I’ve covered the minor leagues for 15 years and never thought there would be a season I wasn’t covering Minor League Baseball.
Then 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic happened.
Instead of there being a minor league season, there was an alternative site for each organization, with the Mets being in Brooklyn.
This site was primarily used by the organization as a system to have players ready in case of an outbreak, or simply as call-ups. The Mets had some of their top prospects at the site, most notably Francisco Alvarez – ranked as SNY's No. 1 prospect – Matthew Allan, Ronny Mauricio, and Brett Baty.
The question is, during unprecedented times, what did players do to try to limit potentially stunted development with no minor league season?
I spoke to four prospects via phone and text to get a sense of how they handled the situation, including many training facilities being shut down all summer.
Prospect Jake Mangum said that he relocated for a couple months because he found an open training facility that, prior to the big league season restarting, had big league All-Stars there. Thus, he was able to get real at-bats against All-Star caliber arms.
“When we got sent home from spring training on March 11, I took every day working on getting better by improving my swing and physique," Mangum told SNY. "I went home and worked on what I needed to relentlessly. I did garage workouts in Rankin County, Mississippi and also traveled to West Palm Beach, Florida to an open training facility and worked out with big league players and got real live at-bats against them."
Other prospects told SNY that they trained with former coaches and teammates at local fields. One prospect I spoke to hit in a batting cage every day and had family members hit him ground and fly balls, but everyone I spoke with tried to make it work in his own way for his own situation.
The Mets were allowed to hold their instructional camp in St. Lucie this fall, with the team inviting 60 of its best prospects to partake in a camp that started Oct. 3. It was disbanded two weeks earlier than expected due to two cases of COVID-19, but prospects painted a picture of what their day-to-day was like.
Prospects would be up early and at the ballpark by 7 a.m. and go straight through until 2-3 p.m. Every day they played a seven-to-nine inning intrasquad game, depending on available pitchers and pitch counts.
They were not permitted to travel, thus they didn’t get to compete against other teams. Everything was internal, and it gave players the opportunity to hit, pitch, run and play defense in live action. It also gave the player development department time to watch these prospects while heading into a complicated decision-making process.
Often, a player’s assignment level for a given season is based on where they played the year prior and how they performed. In 2021 will the Mets place prospects where they expected them to be in the 2020 season? Or will they place prospects where they envisioned them being in 2021 if a 2020 season had happened normally?
With the dismissal of Jared Banner, the Mets will have to bring in a new head of player development who will probably be making assessments largely based on spring training results next year.
While it was an unusual year, the prospects interviewed expressed that while they did not get game action this season, they felt it was a good year to remake their bodies and heal from any nagging injuries that had bothered them.
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December 10, 2020 at 11:33PM
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Mets prospects explain how they continued to develop despite cancelled 2020 season - Yahoo Sports
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