Twelve Mets prospects to watch early in the minor-league season

New York Times

04-04-2025

While Triple-A Syracuse has been playing for a week, the rest of the Mets' minor-league system gets underway Friday. New York's system has improved over the past couple of seasons, not just because of the talent the club has acquired but because of significant strides in its player development system. In a second season under president of baseball operations David Stearns, the minor-league system has more continuity than usual, and the Mets are optimistic that they'll make even more gains, especially on the hitting side.
As the season gets underway, let's look at a dozen prospects who fall into three basic buckets. We've got:
This is not an exhaustive list, and it's focused more on players to watch early in the season. The rankings come from Keith Law's spring breakdown of the Mets organization.
RHP Brandon Sproat, Syracuse (No. 1 in organization, No. 30 in MLB)
Sproat made the biggest leap in the Mets' system last season, evolving into a top-100 prospect in the sport and the consensus No. 1 prospect for New York. He excelled at High-A Brooklyn (1.42 ERA) and Double-A Binghamton (2.45 ERA), earning a promotion late in the summer to Triple-A Syracuse. Once in Triple A, Sproat experienced his first adversity in pro ball, pitching to a 7.53 ERA over seven starts.
Sproat's first start for Syracuse this year was more of the same: He allowed four runs in two innings. The Mets want to see Sproat attack hitters aggressively in the strike zone, since his stuff should be able to play at this and any level. The right-hander has also added a sinker to his mix that could lead to earlier weak contact and lower pitch counts.
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'The biggest thing is dominating the strike zone,' said Andrew Christie, the Mets' director of player development. 'Attack. You're going to get outs if you command it in the strike zone.'
'The fastball velocity has always been there and hopefully will always be there. For him, it's finding those quick outs at times,' assistant pitching coordinator Grayson Crawford said of Sproat's sinker. 'Sometimes those power pitchers run into pitch count issues because they do generate so much swing-and-miss. Not that we want to give that away, but we're always looking for ways to steal those quick outs along the way. For him, that will be a big thing.'
As an aside, the jump from Double A to Triple A has proven challenging across the sport, and especially for New York's pitchers of late. Since 2023, Mike Vasil, Dom Hamel and Blade Tidwell have all struggled much more at Triple A than at the lower levels. The transition is difficult for a few reasons.
First, while the opposing hitters in Double A might have more potential than those in Triple A, Triple-A hitters typically have big-league experience and a better grasp of how to work a pitcher. Second, Triple A uses a different baseball than Double A, and it often takes time to adapt. Third, the implementation of the automatic balls and strikes system in Triple A changed how the strike zone was called. (In the past two years, half of Triple-A games used ABS to call every pitch; in the other half, a challenge system was used.)
You can scratch the third one off the list. Triple A has moved to a challenge system for balls and strikes, which should depress the run-scoring environment again.
'I'm fairly hopeful this year, for us and for most of the International League, the pitching performances will improve to a level that's more commensurate with what we expect,' Christie said.
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Tong came out of the chute last April, throwing darts, moving swiftly through St. Lucie, up to Brooklyn (3.71 ERA in 19 starts) for most of the year and finishing with a two-start cameo at Binghamton, where he'll begin this season.
Tong's offseason focus was on adjusting his slider to keep its movement profile more consistent.
'Last year it shifted between a cutter and a slurve,' he said. 'This year we're just trying to tighten up the shape.'
Almost every pitcher in the Mets organization spent time this spring talking about 'attacking hitters.' That's especially important for Tong, whose step forward in 2024 derived partly from more than halving his walk rate, from 22 percent to 10 percent.
McLean gave up on the dream of being a two-way player midway through last season, and the 2023 third-round pick is concentrating solely on his work on the mound now. Once he halted hitting a season ago, he pitched to a 3.00 ERA in his final 12 starts for Binghamton.
'He didn't have a lot of miles on the tires from a pitching perspective, which also means not a lot of reps to improve,' said Mets senior vice president of player development Andy Green. 'He can do things with a baseball that very few people can do. He's going to get to more swing-and-miss, and that's where his challenge resides going into this year. He's learning to harness some really impressive stuff, and as he learns to harness it, he will start to eliminate hitters a lot quicker than last year.'
Like McLean, Benge is an Oklahoma State product ditching life as a two-way player; he's just going the other way, dropping his time on the mound to focus on hitting.
Benge will start the year with High-A Brooklyn, which comes with a warning from the front office. Do not, under any circumstances, pay attention to your results while hitting on Coney Island in the early part of the season. Maimonides Park is difficult on all hitters but especially on lefty swingers with power, whose well-struck fly balls are generally no match for the spring winds coming off the Atlantic Ocean. That's why Ryan Clifford's slugging percentage was .304 in Brooklyn last season and .457 at Double-A Binghamton.
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'We really try to raise the awareness of that group,' Christie said. 'Focus on the process and the controllables. Make hard contact on a line. If it gets caught, it gets caught. Obviously, it's a really easy thing to say and a more difficult thing to do.'
Keep this in mind when checking in on Benge and a potential breakout candidate in Brooklyn who also swings from the left side, shortstop Boston Baro (I wrote a bit about Baro back in March). Both players are trying to add power to their approaches by pulling the ball in the air; the results of that adjustment will not be tangible for the first six to eight weeks of the season.
Whereas Sproat labored in his first outing of the season, Tidwell cruised. He allowed one run on one hit in five innings for Syracuse.
That continued the positive momentum Tidwell's been building since late last season. He was very good in his final two starts for Syracuse, then impressed at times in spring training, even throwing an immaculate inning.
After years of adding to his mix, Tidwell has reached the point of refining.
'During the season I did a lot of tinkering — probably too much to have any on-field success,' he said. 'By the end of the year, I figured out what I want my arsenal to be and how to use it.'
'He's got a real chance at some point this year to make an impact,' Christie said. 'His stuff is major-league caliber stuff right now.'
When Williams made a cameo at Binghamton at the end of the 2023 season, he appeared likelier to start 2025 in the majors than back in Double A. But thanks to wrist surgery, 2024 was a mostly lost season for the top prospect, who played in only 33 games.
While Williams returned last season after surgery, even playing a few games at Syracuse, he never quite felt like himself. So his focus all winter and into the spring was finding his swing from a breakout 2023. He used the Mets' hitting lab in spring to compare his current swing to his 2023 form, and he was confident by the end of camp that he was on the right track.
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'It's more about trust than anything,' he said. 'I just trust myself, trust what I've always done and then you'll have confidence in the way you prepare.'
Gilbert missed more than three months in 2024 with a hamstring injury, and he's starting 2025 on the injured list at Triple A because his hamstrings still don't feel right. It's not exactly an encouraging sign.
That said, Gilbert is slated to start a rehab assignment for St. Lucie on Friday. Given the persistence of Gilbert's hamstring issues, the Mets are going to be cautious with him before bringing him back up to Syracuse.
When Gilbert did play last season, he looked compromised. He hit just .205 in 62 regular-season games, then .208 in 18 more in the Arizona Fall League. He'd hit .289 in an excellent all-around 2023.
It's a critical year for Gilbert, who will need to be placed on the 40-man roster or exposed to the Rule 5 draft this winter.
Houck's initial foray into pro ball after being drafted in the first round in the summer of 2023 did not go well (.699 OPS), and his first full season in 2024 went worse (.610 OPS). The infielder is going to start the year at St. Lucie again, hopeful that two adjustments can make for a different year.
First, Houck made a physical adjustment to his stance, moving closer to the plate. Some of his best contact last season came on pitches in off the plate, which left him susceptible to strikes on the outer half.
Second, the Mets have worked with Houck on mentally handling the day-to-day grind in pro ball, especially during times of struggle. That's allowed the Mets to challenge Houck more often in training and practice.
'He's done an awesome job of letting go of what happened last year,' Christie said. 'It's translated into letting go on a daily basis of what happened earlier in that game or practice. That's a real maturation in his mental approach.'
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On Sunday, Allan will do something he hasn't since 2019: pitch in a professional baseball game. It will cap off a remarkable return journey from three elbow surgeries for the 2019 third-round pick, and the Mets are ecstatic he's even gotten to this point.
'A reasonable expectation would have been that he never pitches again,' Christie said. 'He doesn't really care about reasonable expectations. He just has an insane amount of belief in himself.'
The Mets made Allan the centerpiece of their 2019 draft for a reason, and they still believe him capable of reaching that level.
Allan will be treated as a typical starter at St. Lucie, which means a first outing of three or maybe four innings.
'There's been a lot of breath wasted on pitch and innings limits and determining a limit on a guy prior to seeing how a guy responds to each outing. That's not what we want to do,' Christie said. 'We want to see how he's bouncing back and how his body and his arm feel and just keep stacking days. That's been the theme for the last year.'
Most pitchers are doing whatever they can to dial their fastballs up to 99 mph. The Mets want Gomez to tone his down … to 99 mph.
Gomez, back from Tommy John surgery he underwent in early 2023, hit 102.8 mph this spring. Nevertheless, the Mets believe he can start and hold his velocity near triple digits multiple times through an order. Gomez had reached High-A Brooklyn before surgery. He'll start this season in St. Lucie, with the Mets hopeful he can get off to a fast start there.
'He has a good enough idea of the strike zone that with his electric stuff, (starting) can really happen,' Christie said. 'We don't want him to go blow 103 for one inning. We want him to stay out there for three or four or five ups and hold 99, which is hilarious to say, but he has done that.'
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When asked who could be this year's Jonah Tong — a pitcher who pops onto everyone's radar early in the season — multiple team sources pointed to Gomez.
Wenninger was one of the others mentioned with the potential to follow Tong's blueprint. A 2023 sixth-round pick out of the University of Illinois, the right-handed starter spent his offseason building strength that, theoretically, will allow him to hold his velocity better in 2025. Wenninger averaged about 92 mph on his fastball last season; the Mets think he could add two ticks or more this season.
'He didn't come nearly as prepared for pro ball as a Nolan McLean. He was green when he got to us,' Christie said, pointing out that Wenninger had come from a cold-weather school. 'He's been so impressive just in terms of the work he's put in and the ability to retain and apply information. He's physically gotten a lot stronger.'
Lambert looks and acts the part of a late-game fireballing reliever. Drafted as a college reliever in the eighth round last summer out of Oklahoma, Lambert can throw his fastball in the high 90s with a sharp slider off of it.
'We love his mentality,' Christie said. 'He just wants to come right after you and throw it by you. That's what you need to be a big-league reliever.'
To make that mix work and move swiftly through the system, as everyone always wants a college reliever to do, Lambert will need to establish better strike-zone credibility. He walked more than 13 percent of opposing hitters with the Sooners last season. His stuff is good enough to play in the strike zone; he just needs to get it there.
(Top photo of Nolan McLean: Jim Rassol / Imagn Sports)