St Lucie To Flushing: 2012 MLB Mock Draft 1.0, Pre-Season Mets Top 20

10 Comments + Add Comment

• Mr North Jersey February 18, 2012 at 7:19 pm

  “Spring Training is right around the corner” and it can’t come soon enough. Looking forward to watching MLBNetwork’s coverage starting Monday.
• MetsJets13 February 18, 2012 at 8:05 pm

  Who has the higher upside Evans or Muno? think Evans is closer to majors, but that Muno could be the better player. I see you put Gorski ahead of Fulmer, I feel the same way, nobody else does though. lol
  • Nicholas Pugliese February 19, 2012 at 12:07 am

    Muno is definitely closer to the majors and has a ton of polish, but Evans has a considerably higher upside. Neither is a lock to stick at short, but Evans is a little more athletic than Muno which would give him the edge in that area.
    • Ben Yoel February 19, 2012 at 4:39 pm

      yes as Nick said Muno is definitely closer to contributing at the Major League level. However Evans does have much more potential.
• t agee February 18, 2012 at 8:14 pm

  Muno’s like 4 years older than Evans. All things being equal Evans will have the longer career. Gorski’s very old for his comp and his off speed stuff isn’t that much slower than his FB and he’s got some red flags injury wise in his delivery and in his follow through. AA will do a huge way toward seeing what he may be able to do up here.

  Right now Muno and Gorski are much closer but Evans and Fulmer have the upside and the time to put it together.
• A February 19, 2012 at 3:59 am

  I really doubt the Twins will waste their 2nd overall pick on an outfielder.
• Bob L February 19, 2012 at 9:14 am

  Ranking B. Nimmo in top 5 Mets Prospects always rolls my eyes. Hey, i ‘get’ why you’d focus on a high tools guy to draft. No problem with that on ‘draft day.’ But to rank that kid anywhere in our top 5 – 10 prospects, with but 38 pro ABs to his name, screams for redefining ‘prospects’ being developed for the major league club.
  The other MMO ‘favorite’ is Reese Havens. i can see him in the top 10, but he’s had 792 ABs over 4 years. i agree with Havens ranked somewhere in our top 10, given solid results over that admittedly small sample. But Valdespin, with 1,492 pro ABs, has come on recently and posted some decent #s in AAA last year; and Captain Kirk has 1,501 pro ABs and was shooting through our System until he got derailed by injury last year in AAA. Shouldn’t ALL 3 of these guys be ranked higher than our Mickey Mantle / Roy Hobbs dream-toy, with but 38 pro ABs DEEP in sub-A pro ball??
  To me, Brandon Nimmo has to ‘prove it’ over a full season before being ranked anywhere in our Top 10 ‘prospects’.
  Otherwise, what are we ranking? ‘Tools’? That’s silly to me. To me, unless ‘tools’ are honed and verified on the field, they merely border on fantasy, on what ‘ideally’ a MLB ‘star’ SHOULD look like.
  Also, re Nimmo, doesn’t it matter ‘where’ he showcased his ‘tools’? Against ‘what level’ of competition? WY American Legion ball and he steadily breaks into our Top 5 ‘prospects’ after 38 pro ABs? i don’t get it. At this juncture, all Mets fans, in ranking him this high, sees him as our ‘Mickey Mantle’.
  Well, i do hope, y’all are right! Me? i’ll scour his production THIS year. And if impressive, then yeah i can see slotting him somewhere in our Top Prospects Lists. But Top 5, THIS early. i don’t think so.
  • Metsie February 19, 2012 at 10:40 am

    I toally agree Bob!

    Seems that being a top ten prospect around here has more to do with NOT doing anything to make someone worry than it about what they have done and will do in the MLB!
  • t agee February 19, 2012 at 11:52 am

    Bob,

    Nimmo wouldn’t be in most organizations top 10. He’s only in ours because we have so few top talent prospects overall. In fact only one team, the White Sox, have less than we do.

    What we have is 3 top talents (Mejia doesn’t count having passed the minimum threshold of IP in the Majors) After that numerous questions abound about everyone. Flores (position, power) Valdespin (eye defense) Den Dekker (bat) Puello (K’s) Lagares (eye power) Aderlain (eye defense) Havens (health defense) Kirk (starter or 4th OFer) Right now Nimmo represents 5 tool potential of which questions haven’t yet been raised but soon will and when he starts answering he’ll either stay or slide down as well.

    The top 10 for each team is really more of a financial snapshot than a projection of future major league probabilities. The guys that are on most top 10 lists are the guys that would fetch the most interest around the league when discussing trades at this point in time. Prospects will move up and down as their performance does.

    30 teams and 10 top prospects each at various stages of the minor leagues would represent a complete turnover of all 700 Major league jobs every 2.2 years. There isn’t going to be enough turnover to accomodate even half of them and some of these names will be replaced by future draftees and IFA’s.

    The top 10 for each organization is best served as a guide for where a team might have a surplus or weak spot. The top 100 overall is best viewed as a valuation guide current on the day it was put out with just half of them expected to even make the Majors at best and many of those serving in small roles like utility player, LOOGY or long man.

    The most valuable list in my opinion is the top 20 in each minor league. Not each minor league classification but each league itself. For instance AA has 3 different leagues, Easter, Southern and Texas. The prospects that are selected as the top 20 out of about 700 are the guys who are translating their tools the best relative to their competiton in the league in which they play but even those top 60 aren’t all expected to make it translate up to the Majors even from the relatively high level of AA. All told the top 20 in all 13 minor leagues is over 250 players but that’s one third of all the jobs available in MLB. Your not going to turn over the entire roster on every team every three years. What you are going to do is turn over about 5 spots every year and some will be filled from other teams and some will be filled by the minors. Maybe one or two jobs per team every year on average from the farm and the top 100 are where most of them come from but only about 45 of them actually do.

    These lists are a who’s who of potential from which one can place an educated gamble on with the odds being somewhat less than 50/50 that prospect will even see the Majors. If you wanted more of predictive list of who’s actually going to become an All Star you’d have to settle for no more than a top 20 for all systems encompassing all prospects from foreign rookie leagues all the way up to AAA. On average about 1 guy per league.
    • Bob L February 19, 2012 at 1:29 pm

      Thanks t agee, i appreciate that. You make great points. i think the Top 20 Lists per each Minor League level would provide good working parameters to project potential MLB potential. As far as, all our top prospects having Qs, that must b the case for most team i’d think, even the Yankees. ‘Cept for the Nationals 2 Super Prospects, major Qs abound with all these guys in terms of MLB potential.