Francisco Alvarez, Photo by Ed Delany of MMO

The 2021 Minor League Baseball season is through the first two weeks with the Mets minor leagues experiencing significant highs and lows — much like the big league has.

Some of those lows from the big leagues –mostly injuries that continue to mount– have trickled into the minors with teams simply running out of pitching and playing with short benches on numerous occasions. Just this week the Mets had to sign right-handed pitcher Luc Rennie to start a game for the Double-A Binghamton Rumble Ponies.

The injuries and simply the lack of enough players to field competitive teams has certainly been reflected in the standings, the Triple-A Syracuse Mets are 2-10 as they deal with a constant roster flux and the Rumble Ponies just picked up their first win of the season to improve to 1-10.

And of course, there’s been injuries at the minor league level too, the biggest one coming when the Mets recently announced that top pitching prospect Matt Allan would need Tommy John surgery. That knocks the talented right-hander out for this season and a good chunk of 2022 as well.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only injury to a Mets top prospect in 2021, Pete Crow-Armstrong is on the injured list for the St. Lucie Mets. The Mets 2020 first round pick was hitting .417/.563/.500 before being sidelined with an arm injury that I’m told will likely require surgery. Exact details of the injury aren’t known, so I’m not going to speculate further.

Infielder Wilmer Reyes is another Mets minor league with a significant injury, the 2019 New York-Penn League All-Star suffered the leg injury during spring camp. The injury hasn’t seen any improvement and he’s expected to miss a large portion of the 2021 season.

Other injury notes include right-handed pitcher Harol Gonzalez having Tommy John surgery, outfielder Mallex Smith suffering a broken foot, and right-hander Corey Oswalt being placed on the injured list with no news about why to this point.

Francisco Alvarez, Photo by Ed Delany of MMO

Let’s get to the the highs now, shortstop Ronny Mauricio and catcher Francisco Alvarez have been two of the best hitters in the minor leagues as a whole. The 20-year-old Mauricio has already hit four home runs this season in 41 at-bats, after hitting only four in 2019 over 470 at-bats. He was named the first ever High-A East Player of the Week after the first week of games and hit a monster game-tying three-run homer in the ninth inning for the High-A Brooklyn Cyclones last week.

Mauricio’s teammate and fellow top 10 prospect, Brett Baty, is hitting .355/.488/.484 with 10 RBIs in nine games.

Álvarez, 19 for the entire 2021 season, had his own injury scare last week when a collision at home plate forced him to leave the game. He was said to only have minor bruises and took one additional game to rest before getting back into the lineup.

At the plate, he’s been tremendous for the Low-A St. Lucie Mets with a 1.230 OPS that ranks second in the league. He also leads all of the Mets minor leagues with a 226 wRC+, Mauricio is second at 202. Maybe the most impressive stat is his 3.33 walk to strikeout ratio that ranks second out of 932 qualified minor league hitters.

Keith Law opened some eyes when he had Álvarez ranked as his No. 19 prospect in baseball, and that’s certainly looking pretty smart right now.

Right-hander Tylor Megill has been the best starter in the Mets system to begin the 2021 season, which should be no surprise if you’ve heard anything from the Mets front office. Just recently, our own Jack Ramsey talked to Mets’ VP of Scouting Tommy Tanous, and Tommy was basically gushing over Megill’s potential.

So far, so good for the 25-year-old Megill as the Double-A Rumble Ponies’ ace:

16 IP, 8 H, 2 ER, 4 BB, 22 K, 1.13

The tall right-hander uses a fastball mostly in the mid-90s (been up to 98, a hard slider that has been a swing-and-miss pitched, and an improved changeup that saw bumps in command and run starting during 2020 Instructs.

Another right-hander from the Rumble Ponies has impressed as well, 26-year-old reliever Marcel Renteria has struck out 10 in seven scoreless innings. He’s allowed only two hits and three walks to begin the season. The hard thrower relies on his nasty fastball-slider combo that he’s shown improved command of so far in 2021.

Names to know outside of the top 30 prospects off to hot starts:

UT Jake Hager – Syracuse utility: .405/.436/.703 – earned himself a promotion to the big leagues

UT Yoel Romero – Swiss Army Knife for Binghamton: .385/.514/.500

1B Joe Genord and 2B Luke Ritter – Brooklyn: both infielders have 3 home runs

OF Antoine Duplantis – Brooklyn leadoff man: .310/.350/.500

RHP Bradley Roney – Binghamton, 4 IP, 2 H, 0 R, BB, 10 K

LHP Andrew Mitchell – Binghamton: 7 IP, H, 0 R, 3 BB, 7 K

RHP Hunter Parsons – St. Lucie: 7 IP, 8 H, 2 ER, BB, 14 K

RHP Reyson Santos – St. Lucie 4 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 3 Saves, up to 96 mph

We start off the article talking about injuries that have certainly put a damper on the outset of the Mets minor league season, but there’s a triumphant return from arm issues that is starting to open eyes too –enter hard throwing Bryce Montes de Oca.

Bryce Montes de Oca was the Mets ninth round pick in 2018, he only lasted that long in the draft because he’s been battling arm injuries since high school. He never pitched in 2018 in the Mets farm system, nothing again in 2019, and then of course the 2020 season was wiped out by the pandemic.

But, the big righty from Kansas is back with Brooklyn and he brought his fastball with him.

Bryce has thrown 4 2/3 scoreless innings for Brooklyn without allowing a hit, he has walked four and struck out five. As you can see in the video above, he hit 100 mph with his fastball in that game and I was told he hit 101 mph in his most recent outing.

For an organization that has been decimated by injury in 2020, it’s nice to see a guy like Bryce Montes de Oca bouncing back after such a long time away from the mound.