Mets Minors Players of the Week: Carlos Gomez Continues to Rake
Syracuse Mets – Carlos Gomez
Week Stats: 6-for-18, 2 R, 2B, 2 HR, 5 RBI, 2 BB, 2 HBP, CS
Season Stats: .274/.336/.479, 9 2B, 5 HR, 19 RBI, 5 SB, 4 CS
Gomez’s hot hitting continues, and sooner or later, an organization who has preached the best 25 guys will feel the pressure to call him up. That’s if they already don’t feel that pressure.
With Gomez’s homer on Monday, he had a streak of three straight games with a homer. When he homered on Friday, he homered in four out of his last five games. Even when his nine game streak of reaching base safely was finally snapped, he responded by going 1-3 with a HBP and an RBI.
Binghamton Mets – Harol Gonzalez
Week Stats: 6.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K
Season Stats: 3-0, 2.85 ERA, 0.880 WHIP, 2.2 BB/9, 10.8 K/9
In a brilliant performance, Gonzalez would pitch the first 6.2 innings of a combined no-hitter that was finished by Ryder Ryan. In the game, Gonzalez went back to what has made him an interesting Mets prospect. He was spotting his pitches well, and he kept the Harrisburg Senators off-balance.
As if dominating from the mound wasn’t enough for Gonazalez, he would also have a good day at the plate going 2-for-4 with two RBI. Really, this game was as good as a it gets for a pitcher, and when you look at the organization as a whole, this is the type of complete performance you would expect out of a pitcher like Jacob deGrom or Noah Syndergaard.
While Gonzalez isn’t that type of pitcher, if he is able to build off of this performance and continue to make adjustments in Double-A, we may eventually see him as a teammate with those two pitchers.
St. Lucie Mets –Kevin Smith
Week Stats: 5.2 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 9 K
Season Stats: 3-2, 2.83 ERA, 1.286 WHIp, 3.1 BB/9, 9.8 K/9
The Tampa Bay Rays have the second best farm system in baseball. Their High-A affiliate, the Charlotte Stone Crabs, features a lineup with Taylor Walls, Vidal Brujan, Moises Gomez, and Garrett Whitley. According to MLB Pipeline that is four of the Rays top 30 prospects.
That lineup was the exactly lineup Smith shut down. In 5.2 innings, Smith allowed just four hits and two walks while striking out nine. None of those four hits went for extra bases.
When he was drafted, Smith was viewed as a potential left-handed bullpen option. So far, the Mets have refrained from making him that from the beginning. When he moves the ball around the strike zone the way he did against the Stone Crabs, he shows he may just have a higher ceiling than most anticipated.
Columbia Fireflies – Gerson Molina
Week/Career Stats: 250/.318/.500, 2 2B, HR, 5 RBI, CS, BB
Molina has not played baseball in nearly three years after leaving Cuba. This past offseason, the Mets used their pool money to sign him to see if his raw tools could be developed to make him a top prospect in the Mets farm system.
While you may have expected rust from him, there wasn’t any to be seen. In his first at-bat, he hit a double. By the end of the week, he would hit his first career homer.
Gerson Molina hit his first professional home run tonight for Columbia. He has three extra-base hits in his first five games. #Mets pic.twitter.com/8BZ6tTVj9Z
— Jacob Resnick (@Jacob_Resnick) May 11, 2019
While you may want to argue Molina is old for this level, he has played fewer games over the past three years than anyone else in the South Atlantic League. If this is how good he looks while he is still getting back up to speed, imagine how well he is going to play once he is able to get into a groove.