Mets Roster Central: Draft Special

Running a baseball team is not for the faint of heart, and as the Mets best-laid plans for 2026 blow up in their faces on a regular basis, and undeterred leadership team has executed a pretty unconventional, and seemingly high-risk draft strategy.

Transactions, 7/11/2026

COMING
Drafted as First-Round Selection (27th Overall) out of Arkansas	Drafted as Third-Round Selection (92nd Overall) out of Texas	Drafted as Fourth-Round Selection (120th Overall) out of Texas A&M
Relief Pitchers	Outfielders	Starting Pitchers
Carson Wiggins	Aiden Robbins	Shane Sdao
R/R DoB: 2005-06-01 High Level: Division I+ (2026)	R/R DoB: 2005-01-14 High Level: Division I+ (2026)	L/L DoB: 2003-09-29 High Level: Division I+ (2026)

The first thing you'll notice about the Mets 2026 amateur draft selections is that they went all in on pitchers.  In this day of massive pitcher attrition and increasingly shorter starter workloads, the old saw of "you can never have enough pitching" is truer than ever, but ... well, somebody has to play the field.  With fully 15 of their 19 draft picks, they went for hurlers. They probably intend to offset their appetite for arms by recruiting position players through the foreign amateur markets, or acquiring them through wheeling and dealing along the way.

A second thing you'll notice also starts off with #1 pick Carson Wiggins, and that's not just that the Mets have gone for pitching, but overwhelmingly relief pitching.  Historically, drafted players drafted players are at or near the top of their amateur team's starting rotations, and pro teams draft them with the hope that they can be that for them as well, and if that doesn't work, relief work is a workable fallback outcome.

Certainly, young Mr. Wiggins is not the first guy drafted in the first round as a reliever, and while converting a pitcher from relief to starting does happen (as in the case of Clay Holmes), it is still damned rare.

But the Mets looked past the bullpen assignment and the scant record (14 college innings), and instead saw the 102-mph fastball and pulled the trigger.  Given a chance to bet on records and established outcomes to date, the Mets instead bet on their scouting and development people and trust them to produce a weapon here.

Time will tell.  Cynics like my friend duan have suggested that there is no such thing as a relief prospect, and considering he made that remark after the Mets selected Eddie Kunz at the back end of Round One in 2007, he has a point.

Transactions, 7/12/2026

COMING
Drafted as Fifth-Round Selection (152d Overall) out of Florida	Drafted as Sixth-Round Selection (181st Overall) out of Auburn	Drafted as Seventh-Round Selection (210th Overall) out of Stanford	Drafted as Eighth-Round Selection (240th Overall) out of Mississippi
Relief Pitchers	Starting Pitchers		Relief Pitchers
Luke McNeillie	Alex Petrovic	Aidan Keenan	Landon Koenig
L/R DoB: 2005-03-17 High Level: Division I+ (2026)	R/R DoB: 2004-05-27 High Level: Division I+ (2026)	R/R DoB: 2005-03-07 High Level: Division I+ (2026)	R/R DoB: 2004-11-23 High Level: Division I+ (2026)
COMING
Drafted as Ninth-Round Selection (270th Overall) out of Cal Poly	Drafted as 10th-Round Selection (300th Overall) out of Dartmouth	Drafted as 11th-Round Selection (330th Overall) out of Arkansas	Drafted as 12th-Round Selection (360th Overall) out of UC Santa Barbara
Catchers	Starting Pitchers	Outfielders	Relief Pitchers
Ryan Tayman	Nate Isler	Kuhio Aloy	AJ Krodel
R/R DoB: 2005-08-26 High Level: Division I+ (2025)	R/R DoB: 2004-10-25 High Level: Division I (2026)	R/R DoB: 2005-07-13 High Level: Division I+ (2026)	R/R DoB: 2005-05-11 High Level: Division I (2026)
COMING
Drafted as 13th-Round Selection (370th Overall) out of Notre Dame HS (CA)	Drafted as 14th-Round Selection (420th Overall) out of Troy	Drafted as 15th-Round Selection (450th Overall) out of Missouri-St. Louis	Drafted as 16th-Round Selection (480th Overall) out of LSU
Catchers	Relief Pitchers
Jacob Madrid	Zach Crotchfelt	Dustin Hagens, Jr.	Gavin Guidry
R/R DoB: 2007-11-02 High Level: HS (2026)	L/L DoB: 2003-10-03 High Level: Division I+ (2024)	R/R DoB: 2005-01-05 High Level: Division II (2026)	R/R DoB: 2003-07-14 High Level: Division I+ (2026)
COMING
Drafted as 17th-Round Selection (510th Overall) out of Arkansas	Drafted as 18th-Round Selection (540th Overall) out of Kings Ridge Christian HS (GA)	Drafted as 19th-Round Selection (570th Overall) out of Central Florida	Drafted as 20th-Round Selection (600th Overall) out of Iowa
Relief Pitchers		Outfielders	Infielders
Cooper Dossett	Marcus Ward	John Smith III	Kooper Schulte
R/R DoB: 2004-04-10 High Level: Division I+ (2026)	L/L DoB: 2007-11-14 High Level: HS (2026)	R/R DoB: 2003-11-19 High Level: Division I (2026)	R/R DoB: 2003-12-08 High Level: Division I+ (2026)

A third thing you might notice about the Mets draft strategy is that they overwhelmingly (17 of 19 selections) went for college players.  College players have less leverage at the negotiating table, and are obviously on a faster track (or at least have access to a faster track) to the big leagues, but one may conclude it shows less faith in the organization's development team.  Or maybe a management team in charge of a team playing some terrible ball wants help as soon as they can get it.

They not only went for college players, but college players overwhelmingly from the top conferences (labeled Division I+) on the transaction tables.  Teams from the ACC, the SEC, The Big 10, and the Pac 12 don't always win the NCAA championship, but the week-by-week standard of play is markedly better than in the other 26 conferences in Division I.  The worst teams in these conferences are generally as good as or better than the top teams in the other conferences — and certainly deeper.  Back when the draft had 30, 40, or 50 rounds, virtually every eligible player — backup catchers and mop-up relievers included — had a good chance of hearing their name called by a big-league team before graduation.

The difference between these four conferences and the rest of Division I is probably bigger than the gap between Division I and Division II.  Fourteen of their 17 collegiate picks came out of these conferences.

Lastly, it's notable how many of these players are not here because of eye-popping stats.

Now, all of that comes with caveats:

• We've selected only the most incriminating cases, though there certainly seem to be a lot.
• These guys, as noted, have come out of the highest levels of NCAA competition.
• The NCAA, with the aluminum bat thing happening, plays toward the hitters and away from the pitchers.
• Amateur fielders behind you have a way of inflating ERAs.

There is no shame in trusting what your scouts say over what the numbers say.  The Mets too Bobby Parnell in the ninth round with a 9-ish ERA (if memory serves) out of a relatively obscure Charleston Southern program and made a triple-digit-throwing MLB closer out of him, so it's a defensible strategy — even one we might choose to defend if the Mets weren't currently eating up all of our good will on a nightly basis, but it is sure a strategy the went for seemingly round after round after round.

Much is to be revealed.  Marcus Ward, for instance, has been labeled as a pitcher in Mets reports, but pre-draft scouting reports have him as an outfield prospect, and only a few indifferently allude to his side hustle as a pitcher.  The Mets have added an Aiden and an Aidan, a Cooper and a Kooper.  It's hard to say the future is looking bright in an organization cruising toward last place with a massive payroll and no manager, but they have paused briefly in mid-summer and selected a man named Zach Crotchfelt.

Moments like that just makes the sun shine a little brighter.