Just Mets

Mets infield prospect Matt Reynolds has turned some heads in Port St. Lucie this spring.

A second round selection by the Mets in 2012, Reynolds was a third baseman at the University of Arkansas. He hasn’t exactly been a can’t-miss prospect throughout his professional career. He hit .259 with a .702 OPS over 42 games in his first professional season in Single-A Savannah in 2012. He then struggled in 2013 with Single-A St. Lucie, hitting just .226 with a .639 OPS, drawing only 36 walks in 488 plate appearances while committing 21 errors at shortstop that year.

After the 2013 season, Reynolds worked with hitting instructor Rick Strickland, who has a baseball academy in St. Louis.

“I was pulling off the ball really bad, so I was really working on staying through the middle and swinging through the zone. All of that hard work paid off [in 2014],” Reynolds recently told me.

Reynolds saw instant success from his work last winter. He hit .355 with an .852 OPS in 55 games with Double-A Binghamton. He was then promoted to Triple-A Las Vegas in mid-2014, and hit .333 with an .864 OPS under Wally Backman. He was a 2014 Sterling Award recipient in September, an award which recognizes top performers in the organization.

“[Backman] pulled me aside and told me to stick with my strengths and not worry about my weaknesses,” he said. “He told me they’re weaknesses for a reason. That really helped me out because I realized I was doing things I wasn’t capable of doing.”

Reynolds’ defense is still a work in progress – he committed 17 errors at shortstop between Binghamton and Las Vegas last year. But he still sees himself primarily as a shortstop, and wants to focus on his development at that position.

“I feel I’m strongest and most comfortable at shortstop,” Reynolds explained. “I feel like I can play there in the big leagues. Obviously, there are a lot of things I can work on and always improve on. But, I feel like I am most comfortable there.”

Terry Collins intends to take a long look at Reynolds during Spring Training.

“We will just continue to play him, see how he handles the bat as we get deeper into spring,” Collins explained to reporters on Tuesday. “He’s not a flashy guy. He does all the little things real well, he handles the bat. They tell me he’s a very, very good baserunner. It’s fun to see those kind of guys play the game, because they play it right. They tell me he’s a very intelligent kid out on the field, so we will see how it translates.”

Reynolds is in tremendous shape this winter, thanks to spending a portion of the winter at Barwis Methods in Port St. Lucie. He’s more than likely slated to re-join Backman again at Triple-A Las Vegas, barring something extreme at the big league level. But given the dearth of talent at shortstop in the upper levels of the organization, Reynolds could be the primary alternative at the position should he merit a promotion.