This coming Sunday is the beginning of the 20-round 2023 MLB Draft, and it is a crucial one for the Mets. Let me preface that with every draft is crucial as it is one of two times in the year, along with the international signing period, where you can add young talent to the farm system without it being at the expense of players from your major league team .
The consensus in the industry is that this draft class is one of the deepest classes in years. Starting at the top, LSU outfielder Dylan Crews and right-handed pitcher Paul Skenes have a chance to be the first teammates to go No. 1 and No. 2 overall in the same draft in draft history. Florida outfielder Wyatt Langford as well as high school outfielders Max Clark (Indiana) and Walker Jenkins (North Carolina) round out the top five talents. In an ordinary draft, all five of these prospects would be legitimate No. 1 overall pick.
The top strength of this class is bats, and both college and high school position players will make up much of the first round. College pitching has depth, but not a ton in the top couple of rounds as there are only four college arms (Skenes, Wake Forest’s Rhett LowderTennessee’s Chase Dollander and Florida’s Hurston Waldrep) that are considered first-round locks. As teams seek close to big league-ready pitching, that could push up that next tier of pitchers like Kent State’s Joe WhitmanLSU’s Ty Floyd and a couple others into the late first/supplemental first-round conversation.
The Mets were slated to have the No. 22 pick in the draft, but that pick was dropped 10 slots to No. 32 due to the Mets spending more than $40 million above the luxury tax threshold in 2022 payroll. We spoke to Jim Callis from MLB Pipeline on the latest episode of The Mets Pod and he told us he believes the talent difference between those two slots is not stark, but the bigger loss is the $889,100 in bonus pool money.
Despite not picking until No. 32, the Mets have a reasonably sized bonus pool of $8,440,400 due to receiving three compensatory picks. They received the No. 101 pick due to not signing last year’s third-round pick Brandon Sproat, who I anticipate will go in the top 40-50 picks in this draft. They also received No. 134 and No. 135 as compensation for losing Jacob deGrom and Chris Bassitt, respectively, in free agency.
While there is no limit to what you can spend, the penalties get harsh when you spend beyond 5 percent over your bonus pool, which would include loss of next year’s first-round pick. No team has ever spent above that 5 percent threshold in the bonus pool era. The Mets typically will spend close to their 5 percent average of $422,020 which brings their total allotment without surrendering next year’s first-round pick to $8,862,420. That covers almost half of the lost bonus pool money dropping from No. 22 to No. 32.
At this stage, the team has spoken to the advisors of some players they have interest in to get an idea on signing bonus demands, as unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL Drafts, the MLB Draft is very much financially driven. Given the need to stay within your bonus pool limits, you can’t always simply draft the best available player unless you can make the numbers work. The biggest example was the Mets drafting Matt Allan in 2019, signing him for $2.5 million and then drafting college seniors and signing them for low bonus amounts afterwards to off-set the dollars given to Allan.
Owner Steve Cohen spoke in his press conference about the need and desire to add and develop more pitching. He spoke to the resources that he had put into player development, especially on the pitching side. They recently opened their pitching lab in St. Lucie which is state-of-the-art and should be a very valuable resource for Director of Pitching Development Eric Jagers and his staff. The best organizations in baseball at developing pitching don’t necessarily always get access to the highest ranked prospects in the draft, but they find ways to develop the arms they do get, even in the mid rounds.
It’s very important to have synergy between your scouting, analytics, and player development department. You want the scouts to scout, the analytics folks to analyze the data where a pitcher could improve, and the player development team to put the package together. This is all a new system that will realistically take years to routinely churn out pitchers for the big-league roster. With that said, early dividends on the likes of Blade Tidwell, Mike Vasil, Christian Scott and Tyler Stuart are showing this is heading in the right direction.
While I suspect a high percentage of this year’s draft class will be made up by pitching, I would advise pumping the brakes just a little if you are assuming the top pick will be a pitcher. It very well could be if the right player at the right value is available, but the Mets have been linked to every demographic that the draft has to offer with their top pick.
I have heard them connected to college hitters like Brock Wilken (Wake Forest), Yohandy Morales (Miami) and Chase Davis (Arizona). There is some college pitching that could interest them in the previously mentioned Whitman, Sproat (who would have to sign consent for the Mets to re-draft him), Cade Kuehler (Campbell) and Tanner Witt (Texas).
The last time the Mets used their first draft selection on a high school arm was when they selected Steven Matz No. 72 overall in the 2009 MLB Draft. They typically are not interested in that model if they are picking in the top 15, as is consistent with most forward-thinking organizations. However, they have used supplementary picks and second-round picks on high school pitching consistently over the last decade.
Could they go high school arm this year at No.32? I think so, as there are a few options that possess the high-end upside that Cohen spoke about desiring. A lot will be dependent on signing bonus demands, which is something we won’t know much about until the draft begins, but Thomas White (Massachusetts), Charlee Soto (Florida), Cameron Johnson (Florida), Alex Clemmey (Rhode Island) and Josh Knoth (New York) all are names that can fit in that range.
It is a crucial draft for the scouting department led by Tommy Tanous and new Scouting Director Drew Toussaint, but they are well equipped with extra draft picks, so despite the first pick dropping 10 slots, which naturally gets most of the focus, the Mets can still have a very impactful draft given the depth of this year’s class.