A Close-up Look at 2 Kingsport Mets: Patrick Mazeika and Kevin Kaczmarski

In the Mets 2015 MLB drafted, they drafted Patrick Mazeika in the eighth round and Kevin Kaczmarski in the ninth round, both college players from Division 1 schools, Mazeika from Stetson and Kaczmarski from Evansville. However in batting averages, they differed greatly. In his last college season, Mazeika hit .302, not even among the top 300 in Division 1 baseball in batting average. In contrast, Kaczmarski hit .465, or 163 points higher, which could cause one to believe that Kaczmarski is a much better hitter than Mazeika.

Both now play for the Kingport Mets. The graphic below shows their performances for Kingsport.

Image credit: Kingsport Mets

Both have appeared in almost the same number of games and have similar At Bats. Though Mazeika has the higher batting average (.296 vs .280) and a much higher OPS (.906 vs. .799), at this point the two players numbers are both interesting and unexpected, but because of the small sample size, to say that one is the better hitter would be premature. In fact, it is possible that Mazeika could be the better hitter, something only time will tell. However, a more interesting question is why their batting averages differed so greatly in their final college seasons.