What to expect from Mets prospect Luisangel Acuña in 2024

When owner Steve Cohen met with the media in late-June at an impromptu press conference, he said he was preparing his management team for all possibilities and contingencies as the Mets headed into the trade deadline. It appeared he was using this media session to try to motivate the players to turn a season around that was on the downhill.

Unfortunately, that turnaround did not occur in a meaningful way, and those contingencies were put into place when surprisingly the Mets traded David Robertson to the Marlins during a rain delay on July 27. This signified that the Mets indeed were sellers, but to what extent? Most thought this meant the Tommy Pham and Mark Canha rental types would move. It was up in the air what the Mets would do with their two $43 million arms in Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander.

There were layers to this with Scherzer’s salary, which the Mets would need to absorb plenty to get a meaningful return in addition to a no-trade clause and an opt-out that potential acquiring teams wanted him to waive. Two days after the trade of Robertson, the buzz starting growing Scherzer was getting close to being traded to the Rangers.

This led to me and plenty others scouring the Twitter/X feeds of Rangers minor league affiliates to see who was out of the lineup that day. There were names like Sebastian Walcott who was out due to disciplinary reasons and Brock Porter who was reportedly scratched from his start and then he wasn’t. When Double-A Frisco’s lineup came out and was missing 21-year-old infielder Luisangel Acuña, word began to leak that Acuña was the return to the Mets for Scherzer. One day later, Scherzer waived his no-trade clause as well as his opt out and he was officially a Ranger and Acuña a Met.

Prior to joining the Mets organization Acuña was having a strong campaign for Frisco with a slash line of .315/.377/.453 (.830 OPS). Although some of those numbers were aided by a .381 BABIP which insinuates he had a level of good luck. His baseline stats with Double-A Binghamton were not nearly as good with a .243/.317/.304 slash line, albeit with a much lower .288 BABIP. We are ultimately not talking about huge sample sizes, as he only played a month’s worth of games with Binghamton, but things clearly went much better in his first half.

When you look a little deeper breaking down his time with Frisco and Binghamton, his walk rate was nearly identical, his strikeout rate with Binghamton was almost one percent lower than with Frisco. His batted ball profile showed a significant uptick in fly ball rate with Binghamton and a slightly lower groundball rate. Those on the surface are good things, but his line-drive percentage also dipped, and with Acuña’s skillset, you would want him to focus on hitting more line drives. He made swing adjustments going into 2023 to reduce his groundball rate and was successful.

That skillset? Well, Luisangel is not like his older brother Ronald Acuña of the Braves. We can get that one out of the way. That does not mean he is not an exciting prospect in his own right. Acuña has made real strides over the last year-plus in both making contact as well as plate discipline, though he is still susceptible to chasing breaking balls at times. I do think there is potential for him to hit in the .270-.280 range with reasonably good on-base percentage and 30+ doubles. 

Home run power is not expected to be a big part of his game, one scout I spoke to said, “I’d really have him focus on trying to spray line drives gap to gap so he can use his speed to his advantage.” Right now, I don’t believe there’s much more than 10-12 home runs in there.

He is a plus-athlete with high baseball IQ coming from a baseball-rich family that translates both into the field and on the base paths. Defensively, he has played mostly shortstop and second base and has begun to dabble in center field. Most scouts believe second base is going to be his best long-term home. As a base runner he posts plus sprint speeds and has stolen at least 40 bases every full season in the minors including 57 in 2023. He should be a stolen base threat at the next level as well.

In 2024, Acuña, who is already on the Mets 40-man roster, should begin the season with Triple-A Syracuse. As I wrote last week in what to expect from Drew Gilbert piece, the 2024 season is not necessarily an “all-in” season for the Mets, but rather one where they intend to contend for a playoff spot while also giving ample opportunity to the top young players in their system to establish themselves on the biggest stage.

Acuña is another consensus top 100 prospect in the Mets system and he is on a similar tier to the other top prospects in the system, Jett Williams and Gilbert, who all could potentially make their big-league debut in 2024.