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.
After two straight days of reviewing prospects that are no longer with the Mets (Adam Hill and Eric Hanhold) today we get to review a player still with the team (before tomorrow we go back to players no longer on the team with Ross Adolph). Will Toffey was the second play acquired in the Jeurys Familia trade with Bobby Wahl.
BA noted before the 2019 season that Toffey “has an outstanding batting approach that helped him run a 16 percent walk rate in 2018 and a .375 on base percentage in pro ball” and that “he makes consistent hard, line-drive contact that equates to an average hit tool with gap power.” They speculate that he needs to develop more regular power to see playing time at the major league level and that he should be in Syracuse for the 2019 season. When the Mets acquired him from Oakland in 2018, he was playing in their A+ league, where Toffey was almost a year older than the average player. The Mets sent him to Binghamton where he was 1.3 years younger than average.
2019 Binghamton: 323 PA, 269 AB, .219/.347/.349, .696 OPS
First off, Toffey hit as advertised last year, putting up an on base percentage way higher than his batting average. That’s a positive sign. His power just wasn’t there, which is the opposite of a positive sign. Unlike BA’s prediction, Toffey did not get bumped to Syracuse last year and was the average age in Double A last year. Unless some crazy roster stuff happens, he’ll probably get bumped up to Syracuse this year.
