Mets prospect Kevin Parada on first full pro season: 'It was just a good year all around'
New York Mets catcher Kevin Parada during a spring training workout, Monday Feb. 13, 2023 in Port St. Lucie, FL. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
SURPRISE, Ariz. — Ten months later, Kevin Parada got to go home this weekend.
His first full season of professional baseball was a bona fide odyssey. It started early, when he arrived in Port St. Lucie, Florida, in January for a Mets minicamp, and ended late, when his Arizona Fall League season wrapped up Thursday.
In between, he received his first exposure to The Show in the form of major-league spring training, reached the upper minors, made defensive strides in which he takes pride and struggled to hit — for basically the first time in his life — for stretches.
That is a lot.
Although the 22-year-old catcher prospect — No. 5 overall in the Mets’ system, according to MLB Pipeline, and No. 10 per Baseball America — figures to be at least a year away from the majors, an eventful, elongated season proved instructive.
“It was just a good year all around. Can’t complain one bit,” Parada told Newsday after his last game with the Glendale Desert Dogs. “I have a lot to learn.”
First comes the hitting, the skill that allowed Parada to shoot up the draft boards in 2022, when the Mets selected him in the first round (11th overall).
Parada described his offensive performance as “good” but also “not ideal.”
Spending most of the season with High-A Brooklyn, he batted .265 with a .340 OBP and .447 slugging percentage — solid numbers, not dominant ones. He also struck out in one out of every four plate appearances, ranking in the middle of the pack in that league, but walked only 8% of the time, which is below average.
When the Mets promoted him to Double-A Binghamton for a 14-game cameo near the end of the season, he got eaten up: .185/.250/.389 with 23 strikeouts to four walks in 60 plate appearances.
He followed that up with more of the same (.186/.240/.371) during a six-week AFL season.
“Obviously, there’s things I want to get better at,” Parada said. “I got to Double-A, I got to face good pitching there, face good pitching here in the Fall League, big league-esque pitching talent-wise. I’m excited for an offseason to reset, take that information and get ready for next year.
“My goal is to be a little more disciplined. Trust what I’m looking for, whether it’s a fastball away or whatever my approach is for that day or that week or whatever it is for the season, and just sticking to it. That’s the hard thing: When things don’t go as well at times, you might want to change things, and that’s not the ideal situation. So definitely that’s my biggest thing.”
Parada said he had had hard times in baseball before, but “not to the extent that I have this year.”
“I don’t think I had a bad year by any means. It’s just one of those things that, it happens,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that I can improve on, but there’s a lot of things I got a lot better at. Baseball is hard. I’m excited because it’s like, yeah, I had some struggles, but that’s part of the game. It’s what happens when you play 150, 160 games in a year.”
His last point is a good one, especially in the context of this being his first go-around in pro ball.
In 2022, for example, Parada played a 60-game college season, had a lengthy break and dabbled in the lower minors near the end of the summer.
In 2023, he jumped into the deep end, racking up a whopping 87 games behind the plate alone (plus another 33 as a DH).
Parada’s entry into the Mets’ system came with questions about his defensive abilities. He felt good about his recent progress.
“I got a lot better at catching, in my opinion,” he said. “Whether the numbers show it or not — I don’t really look at the numbers — but as far as how I feel defensively and my confidence back there, I can’t be prouder about that.
“Receiving, definitely. Throwing, it’s been a work in progress, but I think from January to now, I’m light years ahead of where I was. So it’s one of those things that I’m always going to have to work on, always going to have to keep getting better at, but I’m a lot more confident than I was six, seven, eight — 10 — months ago.”
The other bigger-picture issue about Parada’s future with the franchise is that he plays a position that, as of last season, belongs to Francisco Alvarez, who actually is three months younger than Parada.
There are, of course, versions of this in which both carve out roles with the Mets. But it’s also possible that the Mets will treat Parada as a trade chip.
President of baseball operations David Stearns recently said his preference is not to trade from the top of the farm system regularly, part of the Mets’ overarching goal of developing a consistent pipeline of homegrown talent. But he took less of a hard-line stance than his predecessor, Billy Eppler.
“Does that mean we’re never going to trade prospects? Of course not,” Stearns said. “Does it mean we’re going to be cautious when we do? Yeah. And does it mean that we’re going to maybe do it a little bit judiciously and make sure it’s the right moment and the right time for our organization to do that? I think that’s probably fair. But we’re never going to shut down a conversation.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
