2. Francisco Mejia, C
Birthdate: 10/27/95 (21 years old)
Level(s) Played in 2016: low A, high A
Stats in 2016: .342/.382/.514, 11 HR, 2 SB
Mejia grabbed national attention this summer as he pursued a long-held hit record in the minor leagues, finishing with a 50-game hitting streak before it was snapped. The streak carried across a promotion from low-A Lake County to high-A Lynchburg.
While that may have put him on the national radar, Mejia was a guy who had legitimate reasons to rank high before that hit streak. He is a guy whose defense has been highly-regarded since the Indians signed him out of the Dominican Republic in 2012.
His bat has shown to be very solid offensively all along the way as well, especially with excellent contact. Mejia is a switch-hitter with very good ability to get the bat through the zone and make adjustments to all kinds of pitches while making loud line-drive contact consistently.
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While he will rack up tons of doubles and triples currently with his line drives, Mejia has some power to come as he works his swing at the MLB level to intentionally reach for the fences without sacrificing his contact ability.
He does not strike out a ton, but the one thing that I would like to see improved in Mejia’s offensive game is taking more pitches. He has a contact focus to his approach, which leads to him attacking early in the count, which means he doesn’t get deep into counts frequently to take walks.
Regardless of all that offense, Mejia’s defense will continue to be his calling card. Mejia has an arm that could be argued as an 80-grade arm behind the plate on the 20-to-80 scale, which means it’s as good as it gets back there. On top of that, he has excellent movement skills behind the plate, really able to move well behind the plate. The biggest thing to work on coming into this season was his working with a pitching staff, and he got high marks for this from scouts this year. All in all, he is one of the rare catching prospects who has enough offense to rank, but the defense to make him a clear top 100 guy.
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