The Major League Baseball draft is one where we see a variety of strategies employed. In sports like basketball and football, players immediately go to the major league team. This is not the case in baseball where players often toil in the minors for a few years before being called up.
This make projecting out players difficult. The younger the player, the greater the chance of a "miss".
It is for this reason that the Mets 2019 draft is so intriguing.
If you are unaware, the first 10 rounds of the draft have slot money tied to each position being drafted. Teams have those slots added up and that is the total of what they can spend. How they break it up is totally up to each team.
The Mets used a strategy that could net huge dividends to them. Or, it could end up being a major bust and costing them, essentially, their entire draft.
In the first three rounds, they took high school players. All three were considered first round talent, especially the third round pick.
Matthew Allen was considered the 13th best prospect by some of the rating publications. The reason why he fell to the Mets in the third round was because there was a question of him being signed. Like most high school players, he had committed to college, in this case, the University of Florida.
Teams passed on him because they believed it would take first round money to get him to forego college. They were right.
So how did the Mets pull it off?
They used their rounds 4-10 picks on college seniors. This is a risky strategy in terms of on field talent since most of your top college players leave school after 3 years. Those who return for their 4th year do so because they are either not that good or come from smaller schools. That is not to say there aren't some gems periodically but it is rare.
This move, though, is what enabled the Mets to sign their top three draft picks. With the college seniors, there is no leverage. Hence the signing bonuses ranged from $1,000 to $20,000. In comparison, the slot value ranged from $145,000 to $487,000.
It was this money that was given to two of the first three picks to get them to sign.
Brett Baty, the first round pick got $400,000 over slot while Allen, the pick that many thought could not be signed, took $2.5 million, or $1.9 million more than slot.
The question in the future will be did the Mets bomb on their draft or did they hit it out of the park? This answer will not be known for a few years. They did add three, high ceiling kids to their farm system. This will help their farm rankings immediately.
If these kids can pan out along with one or two of the college seniors becoming solid major league players, the Mets might have their best draft in some time.
The swung for the fences on this one.
