Tom Brennan - Retrospective on Mets' Drafts of Years Past: 2017

Wikipedia states:

A retrospective is a look back at past events that took place.

I thought it might be fun to get all retrospective and look back at: 

1) How Mets kiddies drafted in rounds 1 thru 5 panned out, and 

2) Which of all the Mets' picks actually made it to the dance. 

Not to get too historical, I thought I’d start at 2005 and work forward towards 2021 from there, a year at a time. 2005 thru 2016 done so far.

Today?  

The Mets' 2017 Draft: 

Round 1 (20th overall) goes to big lefty David Peterson, who debuted nicely in 2020, but ran into the Soph Jinx in 2021.  Will he rebound and prove this to be a successful pick?  I say, "give him more time."  I think at least moderate success lies ahead for the southpaw Peterson.

Round 2?  Listening to the Brennan refrain of "Drafting power arms and power bats", the Mets no doubt said, "Why not?" 

Mark Vientos unloaded major lumber power in the minors in 2021, and likely will bring that heavy lumber to Citifield sometime in 2022.  Nice power pick for a 59th overall snatch.  Any guy who can hit over .300 over his last 210 at bats with an amazing 22 jacks is someone I can only hope is Alonso II.

Round 3 - what a difference a round can make.  Vientos in the second round, but in the third, Quinn Brodey had a simply awful 2021 (.174, 98 Ks in 70 games) in a major regression from a pretty solid 2019, and I am not sure if there is a future for him beyond 2021.   

His 2021 stats say "no" to me, but I don't know what his 2021 difficulties were, so let's see if he can be a comeback kid.

Round 4 - righty Tony Dibrell had in all frankness a so-so career through early July 2021, and then succumbed to major injury of the Tommy John kind in July - we'll see if there is any hope for Mr. Dibs even pitching in 2022.  I'd imagine that 2022 may be a total wash out, given the timing of his 2021 surgery.  Hopefully, he is one of those guys who gets the surgery and comes back throwing better and harder.

Round 5 - Matt Winaker - not in the "power bats" category, certainly, so far at least.   In 2021, in Binghamton, he had a very solid July - and not much else.  He seems like a lesser version of prior draftee Kevin Kaczmarski to me - not much power, but a lower .240 lifetime hitter.  

Matt may need to shake it up by adding 20 pounds of muscle for 2022 to try to reinvent himself.  He does have a career .362 OBP, so to me, that right there shows there is hope.  My armchair advice?  Muscle up, Matt.  Kevin K did not, but Jeff McNeil did so successfully, TJ Rivera did too, and it seems you need to also.

Now that the annual drafts I am writing about are getting close to the current year of 2021, and having missed all of 2020 in the minors, it is unreasonable to expect any Round 6 and lower guys to have gotten to the big leagues.  

But those rounds were seemingly unproductive, save for 37th rounder Josh Walker, who pitched very well in AA and AAA in 2021.  Perhaps the tall lefty can be a clone of sorts to David Peterson in 2022.  In a good way.  A few other guys were still playing in 2021, and we'll see if they still are in pro ball in 2022.

Vientos, Peterson, and Walker are the 3 successes of this draft - just 3 makes this a slim draft, but if 2 of those 3 become impact major leaguers, it will be a fairly solid draft year.

Next article? 2018.