For the second time in a span of four days, the Mets have dipped into their surplus of young pitching talent to strengthen their 2015 roster. Over the weekend, they dealt two unremarkable pitching prospects — Rob Whalen and John Gant — to add Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson to their sputtering offense. Last night, they cut a deal with the Athletics for Tyler Clippard. In return, they coughed up another fringy arm in Casey Meisner.

Kiley McDaniel saw the 6-foot-7 righty in person over the weekend and provided a nice little write up (with video!) in a post last night. He concluded that Meisner’s fastball-curveball combination made him a potential league-average (#4) starter. That’s not particularly sexy, but it would be a fine return for 2-3 months of a reliever.

Meisner’s stat line isn’t quite as optimistic. Meisner split the 2015 season between Low-A and High-A, where he’s pitched to a sparkling 2.35 ERA as a 20-year-old. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. His .265 BABIP disguises his unremarkable 3.98 FIP. His 20% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate, meanwhile, are merely average.

As a result, KATOH forecasts Meisner for just 1.6 WAR through age-28, which is actually a notch down from his 2.2 mark following his performance in the New York-Penn League last season. The statistical comps paint a similarly dismal picture.

Rank	Mah Dist	Pitcher	IP thru 28	WAR thru 28
1	0.14	Cristobal Correa	0	0.0
2	0.20	Kennil Gomez*	0	0.0
3	0.21	Tim Melville*	0	0.0
4	0.21	Corey Powell	0	0.0
5	0.25	Scott Randall	27	0.6
6	0.26	Doug Johnston	0	0.0
7	0.33	Jake Woods	162	0.0
8	0.37	Frankie Sanders	0	0.0
9	0.42	Carlos Chantres	0	0.0
10	0.44	Micah Bowie	71	0.0
11	0.44	Ronnie Ventura	0	0.0
12	0.48	Kevin Kloek	0	0.0
13	0.48	Shawn Morimando*	0	0.0
14	0.49	Mitch Talbot	232	0.8
15	0.50	Kyle Lobstein*	87	0.9
16	0.53	Jacob Faria*	0	0.0
17	0.53	Nick Pesco	0	0.0
18	0.56	Michael Foltynewicz*	0	0.0
19	0.58	Jason Shiell	24	0.0
20	0.58	Zach Miner	357	2.2

*Pitchers who have yet to play their age-28 seasons.

Meisner appears to be one of those pitchers whose performance lags behind his stuff. He’s 6-foot-7 and throws a mid-90s fastball, so the ingredients for success are certainly there. So far, however, he hasn’t performed in a way that suggests he has much of a big-league future. At age-20, though, he still has plenty of time to figure things out.