The Mets' minor league season is over for all but one affiliate, Triple-A Syracuse, whose season will be coming to a close shortly. With the 2026 season in its final stages, it's worth evaluating which prospects surprised fans and evaluators with their strong performances.
Some of these prospects are well-known amongst Mets fans, while others have yet to break through into mainstream conversation. Regardless, each of these five prospects has elevated their status and has a more favorable outlook than they did prior to 2026.
Note: all stats
The Mets recently handed out their 2026 Player Development Awards, with Mitch Voit receiving the esteemed Player of the Year Award. Voit's 2026 season was exceptional , but even as a former first-round pick, it wasn't a given.
Voit's first taste of professional baseball in 2025 was a struggle. The Michigan product slugged under .300, recording just three extra-base hits in 22 games with Low-A St. Lucie. Not that Voit is known for his power, but he simply wasn't dangerous with the bat in his hands during this brief stint.
Fast forward a year, and Voit raised his slugging percentage from .294 in Low-A to .431 between High-A and Double-A. He also raised his batting average by .040 points from .235 to .273, demonstrating a greater ability to put the ball in play.
A positive aspect from Voit's 2025 season that he carried over this year was his base-stealing ability. The speedy middle infielder recorded 20 steals in 22 games in 2025, and he topped that this year with 45 steals in 105 games. Voit's 45 steals led the entire Mets organization.
Given the shortcomings of former Mets first-round picks such as Kevin Parada and Colin Houck, it wasn't a sure thing that Voit would bounce back after his rough introduction to pro baseball. A phenomenal season now has him firmly as a top-five prospect in the organization and a big part of the team's future.
Despite being on the major league roster, the 26-year-old Nate Lavender still retains prospect status as he's logged just 17 innings in the big leagues. Any fan loyal enough to stick with the Mets during this disappointing season has witnessed just how impressive Lavender has been .
Being an older prospect, Lavender has seemingly knocked on the doorstep of the majors for years. In fact, he was pitching meaningful, effective innings for Syracuse back in 2023, but Tommy John surgery derailed both his 2024 and 2025 seasons. He pitched just seven innings in 2024 and missed all of 2025, which he spent in the Rays organization after they selected him in the Rule 5 Draft.
Lavender returned to the Mets following the 2025 season, and he appears to be back to pre-surgery form. The lefty recorded a 3.27 ERA in 25 relief appearances for Triple-A before finally getting the call to the big leagues. In 17 innings with the Mets, Lavender has a 1.59 ERA, a 0.88 WHIP, and a .183 batting average against.
It's difficult to be an effective pitcher immediately following what was essentially two years of recovery, but Lavender has been exactly that at the highest level. After the Mets shipped off their two premier lefty relievers -Brooks Raley and A.J. Minter-at the trade deadline, Lavender has cemented himself as a key piece of the 2027 bullpen.
Marco Vargas received a lot of hype as a young, high-ceiling teenager when the Mets acquired him alongside Ronald Hernandez in the 2023 deadline deal that sent David Robertson to Miami . He was in rookie ball at the time, and he's since worked his way up to Double-A.
The road from rookie ball to Double-A has been a tumultuous one for Vargas. After missing most of the 2024 season and struggling to a .608 OPS when he was healthy, Vargas recorded a .675 OPS in 2025. He missed time again this season, but he was a much better player when healthy this year than he had been the past few seasons.
The 21-year-old Vargas reached Double-A for the first time this season and he surpassed all expectations. In 53 games he recorded a .282 average, a .770 OPS, and 28 stolen bases with just one caught stealing. Vargas also recorded just three errors at shortstop after recording nine in a similar sample size a season ago.
Vargas is not quite the more-walks-than-strikeouts player he was when the Mets acquired him, but he still serves as a speedy, defense-first middle infielder who gets on base at a solid clip. At 21, there's even more room to grow.
Corey Collins was a sixth-round draft pick by the Mets in 2024. A product of the University of Georgia, Collins is a slugging first baseman with a fantastic eye. Those skills didn't translate well early in his Mets tenure, and injuries also brought him down. But his 2026 season has been everything the Mets could have hoped for from him and more.
Collins' first full professional season in 2025 was cut short due to injury, as he played in just 69 games. Saying he was awful might be putting it kindly. Collins had a .168 average and a .610 OPS across three levels, including rookie ball. He also hit just four home runs, a concerning sign for someone whose pop is one of their defining traits.
The 2026 season was much kinder to Collins, who spent time in both High-A and Double-A. The 24-year-old recorded an .833 OPS in 111 games, including a .902 OPS in 43 games at the Double-A level. He had 18 home runs, 61 RBIs, and 81 walks in his rebound season.
He still struggled to hit for average this season, batting just .238, but what Collins lacks in average, he makes up for with his on-base and slugging abilities. The first baseman has a chance to be a regular contributor in Triple-A next season if he continues to get on base and mash the ball. Nobody thought that was a possibility before this season.
Felipe De La Cruz has spent six seasons in the Mets' minor league system and has been average, at best, over that period of time. His best full season before this one was probably in 2024, when he went 3-9 with a 4.25 ERA for High-A Brooklyn. He followed that up with a poor 2025, recording a 5.04 ERA between Double-A and Triple-A. But against everyone's expectations, De La Cruz became a real weapon in 2026.
The 25-year-old lefty spent most of his season in Double-A, pitching in just three games in Triple-A in the middle of the year. Pitching mostly out of the bullpen, he recorded a 2.87 ERA in 47 innings across 36 games, allowing a career-low 7.1 hits per nine and 0.6 home runs per nine.
Walks and baserunners in general are still an issue for De La Cruz, who, despite his strong numbers, still recorded a 1.319 WHIP. That suggests he might regress next season, but if he can become even slightly better at limiting baserunners, De La Cruz has a chance to become a really solid lefty reliever.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/mlb/mets/onsi as 5 Mets Prospects Who Exceeded Expectations in 2026 (And What's Their Future in 2027) .
