Mets Minors Monday: Future, Thy Name is Szapucki

The Mets drafted a bunch of high school pitchers last year, in what would seem to be a precursor to them shipping out a lot of pitching prospects at the trade deadline. Drafted in the 5th round out of Florida was Thomas Szapucki. He was 18 at the time, a senior in high school, and from all the reports I read apparently throwing in the low to mid 90's. For a high school lefty, that's pretty damn good.

HOWEVER. On of the reasons he wasn't in the first round was a, reportedly, very funky arm delivery. A lefty with a funky delivery can be DOA. I've read around the internet that the Mets, in the offseason and extended spring training, completely rebuilt his arm motion from the ground up.

And goodness gracious, has it paid off already.

Szapucki (awesome name) is 20 now and pitching in the Appalachian League for the Kingsport Mets. He's now started 4 games, thrown in 21 innings and has struck out 38. THIRTY EIGHT! He's almost doubling his innings pitched with his strikeouts and has only walked 7 batters. Not only that, he's only allowed 12 hits and has A earned run. ONE!

That means his ERA is .42.

Freaking. Nasty.

The bad thing about all of this is that the Appy league is a long way from the majors. Very long. It's a rookie league on par with the league the Hudson Valley Renegades are in. There are at least 4 levels above that league in the entirety of the minor league system, and that's assuming the player doesn't go to the Brooklyn Cyclones the year after Kingsport. There's also a ton of things that could go wrong. Namely, arm injuries.

Barring everything bad that can happen, Szapucki might be one of, if not THE most exciting arms in the Mets pipeline, since Thor and Matz have graduated to the majors. Hopefully he keeps this up and moves through the system quickly.  You just don't see lefty's with control throwing mid to high 90's very often.

(BTW. He's not the only lefty from the 2015 draft tearing it up for the Mets. But his numbers are bonkers so I wanted to write about them on their own)