winning while they have the arms in house and cheap as they just don’t have the talent in the pipeline to keep it up when those guys start hitting free agency.

Next: #10

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