MLB Scout's Video View: Analyzing Mets Prospect Ronny Mauricio

Image credit: Ronny Mauricio (Photo by Tom DiPace)

While the game is away, Baseball America is digging into its video database and asking scouts around the game to analyze what they see from some of the sport’s best prospects. Today’s subject is Mets shortstop Ronny Mauricio.

Mauricio ranked as the No. 3 prospect in the 2017 international signing class and inked with the Mets for $2.1 million. He opened the year as the second-youngest prospect in the South Atlantic League, and spent all season with low Class A Columbia. He hit .268/.307/.357 with the Fireflies, including 20 doubles and four home runs.

Mauricio will take time, but he should prove to be worth the wait. He ranks as the Mets’ No. 1 prospect and No. 66 on this year’s Top 100.

Here our our previous installments:

Here’s the video below, followed by what our scout had to say.

SCOUT: Mauricio has a long, lean body on a good frame. He has plenty of room to gain strength and fill into his frame. He lacks present strength but shows all indicators that he will gain strength through natural maturation. Has the looseness in all of his actions on both sides of the ball that will only continue to get better. This is not a guy who makes you worry about the body or athleticism backing up on him at any point.

Mauricio’s defensive actions are smooth and appear to come easy. His hands are soft and quick, and he can get rid of the ball when he needs to and shorten up the arm stroke. It’s a solid-average arm that plays from multiple slots. For a gangly look, he moves smoothly through the ball on the slow roller. He makes some young, immature mistakes on throws but I see no reason why that won’t iron out with maturity and knowing when to put the ball in his pocket.

I see this guy sticking at shortstop and playing it at a solid level. He’s not a burner on the bases and isn’t going to be an impact baserunner, but the footspeed plays better at shortstop with first-step quickness.

Offensively, he is overaggressive at the plate. He chases out of the zone and needs more time to learn the strike zone and keep pitchers within it. He gets himself out more times than the pitcher gets him out. As noted above, doesn’t have much strength yet, so it’s not the loud impact off the bat, but this swing works from both sides of the plate.

Mauricio shows good timing, a clean and efficient path and loose hands to the finish. Those are all ingredients that make you like the future potential of the bat. Seeing him, I liked that he didn’t miss many pitches in the zone. There was off-barrel contact and weak contact, but he didn’t swing and miss and was right on a lot of pitches. He seems to recognize spin and stays balanced in his approach.

I think this guy ends up being a solid hitter in the big leagues. I don’t see huge impact with big OPS or home runs numbers, but I like the swing enough here to see this guy being a good hitter. He will need to grow into a better approach at the plate, but definitely has time on his side.

Ultimately, I see Mauricio as a solid major league shortstop. The actions are everything you look for and natural maturity will help in every aspect of his game. You show up to a big league park and this is what MLB shortstops look like. He has a good foundation of loose actions on both sides of the ball.

He needs some small refinement in terms of when to pick his spots to be aggressive both on defense and in the box, but this is what they look like.