Minor League Mondays: Carson Benge Is Having Little Trouble In Brooklyn

One of the challenges of evaluating hitters, particularly left-handed ones, in High-A Brooklyn is the challenges of playing their home games at Maimonides Park on Coney Island. The ballpark's location leaves it prone to intense wind that suppresses left-handed pop, which is why top prospect Ryan Clifford struggled there last season before getting moved up to AA Binghamton. The latest top New York Mets' prospect to face the Coney Island wind wall is outfielder Carson Benge, who is the focus of this week's edition of Minor League Mondays.

Mets' outfield prospect Carson Benge has gotten off to a fast start for High-A Brooklyn.

The Mets took Benge, 22, in the first round of last year's draft out of Oklahoma State. Benge played two ways in college like his former teammate Nolan McLean, but unlike McLean he opted to commit to just being a hitter right out of school, allowing him to focus solely on one side of the ball. After a solid cameo at Low-A St. Lucie last summer, where he hit .273 with two home runs and 8 RBI in 15 games, the Mets pushed Benge up to Brooklyn to start the 2025 campaign. The increased competition hasn't faced Benge, who is hitting .280 with five doubles, a triple, a home run and nine RBI in his first 21 games for the Cyclones.

Scouts like a lot of Benge's traits as a hitter, particularly his ability to make contact and go the opposite way with power. That opposite field power has helped Benge survive Brooklyn's wind tunnel, but the hope is that the Mets will be able to help their third-ranked prospect (according to MLB.com) be more effective pulling the ball for extra base hits as he advances up the minor league ladder.

Another positive for the Mets is that Benge is an incredible athlete with the speed necessary to man center field, which is where the Cyclones have used him in the early going. Benge's background as a pitcher means he has a strong enough arm to be an asset anywhere in the outfield but if he can handle center field defensively it will significantly increase his value at the big league level. The Mets have been aggressive promoting their prospects since David Stearns took over baseball operations last year and will likely bump Benge up to AA Binghamton in the next month or so. With Drew Gilbert ahead of him at Syracuse and a full big league outfield, Benge isn't under immediate pressure to race to the major leagues to be a savior for the Mets.

The ideal situation here would be for Benge to get to Binghamton and start finding power from the pull side for the Rumble Ponies, which would signal a potential fast track to the big leagues. Benge isn't much of a consideration for the 2025 Mets but if he keeps producing he could be somebody to watch for a potential big-league call up by the end of 2026.