22-year-old left-handed reliever Daniel Juarez has dominated at each stop in the minor leagues and is showing no signs of slowing down. He split the 2021 season between rookie ball and Low-A, the 2022 season between Low-A and High-A, and in 2023, he was promoted from High-A to Double-A. While it wouldn’t be shocking to see the Mets to keep pushing Juarez up through their system, they typically work a bit slower with younger, non-college players. Regardless, Juarez has consistently recorded strikeout rates above 30% in his minor league career, and he’s built up a great product so far in Binghamton and is only getting better.

Daniel Juarez, Photo by Ed Delany of Mets Minors

The Arsenal

Juarez is an atypical lefty in the regard that he relies heavily on his 94-mile-per-hour fastball and change-up. Juarez is a pronator by nature, throwing four-seam fastballs up in the zone, and complimenting it with a change-up as his primary offspeed pitch (pitches thrown in wrist pronation). The downside to pronators, including Juarez, is their struggle to throw hard-breaking balls (pitches thrown in wrist supination). While he might not have an overpowering breaking pitch, Juarez’s pitch mix and pronation work well against both righties and lefties. In 24 games this season, right-handers are slashing .156/.245/.244 against Juarez, while lefties are slashing .127/.179/.206.

His four-seam has an elite vertical break, leading to an extremely high swing and miss rate. His vertical break on the pitch, approaching 20 inches on average, would be among major league leaders. While he has been averaging low-90s with the pitch all season, he has had a spike in recent outings to 93+ averages, touching nearly 95 mph. As his best pitch, Juarez uses his fastball nearly 2/3 of the time.

His change-up has good movement separation from his four seams and is his main offspeed with a gyro slider as his third pitch. His slider leaves the most room for growth and will be a good pitch down the road for getting lefty swing-and-misses but will need to be a bit faster in the big leagues.

The Results

This season has been nothing short of incredible for Juarez. In 15.2 innings in Brooklyn, he posted a monstrous 40% strikeout rate and only allowed five hits. His 10% BB rate left just a little something to be desired but a 30% K-BB% ends that conversation quickly. Since his promotion, as expected, the extremely high FB usage has slowed his strikeout rate to just 25.6% in his 22 innings of work (one K per inning average). That K rate in Double-A is just a hair above the 25% league average, but his walk rate has improved. His BB% is down to 7.0 and his combined hit total allowed on the season is just 17 in his 38 innings. His OPS allowed this year is below .500 which is over .250 points better than average.

His only blemish on the season was a recent outing where he gave up two solo home runs against Portland, which were both down in the zone. If Juarez is going to succeed in the major leagues, he’ll need to locate his four-seamer upstairs.

Path to the Show

Juarez is on the fast track to Queens now and profiles similarly to Nate Lavender who has some outlier strikeout numbers in Syracuse despite low fastball velocity. Juarez has excellent movement on his fastball and could excel even further with a more even pitch mix. Throwing more change-ups, improving the slider by adding velocity, and then increasing the slider usage afterward are simple steps that will bring him to the next level. As it is, he will likely be on the cusp of Queens early next season, as it would be expected for him to start 2024 in Syracuse if he doesn’t receive a September call-up. With the Mets tanking the 2023 season, Juarez could be in Queens sooner rather than later.