This is the second year where we are walking through the previous season’s Baseball America’s Top Prospect handbook, looking at the all the Mets to see how they are developing against Baseball America’s Projections.
For a second straight day we look at player who is no longer in the Mets organization. Eric Hanhold was DFA’d by the Mets in September to make room for Donnie Hart, a move widely regarded as poor roster management. Eric Hanhold was then picked up by the Orioles who then DFA’d him this winter but no one else picked him up (the Mets let this opportunity to un-do their previous move slip by) so Hanhold is now off the Orioles roster and has an NRI to spring training.
Hanhold was one of the many pitchers acquired by the Mets in their 2017 sell-off. He was traded for an August waiver wire deal with the Brewers for Neil Walker. He threw quite hard and had a hard slider which BA described as “devastating late break and wipeout potential in and out of the strikezone”. They predicted that he would see a lot of time at the major league level in 2019 as an “up and down reliever” pitching himself into more important situations as the year went on.
2019 Minors: 48 G, 63.1 IP, 3.84 ERA, 1.484 WHIP, 7.7 K/9
Baseball America wasn’t write about his playing time in the major league level, but the team did such a bad job with the roster, especially relievers, this isn’t surprising at all. Hanhold had a lot of promise and looked to be one of the better pitchers the Mets acquired in 2017, but it just didn’t work out. Despite being an NRI to Orioles camp, he has a decent chance to break camp with the team or find his way to Baltimore at some point this season. We wish him nothing but the best.
