The Mets signed infielder Yolmer Sanchez and catcher Austin Allen to minor league contracts on Tuesday, the team announced. Both players will be in big league camp as non-roster invitees to spring training.
Sanchez, 31, won a Gold Glove with the 2019 White Sox and was their regular second baseman from 2017-19, batting a combined .253/.314/.368 in 1751 plate appearances. The glove-first switch hitter has tallied just 65 MLB plate appearances since that time, however, with an ugly .170/.302/.283 output in that tiny sample. Sanchez spent the 2023 season with the Braves’ Triple-A affiliate, for whom he turned in a .236/.381/.350 slash in 481 plate appearances.
Allen, who turns 30 today, once ranked as one of the better prospects in the Padres and Athletics systems. He’s only received 127 big league plate appearances, batting .195/.252/.288 in that time. However, Allen carries a stout .287/.349/.555 batting line in parts of four Triple-A seasons. He spent the ’23 season with the Marlins Triple-A club, batting .225/.312/.491 with 15 home runs in 366 trips to the plate. Allen has posted roughly average framing marks in the upper minors, per Baseball Prospectus, and he sports a career 23% caught-stealing rate between the big leagues and minors combined.
Sanchez joins a list of infield depth options that includes waiver claim Zack Short, free agent signee Joey Wendle and fellow minor league free-agent pickups Jose Iglesias and Rylan Bannon (both of whom will be in camp as non-roster invitees as well). Francisco Alvarez is expected to be the Mets’ everyday catcher, with Omar Narvaez and Tyler Heineman both as 40-man options behind him. Allen joins Tomas Nido as a non-roster entrant into the mix for playing time behind the dish.
No.
ZZZZZzzzzzzz…
must be the frigid weather..
At least i don’t want my scotch on the bbuurrrr rocks
@GiantJm:
Why not? Minor league contracts are no risk. If you need the depth you have them. If the Mets don’t like how either one of them plays they can just cut them.
Happy birthday to Austin Allen in that case, getting signed on your B-Day must be a good present
Painful this stuff even has to make Mets news.
I guess when the Mets say they will compete in 2024 it was in AAA and not in the big leagues. Long time Mets fan.
I like Nido, he got straighten out in the minors last year; vision thing?? and he ranks very high in framing as a backup.
Nido’s .728 OPS in Syracuse was 68 points below the league average of .796. Not sure that qualifies as getting straightened out. And the Mets never committed to competing in 2024. They paid a little lip service to the idea. But even there, Stearns has equivocated, saying in almost every interview that they want to compete, but not at the expense of being able to compete continuously in the future. Doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see that he means getting below the CBT threshold and the penalties that compromise their ability to build up the farm system.
@CanoSucks When did they ever say they were going to compete in 2024?
Yolmer?! I hardly know her!
I remember Yolmer’s being with the Sox, and his stats din’t look all that bad….then he only appeared in 11 games in 2020 and fell off the map for a year….any White Sox fan out there know what happened to hiim??
jammin: I wondered about that too. He was a pretty good player, then for some reason they cut him. Didn’t send him to the minors, didn’t trade him, just showed him the door. After he left Madrigal took over in 2020 and ’21. That was the last time the Sox had an actual second baseman.
Arguably if they kept Yolmer, they would have advanced in the 20 playoffs. Instrad they let butthead Madrigal bounce the team out of the series with Oakland with base running mistakes and errors.
He was / is the most fun guy on team sports. Who can forget his post game celebrations? Decided to next level it and after a walk off, ran onto the field with a tub of Gatorade and poured it….on himself
I feel like the Mets have signed 7,000 or so players this offseason.
I’m likely wrong on this.
Naw, not 7,000. Its only 6,228.
(Actually just 28 new players by my count. But not all signed. Two came via trade, and a few were claimed after DFA by another team.)