Matt Rudick, Photo by Rick Nelson

If you look at many New York Mets top prospect lists, you likely won’t find Double-A Binghamton Rumble Ponies outfielder Matt Rudick on many of them. However, the 24-year-old left-handed hitter may be near the top, if not at the very top, of the list of the best players in the Mets system in the first two months.

So far this season, Rudick has a slash line of .311/.455/.546/1.001 with 41 hits, 10 doubles, 7 home runs, 25 RBIs, and he has more walks (30) than strikeouts (23). His 41 hits are 6 more than any other player on the team (Brandon Mcllwain is second with 35).

May in particular has been a strong month for Rudick. If you look at the Eastern League as a whole, he has the third best on-base percentage of any player (.444). In addition, he has the seventh-highest OPS (1.001), his 23 hits are tied for eighth in the league, he has the 11th best batting average (.304), and the 13th-best slugging percentage (.557),

As our own Michael Mayer tweeted last week, some of Rudick’s advanced numbers put him as one of the better hitters in all of minor league baseball:

Back in 2021, the Mets selected Rudick in the 13th Round of the MLB Draft out of San Diego State. He was one of only two outfielders that the organization selected in the 20-round format. (Rowdey Jordan was selected in Round 11.) While with the Aztecs, Rudick had a great redshirt junior season as he hit .410 with 73 hits and he was 17-for-18 on stolen base attempts, so he was very consistent at the top of the order.

It’s early in the season, but Rudick had done a good job of cutting down on hitting ground balls, and he is getting the ball more in the air. According to FanGraphs, his line drive percentage has gone up from 19.6% with High-A Brooklyn last year to 22.4% this year, and his ground ball rate has gone down from 39.2% to 29.9%.

When he is at the top of the order, Rudick is doing a good job at putting together good at-bats. The walk rate is at 18% on the season, and when he puts the ball in play, his BABIP has remained consistent over his first two-plus professional seasons.

On May 25, Rudick’s hitting coach Darin Everson was a guest on the Rumble Ponies Pregame Show with Jacob Wilkins, and he talked about how with Rudick is letting his talent show.

“We had a great talk in spring training about his injury history,” Everson said. “When he was healthy enough to play in the past, he did a lot of things right. He didn’t chase, he didn’t swing and miss in the zone. A lot of the metrics that you look at you go man, he’s got a lot of things going. Really work on the approach. Then, just understanding how good he can be. I think he’s done a good job of building as we has gone up.”

Some of the things that Everson talked about in that interview was that Rudick has made a small change to where his bat enters the strike zone, and it has helped his landing on the swing. Plus, Everson said he was pulling the ball more (39.4% of the time according to FanGraphs) as a result.

With Rudick showing off power this year, unlike his first two professional seasons or in college, he is turning into more of the complete outfielder that can do a little bit of everything. He said in an interview with Wilkins that the difference was the adjustments he made with his swing this winter to stay consistent.

“I’m happy with it right now. I was just trying to create something as consistent as possible,” Rudick said. “With my approach I’m taking this year and the confidence that I have this year, it’s awesome and it shows that I can play at this level, play at a high level, go out every day, take it one at-bat at a time, and just play baseball.”

Through the first two months of the year, Rudick has been one of the fun surprises of the season and it will be fun to see if he can turn that success into maybe a promotion to Syracuse at some point later in the year.