Things weren't looking so bright for the New York Mets in the early stages of the 2024 season. At their lowest point they stood 22-33 and far off the blistering pace being set by the Phillies and Braves. Not long before then they had thrown the keys to the starting third base job to Mark Vientos, who took the place of fellow youngster Brett Baty. The Mets' lineup has been different ever since, and the club's fortunes have turned around.
I loved the Vientos pick in the 2nd round of the 2017 draft for a couple of reasons. First, there's the tools, the measurables. It's a pure power stroke - he can hit it out of any park to any field, and you could see that coming when he was a mere high schooler. He didn't project as a Gold Glove type of third baseman, but you could see him staying there, with enough arm for the position.
There was a second, sneakier reason I loved the pick. His birthdate. He was less than 17 1/2 years old when he was drafted out of American Heritage HS in Florida. You don't see many December birthdays on high school draft picks, and if you do, they tend to be old for their class. (Interestingly, Francisco Lindor, his partner on the left side of the Met infield, was also very young for his draft class, with a November birthday.) Couple that birthdate with a projectable 6'4" frame and present power, and that's a superb risk/reward proposition in the 2nd round of the draft.
Why didn't he go earlier? Well, there's always been a lot of swing and miss here - some players with Vientos' tool set wash out before they reach Double-A. And it took him a little while before he became a consistent minor league producer. Each year I compile an ordered list of top minor league position player prospects based on performance and age relative to league and level. I take the player rankings with a grain of salt as the samples can be quite small at times - it's more of a master follow list, a starting point from which more traditional analysis can be undertaken.
Vientos has made my list four times (he's likely to do so again in 2024 based on his Triple-A performance earlier this season), making the Top 100 from 2021-23, peaking at #47 in 2021. Baty made my list three times (and could do so in 2024), peaking at #41 in 2022. These are not totally dissimilar prospects.
That said, neither was or is a slam-dunk prospect. Defensive ability is not taken into account on my lists, and no positional adjustments are made. Big-time power-hitting corner infield prospects often rank much higher in their peak seasons. So is Mark Vientos for real, or has he gotten ahead of himself a little bit?
He is and always has been a power-before-hit guy, as opposed to the preferred hit-before-power type. The swing-and-miss remains - his 27.4% K rate is almost a full standard deviation above league average. His 7.5% BB rate, though almost a half standard deviation below league average, is quite acceptable for a player in his first full MLB season and a healthy step up from his first extended trial last season.
Vientos destroys the baseball in the air - his 95.5 mph average fly ball exit speed is over a full standard deviation higher than league average. He also hits his line drives quite hard, a 97.2 mph average exit speed that is over a half standard deviation better than average. He doesn't hit his grounders very hard, however - his 85.6 mph averaged grounder exit speed is only in the league average range.
His batted ball profile by type is already a pretty mature one - his 3.8% pop up and 34.1% fly ball rates are almost exactly league average, so he's not one of those guys who can expect a sharp future upward power spike as he learns to elevate the baseball (like the Marlins' Jesus Sanchez, who I discussed last week).
A cursory look at Vientos' basic batting line, with all that power and a solid batting average in the mid-.280s despite all those strikeouts would correctly lead one to surmise that his BABIP is unsustainably high. He's actually been quite fortunate across all batted ball types. He hasn't been materially so in the air or on a line, where has posted more than respectable Adjusted Contact Scores of 267 and 111, respectively, but he's been incredibly lucky on the ground, where he has a 199 Unadjusted vs. a 92 Adjusted Contact Score. Vientos has been an extreme grounder puller this season but is hitting .292 AVG-.348 SLG on the ground anyway despite 1) ordinary grounder exit speed, and 2) the fact that the infield defense pretty much knows where the ball is going to be hit. So random chance has been a big factor.
Vientos "should be" hitting .256-.312-.493 with a 121 "Tru" Production+ this season. Still pretty darned good, but nowhere near the 150 wRC+ he was running through Sunday's games. His projection is lower, in fact, than Sanchez' 127 "Tru" Production+ figure at the time I wrote last week's article. The Marlin outfielder doesn't quite hit the ball as hard in the air, but hits it much harder on a line and especially on the ground. Plus, he is one of those guys with a low average launch angle that can be expected to rise as he begins to elevate the ball more, and he keeps the infield defense honest by smoking it to all fields.
So sure, I really like Mark Vientos. He could settle in nicely as a 30-HR guy with average hot corner infield defense. I do think he'll be more of a .250-.260 hitter, a Dean Palmer with a better glove type. Despite their actual numbers, I see a higher future upside for the Marlins' Sanchez than I do for Vientos.