What do the Amazin’ Avenue writers think of the players on the 2025 Top 25 Top Prospect list.
Edward Lantigua (25)
Steve says,
Edward Lantigua is the relative-unknown-international-signee-with-a-rocket-strapped-to-their-back du jour this winter. Signed for $950,000 during the 2024-2025 international rookie signing period, Lantigua won DSL Player of the Year with a solid .263/.397/.395 slash line and 149 wRC+. Lantigua shows above-average power right now, and with a skinny and leggy 6’3”, 170-pound frame, there’s plenty of room for more. I’m not sure how his swing is going to translate, because it looks like it will be susceptible to better pitching, but we’ll have years before we need to worry about that.
Lukas says,
Just to make you (and me) feel old, Lantigua was born AFTER Carlos Beltran struck out looking in the 2006 NLCS. He was also a top-50 international signing last year per MLB Pipeline and received a $950,000 bonus before posting a nice line in the DSL while demonstrating contact skills, a decent approach, and the occasional ability to impact the ball. Those are some nice starting ingredients, we’ll see how it plays out.
Ronald Hernandez (24)
Steve says,
Between competing with Marco Vargas and Jeremy Rodriguez in “young players the Mets traded for in 2024” and Daiverson Gutierrez and Yovanny Rodriguez in the “young, promising Venezuelan catchers”, Ronald Hernandez gets lost in the shuffle a bit. I’ve always been partial to hit-over-power catchers that are strong defensively (see Ali Sanchez), and after hitting .274/.452/.423 in 2023 and .261/.355/.346 in 2024, Hernandez is starting to look like he might be that type of guy. His numbers were like day and night between St. Lucie and Brooklyn, but there’s a million possible explanations, from exhaustion to small sample size, so we should get a better read on him in 2025 when he presumably returns to High-A.
Lukas says,
The second piece of the David Robertson deal, Hernandez failed to build on the promise he showed in the complex last year when moving to full season ball. He ran an ISO under .100 in St. Lucie (albeit with a slightly above average total line) before striking out nearly 40% of the time in a brief late season cameo with Brooklyn. Questions about the defensive home also remain, putting additional pressure on a bat that didn’t do a whole lot last season. There’s still talent here, but Hernandez is very much in the “low minor lottery ticket” category for me at this juncture.
Daiverson Gutierrez (23)
Steve says,
Last year, Daiverson Gutierrez was an abject disaster. The numbers were bad, his mechanics were bad, and his approach was bad. In his sophomore season, things were much better. He changed his mechanics and hit over .300 in the DSL and the FCL before bottoming out in St. Lucie. Gutierrez is so low on the minor league ladder that the numbers really don’t matter, but as we have all long said, it’s better to see good numbers than bad numbers.
Lukas says,
Catching prospects are weird. Gutierez was awful in the DSL last year, then came back and destroyed it for 14 games, then did the same for 15 games at the complex. Then he cratered for 8 games with St. Lucie. None of this is a huge sample, to be honest – 107 good PA, 27 bad – but walking more than you strikeout is always going to be a huge draw for me, even though Guttierez only went deep twice. This could be the start of something real or it could just be a flash in the pan. Again, catchers are weird.
Will Watson (22)
Steve says,
Will Watson is one of numerous picks that the Mets made in 2024 that was churned out by the algorithm: a solid fastball magnified up in the zone thanks to backspin and induced vertical break, and a sweeping slider. I’m not gonna say that Will Watson, 10th round pick Brendan Girton, 12th round pick Ethan Lanthier, and 16th round pick Josh Blum are all exactly the same player- 8th round pick Ryan Lambert is more of a traditional fireballer and 13th round pick R.J. Gordon is a fastball-changeup guy- but they kind of are. Watson’s changeup looks like it might be a viable pitch, which sets him out from the rest of that 90s-and-a-slider crowd, but something will have to pop for the right-hander to really emerge from the non-descript minor league middle reliever; for every guy who fits that profile who has indeed taken the next step, there are countless Trey Cobbs or Cole Gordons who haven’t.
Lukas says,
Another mid-round arm with an impressive fastball and a history of relieving. Watson ranks ahead of Lambert because he has experience starting and a clearer path to viable secondaries, but a lot of the messaging here is the same; flat (complementary) fastball, development runway (Watson is a transfer from DIII w/ one year of D1 experience), good arm talent. Even better, Watson’s best secondary is a changeup, something we know fits with David Stearns’ MO. It would not surprise me if this ranking sticks out as way too low in a year (check out BP’s Mets prospect list for a more informed perspective on why he should be higher), but this is as high as I can justify putting him given the information on hand.
Jacob Reimer (21)
Steve says,
Reimer missed most of 2024, so not much has changed. We might have been initially too bullish on his prospects when we ranked Reimer in 2024, but there is still a lot to like. Reimer has a great hit tool and his eye and discipline only magnify that. JT Schwartz also has a great hit tool and is more-or-less a non-entity in the system and the similarities between the two are perilously close. Reimer is a lot younger, turning 21 in 2025, and already has 134 professional games under his belt before Schwartz even had one, so it’s far from a direct comparison, but some other aspect of his game needs to pop- and soon- for Reimer to regain some of that prospect cache he had when he was first drafted.
Lukas says,
We can probably start copy-pasting these reports for Reimer, who remains much the same prospect as he’s been each of the last two offseasons. There’s a polished approach that’s likely a bit too passive, a lack of pulled fly balls, middling damage, and a questionable positional profile. There’s also, at this point, a long history of injuries, and Reimer missed most of the season with a bad hamstring strain before getting in 25 (homerless) games between the Complex, Low-A, and High-A. There’s still a chance this all works out eventually given that Reimer will only be 21 on opening day, but the prospect fatigue is definitely setting in.
Dom Hamel (20)
Steve says,
Dom Hamel had about as bad a season as you can have, but there are some positives. He has a solidly effective fastball upstairs thanks to the pitch’s induced vertical break and an effective sweeping slider. As seen with other players the Mets have drafted recently- some of whom are on this very list!- those are things that the Mets value very much. Despite logging the most innings in the Mets minor league system since being drafted, I think it’s finally time to shift him to the bullpen- something that many have long prognosticated regarding his potential as a major league pitcher- where that two-pitch mix can be maximized, and all Hamel’s excess fat be cut off. Maybe I’m squinting too much and trying to find a positive where there necessarily isn’t one, though. At the end of the day, the Mets chose not to add Hamel to the 40-man roster earlier this off-season and no team elected to choose him in the Rule 5 Draft, so maybe I’m just seeing things that don’t really exist.
Lukas says,
After years of being very high on Hamel, I think I’m finally out. His curveball, despite the gaudy spin rates we’ve spent years ogling, has never developed into a plus offering, nor has any other element of his arsenal. Per Rob Orr’s pitch quality metrics, none of Hamels’ five pitches rates as even average, none induce above average chase, and only two (the fastball and change) induce even slightly below average Z-contact. There’s just not a lot going right here, unfortunately. Maybe there’s some magic the Mets can work still but I am no longer holding my breath.
Nick Morabito (19)
Steve says,
Is it finally Morbin’ time? Nick Morabito put up video game numbers at the beginning of the season with St. Lucie, and while he did regress in the South Atlantic League- if he hit .397/.530/.513 over the course of the entire season, we would be having a very different conversation- that regression was far from crashing and burning. His offense was roughly 20% better than league average, and he was doing that in an extremely flawed, but theoretically correctable manner. By and large, he has thrived thus far in his young career by shooting the ball to the opposite field and relying on his plus speed to leg outs hits. He needs to pull the ball more consistently and hit it in the air more consistently to be a viable hitter going forward, things that are not impossible for him to commit to working on. The rest of the profile is extremely fun- he’s got elite speed and his center field defense has looked more than just solid in the looks I’ve gotten- but I learned long ago, probably from watching the shell of Luis Castillo play baseball, that hitting an empty .300, while impressive, isn’t particularly valuable in a baseball sense.
Lukas says,
After Ryan Clifford (who ranks significantly higher on this list), Morabito was the toughest guy to rank here. The top-line numbers in both St. Lucie and Brooklyn were the product of astronomically high BABIPs, and Morabito is not as young as other prep hitters in this range. Ditto the steals, which were fun but inflated by changes to the minor league rules. Morabito has a penchant for beating the ball into the ground, posting 3rd percentile pulled fly ball rates in St. Lucie, something that would usually be an immediate turnoff. And yet…the exit velocities aren’t terrible, the contact skills seem to be there, and the approach is legitimately good (he’s one of only a few hitters in the system that is selective rather than passive). The question is ultimately what is harder to do; learn to hit the ball much, much harder (as Marco Vargas and Boston Baro need to do) or to hit the ball a bit harder while totally changing your spray characteristics? Conventional wisdom would suggest the latter. That also leaves out prospect-specific questions about swing mechanics and how much work is needed to make said adjustments, something I’m not qualified enough to feel confident evaluating. Regardless, I’m somewhat bought in on Morabito as a prospect, something I really wasn’t expecting.
Trey Snyder (18)
Steve says,
The Mets got themselves a premium talent when they bought Trey Snyder out of his commitment to the University of Tennessee, and the general mood surrounding the pick was a lot more positive than other million dollar-plus prep shortstops in recent years. Snyder looks the part of a hitter and, relative to his age and level, has shown that he can indeed hit. Like any and every high school player who wasn’t a generational wunderkind that was drafted 1-1 overall, he will be a bit of a project, but there’s a lot to like.
Lukas says,
The Mets paid 2nd round money for Snyder in the 5th, I got very excited about Snyder when the Mets sent him to Low-A after signing; being among the first prep hitters to reach full season ball is usually a positive marker. Unfortunately, Snyder wasn’t great in his six games, and he’s got the negative demographic marker of being an overaged prep. That probably tumbled him from being in the 9 – 12 range on this list to the late-teens, but there’s still lots to like here. Hopefully we hear some good things out of instructs early on in 2025.
Eli Serrano III (17)
Steve says,
When Eli Serrano was drafted, it felt like a cutesy, “we’re smarter than everyone else” pick. Most of the Mets’ 2024 draft felt like that actually, but most of those other picks were late Day 2 pitcher selections made based on analytical projections, so those were whatever. When Eli Serrano was drafted, it was more like, “if X, and then Y, and then Z happen, we’ll have drafted a really undervalued talent and really shown everyone how it’s done”. That’s not to say that those things might not happen, but banking on major swing and approach changes, in addition to some possibly-needed physical maturation, in order to turn Serrano into anything more than organizational filler just feels unnecessarily convoluted. When Serrano was selected, the 111th player overall, there were a ton of talents still available that would have cost the team a similar ~$700,000 signing bonus and, at least to me, probably will have less convoluted paths to turning into legitimate baseball prospects. Ignoring Dakota Jordan, because he was a special case and certainly would have cost a lot more than the Mets would have been able to afford, there were more than a few pitchers as well as a bunch of position players. Here’s hoping the Mets are smarter than everyone else.
Lukas says,
On a pure preference list, I might push Serrano up a bit higher. A 4th rounder with vague contact/power upside and a funky swing, Serrano put up a 91st percentile pulled fly ball rate in Low-A St. Lucie after signing, something that looked (to my eye) like a conscious change to his inside-out heavy approach from college. Like many Mets hitting prospects, he’s a bit passive, and he’ll need to fill out to get to more power, but this was a very nice mid-round pick that I’m optimistic on.
Blade Tidwell (16)
Steve says,
Before the season started, I was going back-and-forth with one of my preseason predictions: was I gong to boldly say that Blade Tidwell was going to be the Mets’ top pitching prospect when 2024 was done and over with or was it going to be Brandon Sproat? I ultimately went with Sproat- which turns out to be the correct choice- but initially it looked like it might be Tidwell, as he got off to a pretty electric start in Binghamton before things went sideways around the time he was promoted to Syracuse. I am encouraged by a couple of things that make me think Blade will rebound next season. In basically the same amount of innings, he showed improvements between his 2023 and 2024 performance with Binghamton, which makes me think the same can happen between his 2024 Syracuse performance and his upcoming 2025 performance. This past season was also his first year dealing with the ABS, the International League ball, and other circumstances that may have had a negative influence on his performance. I, personally, also feel that Tidwell’s pitch selection was not particularly great and could be optimized, which leaves room for the possibility of improvement, when and if it is.
Lukas says,
I really wonder what might’ve happened had the Mets pitching development apparatus of today had their hands on Tidwell from the jump. Maybe there’s more that could’ve been done in that initial offseason or in his first pro season that would’ve better set Tidwell up for success. Or perhaps not. In either case, Tidwell is a slightly fancier version of the stereotypical 95-and-a-slider arm, one with two distinct breakers (a sweeper and a tighter, more traditional offering) as well as a sparingly used changeup with some promising characteristics. He also continues to get smacked around in the upper minors due to a poor fastball and worse control. He’s someone who should probably get bumped to the bullpen at this point but could be a decent (if frustrating) 7th inning guy.
Marco Vargas (15)
Steve says,
I wasn’t as in on Marco Vargas as were my Amazin’ Avenue partners, and a year later, nothing has really changed since his season was marred by injuries that kept him off the field and had a negative impact on his performance when he was able to play. Most of Vargas’ tools are exponentially ahead of players his age, but he will have to develop a real carrying tool as his age starts becoming less impressive for the level.
Lukas says,
Ah yes, another Met hitting prospect with a lost 2024 due to injury. Vargas was especially odd because he seemingly kept trying to play through his ailments, and the results were very poor. Overall, I think this is just a year your write off and hope that Vargas is healthy next year and can focus on impacting the ball more.
Nate Dohm (14)
Steve says,
After a not-particularly-great freshman season and a solid sophomore season in MSU’s bullpen, Nate Dohm was transitioned into their starting rotation and had a strong start to the season, creating a ton of draft helium for himself. He hurt his forearm and missed about a month of the season, opted to rehab it, and the pain never went away, causing his season to end prematurely. There’s stuff to like about Dohm, but obviously the injury and very likelihood of Tommy John surgery is a bummer. Like other players the Mets drafted in 2024, there were comparable players in terms of talent who ended up signing with their respective teams for comparable amounts, so while I don’t agree with drafting the right-hander to begin with, there’s a decent amount of talent in there and hopefully Dohm will be able to get back on the field fully healthy sooner rather than later.
Lukas says,
Hey look, another college arm with good stuff and injury questions. Like other draft picks from this past year, Dohm has a flat fastball with good IVB as well as a slider and changeup. He also has a barking forearm that cost him a chunk of the 2024 season. Throw him in as raw materials to the pitching dev machine and see what happens, you could wind up with something real impressive out of this 3rd rounder.
Boston Baro (13)
Steve says,
In 2023, the Mets drafted three prep infielders after the first round: AJ Ewing in the Free Agent Compensation round, Boston Baro in the 8th round, and Jake Zitella in the 16th round. At the time, I liked Zitella the most- he was younger than the other two, had more impressive batted ball data, and while he wasn’t a shortstop like Ewing and Baro, was a perfectly fine third baseman. One year later, Baro has separated himself from the pack, having a strong season with St. Lucie and making it to High-A as a 19-year-old. We’re still waiting on a standout, carrying tool, which is a bit problematic, but there’s a very high, very solid floor which should give Baro plenty of time for physical development, mechanical tweaks, and anything else to maximize his potential.
Lukas says,
Baro comes from a very different demographic than Vargas, but the skill sets are actually pretty overlapping. Baro impacts the ball on average even less than Vargas, but has nice contact skills and a decent approach. He also pulls the ball in the air a bit more, which could help him realize more (but still limited) game power. Visually, there’s more room for him to fill out his frame as well. This is a nice result for an 8th round prep bat and Baro is trending like a utility IF type w/ some upside beyond that.
Jeremy Rodriguez (12)
Steve says,
Rodriguez didn’t exactly blow away the competition in 2024, but he had a solid year. He almost hit .300 (.282) and was about 10% better than the rest of the league, all while not celebrating his 18th birthday until roughly halfway through the season. The lack of a single dynamic tool is disappointing, because if Rodriguez had projectable power or speed to couple with his bat-on-ball and plate discipline skills, we would be talking about a guy who could theoretically be an elite prospect. But then again, if that was the case, Rodriguez probably would’ve received more than a $1.25 million signing bonus and probably wouldn’t have been made available straight up for 50 games of Tommy Pham.
Lukas says,
We didn’t get the breakout from Rodriguez we were hoping for in 2024 (RIP my bold prediction). It wasn’t a bad season either – the contact and approach skills were still present, the overall offensive output totally fine for a 17-year-old, and he remains physically projectable. We’re basically back in the same place as last offseason, hoping for a breakout but with a bit less certainty that it’ll come.
Jonathan Santucci (11)
Steve says,
I was not a fan of what the Mets did in the 2024 MLB Draft, and Jonathan Santucci is a big reason why. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it’s like Kris Gross and the rest of the amateur scouting department got too cutesy. Does Santucci have talent? Absolutely. Power stuff from the left-side doesn’t grow on trees, even in today’s baseball environment where it seems like the finesse lefty is extinct and 99 is the new 95. That said, was it wise to draft Santucci? I can count on not just one, but both hands the number of players who were drafted in the second round or at the beginning of the third round prior to when the Mets selected that have comparable talent to Santucci and signed for the same two million dollars that he signed for but don’t have any of the major injury concerns (at this point in time). But, at the end of the day, the Mets did what they did, and the southpaw is part of the organization. Elbow problems are always concerning, and while Santucci did not have UCL problems or anything Tommy John related, as mentioned, elbow problems are always concerning. Looking at medical literature, the reoperation rate for men who had olecranon screw insertions is 36%. Pitching is already such an unnatural thing on the elbow that it does not bode well to be starting with a compromised joint to begin with.
Lukas says,
Yet another college arm with huge stuff and injury questions. Fittingly, Santucci is the most extreme for both of these factors; he’s got a bat-missing fastball with a low angle of attack and inducing swing and misses w/ a hard slider and a good changeup. He’s also seemingly been on the brink of Tommy John for 24 months running at this point and dealt with a rib injury down the stretch that affected his command. A couple rough starts in big games tumbled his draft stock enough for the Mets to grab him in the 2nd, but ultimately I like this sort of bet. The presumption that a seemingly healthy pitcher is less likely to break on his next pitch than one with an injury history is at least partially illusory, and Santucci has all the raw ingredients you’d want to hand the Mets’ revamped pitching development apparatus.