Mets Minor League Players of the Week: Week Fourteen

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JT Benson​

Week: 4 G, 16 AB, .438/.500/1.188, 7 H, 1 2B, 1 3B, 3 HR, 2 BB, 4 K, 1/1 SB (High-A)

2026 Season: 33 G, 116 AB, .276/.361/.578, 32 H, 10 2B, 5 3B, 5 HR, 11 BB, 36 K, 8/11 SB, .355 BABIP (Single-A) / 28 G, 99 AB, .283/.377/.576, 28 H, 10 2B, 5 3B, 5 HR, 11 BB, 30 K, 5/8 SB, .359 BABIP (High-A)

There are some weeks where identifying a hitter of the week is a chore, and the best of the best still feels like scraping the bottom of the barrel. Other times, there are a dearth of options and it sucks to pass over someone who had one hell of a week because someone else had an even better one. This week was the latter. Nick Lorusso hit .300/.391/.750 with three doubles and two homers. John Bay hit .333/.455/.778 with two doubles and two homers. Nick Morabito hit .364/.417/.455 with two doubles and four stolen bases. Yonatan Henriquez hit .417/.417/.542 with three doubles and three stolen bases. Yonny Hernandez hit .571/.591/.762 with four doubles and two stolen bases.

Of those players, JT Benson really turned it up a notch. Benson has been on a tear since getting signed out of the indies earlier this year, but this week was especially impressive. I normally don’t like selecting players who didn’t play a “full week” (five or six games), but it’s hard to deny what he did this week; he had a 301 wRC+!

Offense is only about half of the equation of a player, and looking at Benson’s defense, he’s solid. The 24-year-old outfielder has average-to-above average speed and not only knows how to use it on the basepaths- where he has successfully stolen 13 total bases in 19 attempts this year and 33 in 38 attempts last season in the indies- but taps into it in the outfield as well. He is smooth out there, able to read the ball off the bat well, has a quick catch and release, and a strong arm. He has the combination of defensive skills that allow him to play all three outfield positions well enough, but he profiles best at this point in either left or right field for now due to a lack of reps and experience in center.

Daviel Hurtado​

Week: 1 G (1 GS), 6.0 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 6 K (Single-A)

2026 Season: 4 G (3 GS), 9.0 IP, 10 H, 6 R, 5 ER (5.00 ERA), 1 BB, 15 K, .409 BABIP (Single-A) / 6 G (6 GS), 28.1 IP, 13 H, 6 R, 6 ER (1.91 ERA), 4 BB, 24 K, .167 BABIP (High-A)

Daviel Hurtado had a solid week. Against the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels, he had a solid quality start, allowing one run in six innings pitched, scattering a pair of hits, walking one batter, and striking out six. I wouldn’t necessarily classify that kind of start as exceptional, but given the rest of the pickings for this week among the Mets minor league pitchers, that was the best individual performance. Jonah Tong is the only other starting pitcher who had a quality start, allowing two runs on four hits and two walks with three strikeouts in six innings. Everyone else? Not so much.

The 18-year-old Hurtado was signed by the Mets on January 15, 2023 after the young left-hander left Cuba. A native of Havana, he had been involved in baseball in the city for years, playing on the U-12 and U-15 Cuban National Baseball Teams. In 2022, he and his parents took up residency in the Dominican Republic and the left-hander began the vetting process by Major League Baseball to establish his eligibility to sign with an MLB club. The process went smoothly and quickly and he was granted his eligibility to sign that year, but given that most clubs had spent the majority of their international bonus pool monies, Hurtado and his representatives elected to wait to sign until 2023, giving him a better opportunity to sell his talent and maximize his signing bonus. Having agreed to an informal agreement in the months prior, Hurtado signed with the Mets and the two sides came to official terms, agreeing to a $640,000 signing bonus.

The left-hander was assigned to the Dominican Summer League for the 2023 season, but did not actually pitch, as Tommy John surgery kept him off the mound all season. He finally made his professional debut in 2024 with the FCL Mets and posted a 6.32 ERA in 15.2 innings, allowing 15 hits, walking 10, and striking out 23. He remained in the Florida Complex League to begin the 2025 season, but was promoted to Single-A St. Lucie after roughly a month, allowing a single earned run with the FCL Mets in 19.0 innings over 5 starts, scattering 8 hits, walking 5, and striking out 25. He remained with the St. Lucie Mets for the rest of the season and posted a 2.70 ERA in 46.2 innings over 13 appearances, 7 of which were starts. He allowed 45 hits, walked 19, and struck out 50.

The Mets had the 21-year-old begin the season with St. Lucie, and after posting a 5.00 ERA in 9.0 innings over 4 appearances, promoted him to High-A Brooklyn. The southpaw shrugged off the malaise he was showing in St. Lucie and has pitched well with the Cyclones. In 6 starts, Hurtado has a 1.91 ERA in 28.1 innings, allowing 13 hits, walking 4, and striking out 24.

Hurtado is listed at 6’1”, 165-pounds and is well-proportioned and lean. He stands on the far first base side of the rubber and throws from a high-three-quarters arm slot with a high leg kick and a long arm action through the back. His mechanics flow and are loose and smooth, leaving him in excellent fielding position in his follow-through.

Hurtado’s four-seam fastball sits in the mid-90s, ranging 90-96 MPH; he added a little velocity to it this season, and it is up roughly 2 MPH as compared to last season. The pitch has a low spin rate for a four-seam fastball, 2,190 RPM, giving it less ride and more sink. Overall, the pitch has been very hittable, which lowers his overall ceiling and is why he was never given serious consideration on the 2026 Top Prospect list despite posting sterling surface-level numbers- that and the fact that he bears a striking resemblance to Oliver Perez. He has been throwing the pitch a bit less this season, in favor of his breaking balls a bit more, which can only help him right now. Hurtado’s two-seam fastball is almost identical to his four-seam fastball in every way, from velocity to spin rate to induced vertical break, except it generally gets a few more inches of arm-side horizontal movement, about ten inches to his four-seam fastball’s five.

The southpaw’s curveball sits in the mid-70s-to-low-80s, featuring 55 inches of vertical drop and 5-10 inches of horizontal movement, making it a loopy, slurvy 11-5 bender. His slider sits in the mid-to-high-80s, featuring 35 inches of vertical drop and 3-5 inches of horizontal movement, giving the pitch hop. The two breaking balls tunnel well with each other, the slower curveball featuring more overall movement and the faster slider featuring less.

Hurtado was throwing a budding changeup infrequently in 2025, but he has since scrapped it, barely throwing the pitch during in-game situations this season. Despite the lack of a changeup, he has generally been slightly better against left-handed hitters over the course of his career, but has not ever exhibited extreme platoon splits one way or the other, dominating lefties or struggling against righties.

Hurtado is not only able to command all of his pitches, but the left-hander has pinpoint control. He can throw in the zone and outside of it with confidence, though gets beaten with regularity when he lives inside of it for too long. The southpaw is at his best when he is able to nip the zone with his fastball and then expand the zone with his breaking balls, getting batters to get themselves out either by inducing weak contact or swinging-and-missing. Between the sink from his fastball and weak contact from his breaking pitches, the left-hander has maintained extremely favorable batted ball splits over the course of his young career. This year, Hurtado has maintained a 22.6% line drive rate, 57.0% groundball rate, and 20.4% flyball rate in his 37.1 innings with St. Lucie and Brooklyn combined.

Players of the Week 2026​

Week One/Two (March 27-April 5): Hayden Senger/Cam Tilly​

Week Three (April 7-April 12): A.J. Ewing/Christian Scott​

Week Four (April 14-April 18): Randy Guzman/Jose Chirinos​

Week Five (April 21-April 26): A.J. Ewing/Channing Austin​

Week Six (April 30-May 3): A.J. Ewing/Jonah Tong​

Week Seven (May 5-May 10): Ryan Clifford/Jonathan Santucci​

Week Eight: (May 12-May 17): Jacob Reimer/Zach Thornton​

Week Nine: (May 19-May 24): Ryan Clifford/Channing Austin​

Week Ten: (May 26-May 31): Ryan Clifford/Jose Chirinos​

Week Eleven: (June 2-June 7): Vincent Perozo/Frank Camarillo​

Week Twelve: (June 9-June 14): JT Benson/Nick Carreno​

Week Thirteen (June 16-June 21): Nick Morabito/Jonathan Santucci​

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