I’m excited about this Non-Roster Invitee and I hope you are too. If you hang out with Mets-Prospect-Heads and force them to say who is the “unknown”, possibly hidden talent in the Mets system, they’ll point you in the direction of Paul Sewald.
How did Paul get to this point, let’s go to my favorite resource, the Baseball Prospectus 2017 Annual who chimes in with this lineout: “Paul Sewald has pitched well at every level, and was by far the most effective pitcher for Las Vegas in 2016, but he never got a chance to add some major league per diem to his $1000 signing bonus out of the draft”.
Like many pitchers that land themselves as NRI, they have numbers that suggest they are better than their initial scouting reports on their skills. Scouting Reports on skills push players into prospect status as their skills are extrapolated out. Paul produces solid numbers. Eventually, that turns heads and it’s the part about him being the most effective pitcher in Las Vegas of all geographic locations, that turns heads.
Paul was drafted out of the University of San Diego in 10th round of the 2012 draft and is from Las Vegas (which had to lead to some interesting times last season). He came into the Mets system in a big way as a 22 year old with a 1.88 ERA over 16 starts and 28.2 innings while posting his first several sub 1.000 WHIPs and a 11.0 K/9.
He spent all of 2013 with Savannah where he posted another great ERA, this time 1.77, over 35 games and 56.0 innings, another sub 1.000 WHIP and 10.8 K/9. 2014 he spent the bulk of his time with St. Lucie where he posted a 1.73 ERA over 40 games, 52.0 innings, a 1.0338 WHIP and a 10.7 K/9.
Then in 2015 he made it to Binghamton where he tossed a 1.75 ERA over 51.1 innings and 24 saves with his best WHIP at 0.857 and a his worst K/9 at 9.8. Finally last year he tossed 65.2 innings with Vegas posting a 3.29 ERA, his worst WHIP at 1.203, but one of his best K/9 at 11.0. He also recorded 19 saves.
As for his actual pitches, Sewald has your standard fastball (above 90, not going to completely blow you away if you’re a major league hitter) and a slider. There’s a small write-up here about his approach to pitching and while the Mets should consider him given what other pitchers at Las Vegas did when they jumped over to Queens.
I’m excited to Paul this spring as the Mets look to round-out the depth chart outside of the 40 man.
