The Mets signed 16 year old Ricardo Cespedes yesterday, actually on his 16th birthday. Cespedes just made the cut to be signed this year by 8 days. If he was 8 days younger, teams would not be able to sign him until next July.
According to Baseball America, Cespedes has “a nice swing and a line-drive, gap-to-gap approach”. The Mets reached an agreement with him in July but had to wait until his 16th birthday to sign him (which makes sense). Anyway, at the age of 16, Cespedes is already 6 feet tall and 2 inches. He’s an outfielder right now, and speculation is he will start in center field.
Before you get excited, the reason you don’t hear a lot of press around these signings is the how far down the charts these guys are. It’s essentially like giving 725 K (Cespedes’s contract) to a high school sophomore/junior and their have been few players that have accurately projected into stars from that age.
