Comparing Carson Benge and Jett Williams

Baseball America just released its top 30 prospects for the Mets and in what appears to be common consensus among the prospect hounds, Nolan McLean and Carson Benge are rated as the top two players. It’s not a surprise with McLean, as we all saw what he did in seven games in the majors last year. But how exactly has the opinion formed that Benge is the clear number two?

Benge played at three levels last year, excelling in his first two stops before hitting a wall in Triple-A. It wasn’t a giant sample size at the top level of the minors and given his comically low BABIP (.188) no one should be overly concerned with his performance for Syracuse in 2025.

There’s no doubt that Benge is one of the top prospects in the game. It’s just difficult to imagine that he’s unarguably better than Jett Williams. Now it’s certainly a possibility that Benge is the better prospect. But if there are 10 reputable sites out there ranking prospects, you’d think that one or two would have Williams listed higher. Yet if that site exists, I haven’t seen it.

There are many different factors that go into ranking prospects and different sites place a greater value on certain things than others. That’s a good thing. Among the factors to consider are: age, draft position, highest level reached, performance and current scouting information. If we look at Benge and Williams thru this lens, here’s what we find:

2026 age: Benge 23, Williams 22
Draft position: Benge 19^th overall, Williams 14^th overall
Highest Level: Benge AAA (103 PA), Williams AAA (181 PA)

There’s nothing here that shouts Benge as the clear favorite.

Now let’s look at performance. We have to include age because all things being equal, you prefer the younger player. Let’s start with Benge:

Lo-A, 21, 69 PA, 150 wRC+
Hi-A, 22, 271 PA, 168 wRC+
AA, 22, 145 PA, 184 wRC+
AAA, 22, 103 PA, 53 wRC+

It’s not quite so easy to do with Williams, due to his injury-plagued 2024 season. Let’s skip that entirely, missing out on 101 PA of rotten play that year at AA and 30 PA of great performance at AAA. Here are the rest of Williams’ numbers:

Lo-A, 19, 346 PA, 134 wRC+
Hi-A, 19, 162 PA, 182 wRC+
AA, 19, 26 PA, 69 wRC+
AA, 21, 421 PA, 156 wRC+
AAA, 21, 151 PA, 81 wRC+

Benge had better numbers at Double-A last year. But would he have been able to keep up that pace over a larger sample? I’m pleased that the Mets were aggressive with promotions for Benge last year. But great numbers over 145 PA are not as impressive as great numbers over a sample three times as large.

That leaves us scouting numbers. These aren’t always readily available in the public domain. Let’s use the numbers from FanGraphs on their 2025 Mets top prospects, which was published on June 27. Here are the future tool grades they had listed for Benge (ranked 4^th) and Williams (ranked 6^th) at the time:

CB – 60 hit, 50 raw power, 45 game power, 55 run, 50 fielding, 60 throw
JW – 40 hit, 55 raw power, 55 game power, 60 run, 50 fielding, 45 throw

The future hit totals are really surprising to me. The surprise comes not from Benge being better but rather for Williams to rank so low. In his two and a half healthy years in the minors, all Williams has done has hit. But at the time of the publication of these tools, the memory of Williams’ struggles in 2024 were fresh. It will be curious to see how Williams rates in this area when FG posts its next overview of the Mets’ system.

It’s not a surprise that Benge, a former collegiate pitcher, ranks high with his throwing arm. However, here’s what it said specifically about his arm in the write-up: “He has a plus outfield arm but takes forever to get rid of the ball.” Hopefully, this is something that can be improved upon as he gains more experience in the outfield.

That’s the comparison for all five areas mentioned above. Yet there’s one more thing that we can look at when weighing their respective pros and cons. We have Statcast numbers for Triple-A in 2025. Remember, while both played in Syracuse last year, neither amassed a ton of plate appearances. This is definitely a small sample. But a small sample is better than none, so let’s see what we have.

Benge had a .178 AVG, .311 SLG and a .271 wOBA in 103 PA in Triple-A, while Williams had a .209 AVG, .433 SLG and a .314 wOBA in 151 PA. Neither hit very well but Williams was better. Yet it’s a different story when you look at their “x” stats.

Benge - .272 xBA, .522 xSLG, .376 xwOBA
Williams - .226 xBA, .378 xSLG, .307 xwOBA

Benge enjoys a significant advantage in “x” stats due to hitting the ball very hard. His overall exit value was 92.1 mph, with a max EV of 110.4 mph. He had a barrel rate of 15.5% and a 53.5 HrdHit% - all excellent numbers. Meanwhile, Williams had an overall EV of 86 mph and a max EV of 108.4 mph. His barrel rate was 7.1% and he had just a 34.1 HrdHit%.

A barrel rate over twice as big as the one for Williams is a big plus for Benge. Yet it’s important to recognize the number of events we have. Benge had 103 PA but that includes 9 BB, 19 Ks and 3 HBP. So, there are 72 times where he put the ball in play. For a comparison, Juan Soto had 715 PA, 127 BB, 137 Ks, 3 HBP and 1 SH – a total of 447 times where he both made contact and attempted to get a hit.

With 72 balls where he made contact, Benge had 11 barrels. Williams had 101 balls where he made contact - 151 – (14+35+1) – and with a 7.1% barrel rate, that’s seven barrels. It’s definitely an edge for Benge. But due to the small sample it’s not as big of an advantage that the raw Barrel% indicates.

For the entire season, Benge had a 17.7 K% and a 13.1 BB%. In Triple-A, those numbers were 18.4% and 8.7%, respectively. Williams for the year had a 22.9 K% and a 13.3 BB%. In Triple-A, those numbers were 23.2% and 9.3%, respectively.

So, what do we have? Benge has a distinct advantage with the scouting on his future hit tool, an advantage with his arm and a distinct advantage with his “x” stats in Triple-A in a small sample. Williams has a slight advantage in both age and draft position, an advantage with the scouting on his future game power, a slight advantage in speed and a slight advantage in actual Triple-A production.

It seems to me to be a toss-up. One can focus on different things to make the case for preferring one over the other. It seems entirely reasonable to prefer Benge over Williams if you focus on “x” stats in a short sample. It’s very possible that Benge’s “x” stats in Double-A show the exact same thing; it’s just that those aren’t in the public domain. Maybe that’s why we’ve heard David Stearns talk about Benge having a shot to make the team out of Spring Training, while not saying anything remotely like that with Williams.

So, in the short sample of Spring Training, if Williams out-performs Benge by a significant margin – will that make any difference? Should roughly 60 PA against mostly non-MLB pitchers move the needle? Ideally, both would begin the year in Triple-A and play at least two months at the level. But unless the Mets add an outfielder or two between now and Spring Training, it seems there’s a roster spot available.