A top prospect shows promise
In many ways, the most exciting players to watch in Spring Trainingare the ones you know won’t be making the big league club. The names you see on prospect lists, blog posts, and Twitter feeds more often than on your television set. And like a fleeting warm day in March, they represent hope of good things to come.
So as the Mets trim their roster to a football-team size (53 players), I thought it would be fun to talk about one of the players who will continue his development in the minor leagues this season: top prospect Ronny Mauricio. After striking out in two of his first three Grapefruit at-bats, he put together an impressive five-game hit streak, leaving camp after going 5-8 with 3 RBIs over the past week.
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Due to the cancellation of the 2020 minor league season, this was the first stretch of competitive baseball Mauricio has played since 2019. Family issues kept him away from the alternate site until mid-August last year. And reports from there and the team’s instructional league were mixed, which is part of the reason why several prospect lists pushed catcher Francisco Alvarez ahead of him in their latest rankings.
The Dominican shortstop — who the Mets signed in 2017 to a then team record $2.1 million bonus amount — will turn 20 in April and is just starting to mature into his 6-foot-3 frame. As he continues to add strength, scouts expect his efficient swing to produce power, particularly from the left side of the plate—where he also happened to find his hits this spring.
What was noticeable in Mauricio’s limited Grapefruit action was his continued aggressiveness at the plate, which could be a weakness if he fails to make solid contact. But over his five-game hit streak, he swung at 67 percent of the pitches he saw, and only whiffed on three of them.
This tracks with what a scout saw of him before the minor league season was cancelled last year, via Baseball America:
Seeing him, I liked that he didn’t miss many pitches in the zone. There was off-barrel contact and weak contact, but he didn’t swing and miss and was right on a lot of pitches. He seems to recognize spin and stays balanced in his approach.
The key for Mauricio this season, as he continues to progress up the minors, will be learning how to be more selective — so he’s not chasing pitches out of the zone or making poor contact on a pitch he can afford to take — while improving his bat path, so he can turn more ground balls into line drive hits. Because when he attacks with the proper approach, his swing is beautiful to watch.
Overall, it was a promising spring for the young prospect, who also made anice play to help nab a runner at home plate in the field. While all of the attention is on a superstar shortstop who began contract extension talks this week, it’s also exciting to think about the future of Ronny Mauricio.