Mets starter Gabriel Ynoa has been ranked as a best sleeper prospect in baseball by Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com. Mayo is very confident in Ynoa’s talent, praising him for his control and maturity on the mound.
Mayo believes that the only way that Ynoa doesn’t appear on the top 100 list next year is if he advances to the majors and is no longer eligible as a prospect. Here is what Mayo had to say:
“There are other pitchers with better pure stuff than Ynoa, there’s no question of that. He does have plenty of fastball, sitting in the low-90s and touching 95 mph, but that’s not up where upper-echelon pitching prospects — like organization-mate Noah Syndergaard — live.”
“What Ynoa can do is throw strikes. He walked 1.5 per nine innings across two levels, reaching Double-A, in 2014. And that was a career high. It made Ynoa’s career walk rate skyrocket all the way up to 1.2.”
“He made 25 starts in 2014 and walked exactly that many batters, 25. In his Minor League career, Ynoa has issued 63 walks in 86 total games. Everyone realizes how insane that is, right?”
“Everything else works extremely well. Ynoa has a smooth and clean delivery that he repeats consistently well. His changeup is so effective because his arm speed never changes. If Ynoa can sharpen his breaking ball some to miss a few more bats, it could be a huge difference-maker.”
Mayo loves Ynoa’s plus makeup and mound presence. He says he doesn’t get flustered on the mound and he knows how to make adjustments.
He adds that Ynoa is the type of advanced arm that could move quickly to New York — or at the very least, “move quickly onto the Top 100.”
Ynoa had an 11-4 record last year with a 4.07 ERA during 148 innings for Single-A St. Lucie and Double-A Binghamton. He is usually overshadowed by the bigger name arms in the Mets farm system, but he does have the potential to one day develop into a solid pitcher at the major league level.
