Last year I went through each of the Top 30 Mets Prospects in 2018 at the end of the season to see how they did in 2018 and where they are. I also did this in November/December 2018. I’ve been dragging my feet on this 30-part series this year because for the 2019 edition, the “where they are” for a lot of my favorite prospects are “not with the Mets anymore thank you BVW”.
We start with #30, Tylor Megill, a right handed pitcher with a BA Grade of 50 and risk rating of extreme. Before the 2019 season, Baseball America wrote about how Megill saw limited action in Brooklyn in his 2018 pro-debut but had a fastball between 92-96 and didn’t have a chance to work on his off-speed stuff due to his short outings. He’s 6′ 8″, and they project that the Mets would start to move him to a starter in the minors to allow him to work on his off-speed stuff. If he makes the majors, he’ll head to the bullpen.
2018: 10 G, 2 GS, 28.0 IP, 3.21 ERA, 1.143 WHIP, 11.6 K/9, 2.57 K/BB (+0.5 AgeDiff)
2019 Overall: 22 G, 11 GS, 71.2 IP, 3.52 ERA, 1.242 WHIP, 11.6 K/9
2019 Columbia: 14 G, 3 GS, 31.0 IP, 2.61 ERA, 1.226 WHIP, 11.9 K/9 (+1.2 AgeDiff)
2019 St. Lucie: 7 G, 7 GS, 35.2 IP, 4.04 ERA, 1.290 WHIP, 10.6 K/9 (+0.1 AgeDiff)
2019 Binghamton: 1 G, 1 GS, 5.0 IP, 5.40 ERA, 1.000 WHIP (-1.3 AgeDiff)
Well the Mets saw something they liked in Tylor because they moved him around quite a bit. He was drafted in 2018 and went to Brooklyn like may players out of college go (he had a 4.73 ERA his last season in Arizona, 2018). After a decent 2018 in Brooklyn, helping him get to the #30 spot on Baseball America’s book he started off in Columbia where he was quite a bit older than the competition and played like it, with a shut down ERA, a serviceable WHIP and a strong K/9. He then went to St. Lucie, which was age appropriate and returned down to Earth in terms of runs allowed but kept his WHIP largely the same and saw a modest decrease in the amount of strikeouts per 9.
He’ll be 24 next year. I would be surprised if we see him in Queens (a lot of things have to go wrong for the Mets, but it’s also the Mets). However I would expect that he would start the season either in St. Lucie or in Binghamton. The Mets have a real dearth of pitchers in the system if he turns in a good year at AA maybe he pushes himself into the conversation for a 40-man spot in 2021.
If the point of this article is to revisit Baseball America’s Top 30, then Megill performed exactly or better than they thought. He moved up multiple levels of the minors, no obvious step backs, etc. Personally, I’m always intrigued by pitchers with his height who can throw 96 mph.
