Teenage NY Mets prospect hasn’t gotten enough attention after a strong turnaround

You never know with these teenagers. Are they hanging outside of 711 collecting for charity or looking to ask you to buy them cigarettes? When it comes to teenage prospects in baseball, even less is known. One example is a forgotten member of the New York Mets farm system, Simon Juan.

Now three seasons deep into his tenure with the ball club, Juan has turned in two less than stellar performances. He batted .219/.310/.323 in the Dominican Summer League back in 2022. He followed it up with a .220/.293/.303 slash line in the Florida Complex League in 2023. Juan failed to advance to the next level and understandably so. Despite being a somewhat high-profile international free agent signing, he wasn’t doing much at all offensively.

Even the one thing about Juan’s game dropped off mightily from 2022 to 2023. He stole 16 bases in 17 attempts in the DOSL only to see it drop to 1 successful attempt in 3 tries one level up. Now 19 with his 20th birthday coming in mid-July, Juan finally showed some positive signs last year after repeating a grade.

Mets prospect Simon Juan finally had a season to help make him relevant

No longer present on a lot of the organization’s top prospect lists, Juan’s struggles as a freshman and sophomore might have been an early bump in the road. Last year resulted in a far better .273/.337/.459 slash line. He had 11 doubles and 7 home runs which were a big increase from the 5 two-base hits and pair of homers from the year prior at the same level. He did play significantly more, drawing 55 more plate appearances. Even so, the difference was noticeable with a solid .796 OPS to end the year.

Juan seemed to improve in other places, too. Defensive statistics aren’t quite as readily available for minor league players, especially those at such a low level. However, he committed just one error all year in comparison to 3 in each of the previous two seasons. It came as a left fielder, the most uncommon outfield position he played with just 38 innings logged. Primarily a center fielder in his professional career, Juan played 164.2 innings there of errorless baseball with another 135.1 in right field without a faux pas on the stat sheet.

Signs of finally showing he’s ready for the next step of his career, Juan led his team in virtually every offensive statistic with Jeremy Rodriguez, the impressive piece added in the 2023 Tommy Pham trade, being the only one to challenge him. The growth in power is something to keep a close eye on as this can be an attribute to suddenly become one of his more noteworthy weapons. He showed it off early in spring training, crushing a ball that would have made it out of the Yellowstone.