Phillip Evans has a non-roster invite for a second straight year for the Mets. The only difference this time for the 25 year old who was drafted in the 15th round of the 2011 draft: he actually made the majors last year.
We previewed him last year around this time. This was our critical takeaway:
Now there’s a lot of players in the way of Phillip Evans getting the bench spot (Reyes, Walker, Wright, Flores, Rivera and Cabrera) for three positions. I’m curious to see what happens if Evans is given time in the PCL. does he keep up the hitting? He hasn’t put numbers like he did last year at any other time.
Then we went on to make a really wrong prediction:
I am confident about this though: If Phillip Evans puts up similar numbers, or close numbers, to what he did in Binghamton last year, and somehow doesn’t make the 40-man by the end of the season, he’s going to have to be traded otherwise he’s going to get snatched in the Rule V draft.
Oops. When you’re wrong its only polite to admit it.
Last year in the majors Evans got 38 PA’s and hit .303/.395/.364. Last year he hit .279/.341/.418. Even though he took a step back in the minors in 2017 compared to 2016 in terms of raw numbers, he did it all at Triple A and was successful in an extremely limited outing in the majors.
So far this spring he has spent some time learning to catch, something he has never done, in order to stretch his value. He once again this season has the same issue he had last year. There are a lot of players on the active roster ahead of him for the infield. It will only get worse when TJ comes back. But if Evans keeps hitting, he’ll have to come up at some point.
