Greetings, and welcome to Small Sample Size Theater. It’s a production that happens annually at the start of a season, but fans are particularly excited for the curtain to go up after a year hiatus of the Minor League edition.

We’re just over a week into the Minor League season, which means we’re all trying to draw conclusions and extrapolate long-term outcomes based on one or two starts or a handful of at-bats. I don’t say that derisively; I do it myself quite frequently. And when things like the Mariners calling up Jarred Kelenic and Logan Gilbert to make their big league debuts on the same day, that only adds fuel to the fire.

This week’s Pipeline Inbox reflects that, with many prospect fans wanting to believe the start of this 2021 season will have long-lasting ramifications. In some cases, it will. In others, it won’t. Let’s discuss, shall we?

As a Mets fan, it’s hard not to get excited about Alvarez and PCA. How quickly could they rise, and what do you see their ceilings as? And more generally, will high-performing prospects with their full-season debut this year move more quickly than in previous years?
-- @METSNEXTYEAR

I actually got three questions about Pete Crow-Armstrong (PCA) this week, with folks wanting to know if other teams would rue not having taken him ahead of when the Mets did at No. 19. And it’s easy to see why. The outfielder is off to a .417/.563/.500 start. In six games. (Cue Sample Size Theater theme music.)

We actually tackled this question on this week’s Pipeline Podcast. In general, yes, it’s hard not to like what’s brewing in the Mets system (or what’s happening in New York, if you’re a Mets fan). Francisco Alvarez is already considered to be one of the brightest future catching stars in the game. That’s why we have him at No. 39 on the Top 100, after all. And his small sample size of .571/.677/.857 in seven games certainly won’t quell expectations. Alvarez still has the upside of an elite-level big league backstop. As for PCA, he has the chance to be an everyday center fielder with plus defense and excellent speed. How much power he grows into will determine just how good a player the Mets’ No. 5 prospect ends up being.

The second part of the question, about how quickly they could move, and how fast prospects in general will move, is really hard to know at this point. It’s kind of unclear what last year’s shutdown will do overall to development, though we’ve all gotten reports from farm directors about players who really worked hard despite a lack of real competition. PCA, as a 2020 Draft pick out of high school, is right where he’d have gone even if there had been a season last year. Alvarez probably would have hit full-season ball last year, so maybe he would’ve been in High-A to start this year. Given that he’s only 19 and hadn’t played in a year, this makes sense, but I could see both reaching High-A before long.

Overall, we’re taking a wait-and-see approach to how teams handle this. Some prospects have been pushed aggressively, like the Royals and Padres sending 2019 high school draftees Bobby Witt Jr. and CJ Abrams to Double-A to start the year. Other teams have treaded a bit more cautiously and we’ll see how players handle the daily grind they haven’t had in a while.

Why so many strikeouts for Rutschman? We have heard some talk of an uppercut swing that has holes in it. Is that true and if it is, how was that never brought up about him before?
-- @rshields97

I know we all have super-high expectations for Adley Rutschman, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 Draft and the No. 2 prospect in baseball currently. But he’s had a grand total of 28 at-bats this year heading into Thursday’s action and 158 in his very brief career. Is 11 strikeouts in 34 plate appearances good? No. But it’s 34 plate appearances. (Cue Sample Size Theater theme music). Oh, by the way, he’s also walking at a 14.7 percent rate, which is very Rutschman-esque.

Here’s the larger point. If any player had a 6-for-28 stretch in, say July, you might not even notice. But it seems glaring because it’s at the start of the season, so the numbers jump out at you. Overall in his pro career, he’s struggled a bit more as a right-handed hitter, and all six of his home runs have come from the left side.

None of this concerns me in any fashion. I have not heard about any issues with his swing, though I will note that loft in swing is considered a good thing in these days of launch angle. On Wednesday, he did homer and walk twice without a strikeout, so I’ll use that sample to say he’s locked in now.

Just curious, does Yermín Mercedes merit a re-rank at this point, or is the common practice just let him finish out his prospect status and leave him off the lists, see what he does with his career?
-- @cronebender

I wanted to use this question to bid a fond farewell to the Yerminator, who will graduate off the White Sox Top 30 soon. That should answer the first part of your question: We will indeed let him sail off into the prospect sunset. We will be doing some “market corrections” as the season goes on, but not until he’s gone. (As a refresher: A player who gets past the rookie thresholds of 130 at-bats, 50 innings pitched or 45 days of active service on the big league roster comes off the lists for good.) That’s an arbitrary line in the sand, but it’s hard and fast for any prospect, regardless of how he’s performed.

Watching Mercedes take advantage of this opportunity and hit .376/.419/.587 has been a whole lot of fun and yes, he’s outperformed his relatively modest prospect ranking. But while this isn’t quite as small of a sample size as the Minor Leaguers, we’re still talking a total of 117 plate appearances in 2021. (Cue quieter Sample Size Theater music.) To further that point home, he’s cooled off considerably so far in May. After hitting .415/.455/.659 in the season’s opening month (22 games total), he’s posted a .259/.310/.370 line in eight games this month. I bring that up to point out that re-ranking would indeed be a bit premature, even if Mercedes weren’t graduating in the next couple of days.

Who is better now? Nate Pearson or Alek Manoah?
-- @iantam430

If you’re asking about right now, in this very moment, sure, I’ll take Manoah. But given that we have Pearson No. 1 on the Blue Jays list and No. 10 overall as the top right-handed pitching prospect in the game, and we have Manoah as the No. 6 prospect on the Blue Jays list currently, it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that I’d still take Pearson over Manoah in the long-term.

Now I’m not saying I don’t like Manoah. I think he has the chance to be a really good big leaguer, and soon. And it’s great to see the 2019 first-round pick handle the aggressive assignment to Triple-A extremely well, with two scoreless starts (12 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 17 SO). But it’s only 12 innings. (Cue Sample Size Theater music.)

Yes, Pearson looked lost in the big leagues in his one start, walking five in 2 1/3 innings. In his brief time in the big leagues between 2020 and this year, his command has definitely eluded him. He has some adjustments to make, though again, he’s amassed only 20 1/3 total innings with Toronto. In 2019, his one full season, he struck out 10.5 per nine while walking only 2.4 and holding hitters to a .176 batting average against. I think he’s more that guy than the guy we’ve seen briefly in the big leagues. So I’ll stick with Pearson, though I can’t wait to see these two 6-foot-6 right-handers pitch in the same Major League rotation at some point very soon.