Mets Sign Former Mariners Top Prospect Matt Tuiasosopo

According to Baseball America's Matthew Eddy, the Mets have inked 25-yr old former blue chip prospect 3B Matt Tuiasosopo to a minor league contract. The '04 third rounder spent all of 2011 with Seattle's Triple-A Tacoma affiliate where he batted .226 with 14 homers and a .735 OPS. Expect to see a lot of him in Buffalo this summer.

For those who don't know, Tuiasosopo was once very highly thought of in prospect circles based on his extreme athleticism. For two straight seasons Tuiasosopo ranked in the top five of BA's Mariners top ten. However, despite the awesome raw tools he was never able to turn it into production on the field.

In eight minor league seasons after being drafted by his hometown club, he managed just a .263/.359/.405 triple-slash while playing poor defense at third. In parts of three seasons with the big club he batted just .176 with five homers and 15 RBI's.

Relating to a point I recently made in the Top 50 rankings, athleticism or not, hitting is a really hard thing to do. And Tuiasosopo was just never able to develop the power required by his position, nor much semblance of plate discipline.

And yes, if there was any doubt that was his brother playing quarterback for the Jets and Raiders...