Columnist John Harper of the New York Daily News had some interesting tidbits from Amed Rosario, J.P. Ricciardi, and Mickey Callaway regarding the young shortstop’s development.

Ricciardi had this to say regarding Rosario when asked about the former top prospect and the thought that he could be one of the best shortstops in baseball:

“I don’t think we should put those kinds of expectations on him. I think he can be a good major league player. That’s what we want him to be right now, just a consistent major league player. And then everything else will take care of itself.”

Now, that is definitely the right approach to take publicly. The team should not be putting pressure on him to be a superstar in his first full season. Ricciardi has been around long enough to understand that.

It’s understandable that perhaps some may have soured on Rosario a little after his sub-par showing last season. In 2017, he made 170 trips to the plate with New York and hit .248/.271/.394 with four homers and 10 RBI. However, I’m not so sure that it’s organizational as Harper infers.

While it was expected that Rosario would struggle early on offensively, the surprising part was that he was not too great defensively either, notching only one DRS last year.

That said, new skipper Mickey Callaway isn’t concerned at all about his 22-year old shortstop.

“That’s what you get when you have a young guy that can be a superstar one day. We saw the same things with Lindor when he first came up.

That message from Callaway is obviously has a lot of truth to it as many of the game’s biggest prospects do not have an immediate or instant impact when they come up. Especially ones as young as Rosario.

It takes time to make adjustments to playing at the highest level in the sport, especially on the offensive side. Rosario was instantly forced to face a quality of pitching he likely had never seen before in the minors, and was had to identify and adjust every single night for the last two months of the regular season.

Despite this, Rosario seems to have already started to recognize where he needs to improve.

“I’m trying to go to the plate with a plan. I’m trying not to swing at the pitches that I used to swing at last year. I have to work on my patience. I still want to be aggressive but more under control at the same time.”

Harper is really getting ahead of himself here. Yes, Rosario is still a work in progress. but there is no reason to give up on his ability to be a superstar one day. So while they might be tempering their expectations a bit, the Mets are certainly not losing faith in his ability as he still has a lot of untapped potential.