My Favorite Prospect Became a Serviceable Major Leaguer

 It's been a whole two years since I donated my Luis Torrens collection to Torrens' family.

In the time since I've been too preoccupied with real life to keep up with his playing career. I knew he had been traded to the New York Mets and became a surprisingly important piece during their current contention window. I still rooted for him but I wasn't going to be tuning into every Mets game.

Then the news of Torrens' two year extension came across my feed.

Catcher Luis Torrens and the New York Mets are in agreement on a two-year extension, league source tells The Athletic. He is set to make $11.5 million for 2027 and 2028.

— Will Sammon (@WillSammon) May 2, 2026

I know that's not Kyle Tucker money, but guaranteed money and multiple years for a back-up catcher is huge. Especially for someone whose career looked like it was on its last legs as recently as 3 years ago.

On top of that Torrens currently has nine years of MLB service time. One more and he'll qualify for a pension (and also 10-and-5 rights). Absolutely huge for him and his family.

Despite all of the setbacks and multiple years of lost development (I hate the San Diego Padres AJ Preller for ruining his development, may they never win anything ever while he's still there), he's managed to salvage his career and reach his potential as a quality contributor for a New York based major league baseball team with championship aspirations.

Exactly the career outlook we had for him in 2014, right everyone?

I'm guessing that to most "prospectors" in the hobby this is a failure but for me this is a very successful career. Most prospects and hopefuls in the minors could only dream to carve out a big league career like Torrens has. No matter the talent evaluations or pedigree.

The traits that made him an elite prospect have kept him at the highest level of the game.

His arm is still as strong as ever and most of his highlights are him gunning down would-be base stealers. I haven't looked at his Baseball Savant page but I'd be surprised if his defensive metrics weren't red. He can just flat out catch.

As a hitter unfortunately he isn't the "he has a sneaky high OBP with some nice pop for a catcher" type threat I thought he could be, but he's had his moments here and there. Look it's 2026, there's only maybe two catchers in the whole league that can hit at an elite level and maybe six overall you could consider fine. You pay for the glove and take what you can get with the bat.

I do kind of find it funny how shortly after I move on from the Torrens collection he quietly turns into an actual major leaguer. If all it took for him to turn into a solid major leaguer was for me to stop collecting him I would've done it a whole lot sooner. Although looking at how absolutely nuts the world of parallels have become I think I got out at the right time.

Although I do wonder if there's a hardcore Mets collector out there who's confused at why they can't find any of the low numbered earlier prospect cards of Torrens even though he was seemingly in everything prospect related in 2014.

Then again considering how shit the Steve Cohen era Mets have been maybe there isn't a soul out there who wants to remember this period in card form.

Whatever. Torrens rules and I'll always be there to root for him to succeed. Far away in the distance.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.