Las Vegas 51s’ Amed Rosario joining Mets Tuesday

Shortstop Amed Rosario, the New York Mets’ top prospect, will join the Mets on Tuesday, general manager Sandy Alderson told reporters Monday.

Rosario, 21, was slashing .328/.367/.466 with 129 hits in 94 games with the 51s this season. He also had seven triples, seven home runs and 58 RBIs.

He is the No. 2 overall prospect per MLB.com and Mets fans have been clamoring for his promotion throughout the season. The shortstop was signed in 2012 as an international free agent for $1.75 million and really started to break out last year at both Class-A Advanced St. Lucie and Double-A Binghamton.

Manager Pedro Lopez said he thought Rosario has been “ready for awhile,” but also credited the Mets front office for doing a good job of promoting players at the right time.

Alderson told reporters that bringing Rosario up in the first part of August had been their plan for six weeks or so, assuming he continued to play well.

“I think he got off to a terrific start. Everybody was talking about how he should have been in New York earlier in the season when (Asdrubal) Cabrera went down but I think he needed to go through some of the struggles that he went through in order to just find out what it’s actually going to be kind of like in New York,” Lopez said. “He went through that, he got past it, he kept hitting, he kept making the plays on the field and now it’s time for him to move up to the next phase.”

The Mets have been shifting infielders around. Cabrera, a shortstop, has played both second and third. Jose Reyes can play shortstop, third and second, too. Neil Walker, a second baseman, can shift to first. With Cabrera at third, Reyes at second and Walker at first, that paves the way for Rosario to be at short.

“It was a combination of just getting through the hullabaloo of the trade deadline and then at the same time allowing some of our other players to get more familiar with some of the other positions,” Alderson told reporters.

Alderson told reporters that first baseman Dominic Smith, the Mets No. 2 prospect, “shouldn’t be far behind.” The Mets traded first baseman Lucas Duda to the Tampa Bay Rays before the Trade Deadline, which cleared the way for Smith’s eventual promotion.

“I think the one thing that sets him and Dom apart, they’re grounded,” Lopez said. “They know what they’re after. They know the situation, they know they need to be patient and in Rosario’s case, he wasn’t impatient by no means. He waited his time. He knew that his time was going to come and it happened today so I’m really happy for him.”

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Contact Betsy Helfand at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BetsyHelfand on Twitter.