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.
Shervyen Newton has seen his stock drop quite a bit this past year. Baseball America’s 2019 prospect write up for him happened right before the drop off. Born in the Netherlands, BA notes that he trained in Curacao in the same camp as Jonathan Schoop and Jurickson Profar. His stats in the minors paint the picture for while his stock suddenly rose and then dropped:
2016 DOSL: 150 PA, 118 AB, .169/.347/.229
2017 DOSL: 303 PA, 241 AB, .311/.433/.444
2018 Kingsport: 266 PA, 207 AB, .280/.408/.449
2019 Columbia: 423 PA, 382 AB, .209/.283/.330
BA’s write up includes that some scouts see a potential for a 70 power reaching in the future. “Newton works deep counts and collects lots of walks and strikeouts”. The latter part is what changed for him last year as he struck out 139 times in 382 ABs and his walks decreased from 46 to 37 despite going from 266 PA to 423.
He hit a bump in the road last year. He will almost definitely start again in Columbia this year. He’s going to turn 21 during the season, is still young and showed so much promise earlier, he can put it back together. In an interesting twist, the Mets didn’t protect him in the Rule V draft this year and no one else picked him up. Hopefully Newton can surprise all the teams that passed on him and turn out a big year this year.
