NY Mets prospect traded in 2024 looks ready to break out in a big way

The 2024 season was generally a fun one for New York Mets fans, as the club clawed its way out of a 24-33 start in order to win 89 games and advance all the way to the NLCS before falling to the eventual World Series champion Dodgers in six games. Before that exciting postseason run could begin, however, president of baseball operations David Stearns needed reinforcements at the trade deadline.

Stearns opted for a quantity-over-quality approach that year, bringing in lower-tier pitching help like Paul Blackburn and a platoon bat in Jesse Winker. One of the bigger names the Mets wound up being able to add was right-hander Ryne Stanek, who the Mariners moved the same day they acquired Yimi Garcia from the Blue Jays. In order to bring Stanek into the fold, the Mets surrendered outfield prospect Rhylan Thomas.

An 11th-round pick by New York in the 2022 draft, Thomas had made it to Triple-A Syracuse but wasn't hitting much at the time, with a middling .663 OPS at the highest level of the minors at the time of the trade. That performance was commensurate with his prospect pedigree, as he just barely squeezed onto MLB Pipeline's Top 30 Mets prospects list as the 30th name.

Rhylan Thomas had a huge spring training and looks ready to do more

Flash forward to 2026, however, and Thomas is putting himself on the big league radar in a much bigger way. He tore the cover off the ball all throughout Spring Training, hitting .486 with a 1.319 OPS and more walks than strikeouts in 19 games. Those otherworldly numbers weren't enough to earn him a spot on a crowded Mariners roster, but he already got a three-game cup of coffee in the majors last year and could be just an injury or two away from getting more significant run in the Seattle outfield.

It would be understandable if Mets fans saw Thomas knocking on the door of the majors and were wishing he was still in the organization to provide some competition for one of the team's weaker bench bats like Jared Young, particularly after Mike Tauchman was sidelined by a torn meniscus to start the season. That's especially true given Stanek's lackluster regular season production with the Mets, as he posted a 6.06 ERA in 17 games for the team down the stretch.

Fortunately, Stanek offered a much more solid body of work during the 2024 postseason. In eight frames during the playoffs, Stanek posted a 3.38 ERA while striking out a batter an inning. That postseason performance helped salvage the deal, and while Stanek struggled again after re-signing with the club in 2025, that additional year was not part of the trade that sent Thomas to the Mariners.

Some level of future pain has to be expected anytime you trade prospects for rentals at the deadline, in that context Thomas's breakout this spring is hardly the end of the world for Mets fans. Even so, we'll want to keep memories of that 2024 postseason run in mind if Thomas returns to the majors and makes an impact in Seattle this year.