Luke Ritter has garnered a lot of attention over the last two seasons. He was drafted in 2019 of Wichita and played in 68 games for Brooklyn that season, hitting .245/.351/.371 with only four homers.
It’s the season after the draft where numbers for prospects start to pop, but thanks to the pandemic, there was no minor league baseball. In 2021 he went to high A and hit .232/.311/.436 over 73 games with 14 home runs. Ritter had a fairly average 2022 season hitting .204/.311/.361 with 15 home runs across Binghamton and Syracuse.
In 2023 Ritter finally started to turn some heads. He started the year back down in Binghamton and had a .958 OPS over 43 games. He then got promoted back to Syracuse and had a .808 OPS over 64 games – both of these were career highs in the minor league. In total he hit 27 home runs while slashing .244/.372/.496.
Then last season he just went on a tear, hitting .257/.369/.480 with 26 home runs over 134 games for Syracuse. His power last year coincided at the same time when the Mets offense was faltering. There was noise across social media to call up Luke. His play earned him a spot on Team USA for the Premier12 tournament this past off-season where he hit 5-for-20 with two doubles and a home run.
Ritter has shown in the minors that he has some pop. There are just a lot of players in front of him on the depth chart. On the major league level there is Pete Alonso, Mark Vientos and Jesse Winker. Ritter is also competing against Joey Meneses and Jared Young. Young has the upper hand right now because he is on the 40-man roster.
Spring hasn’t had a great start to spring so far, going 0-for-10 across five games with three strikeouts. To move up the depth chart, he has to show that 2023 and 2024 were not flukes. He has a solid chance of being called up at some point this summer, especially because he’s 28-years old and the Mets are going to need to determine what they have in Ritter. If he goes on a streak again this spring, he may push out other bench players.
