Tom Brennan - Updated Retrospective on Mets 2014 Draft

 

I thought it might be fun to look back and see who got drafted by the Mets in rounds 1 thru 5, how they panned out, and which of them (including those from beyond round 5) made it to the dance. 

Not to get too anciently historical, I thought I’d start at 2012 and work forward to 2022, a year at a time.

Today?  

The Mets' 2014 Draft: 

The first round brought us Michael Conforto 10th overall.  Mets' leadership was popping champagne corks when he (to their surprise and delight) slipped down to # 10 for them.  A very solid if not quite elite 10th overall pick, with 147 career homers and a 16.3 WAR so far.

HOWEVER…

Drafted a mere 3 picks after MC Hammer was All Star Trea Turner, whom Mack frequently touted as a guy to draft prior to that year’s draft. 

Trea has 33 career WAR, essentially twice that of Conforto. 

That dampens my enthusiasm over the “gleeful” Conforto pick.

Round 2 - no pick.  No pick = no fun.

Round 3 - Milton Ramos - a bust pick.  I mean really...Milton Ramos??

.241/.290/.315 in the minors.

Like so many Mets picks, he hit around .240 in the minors without power. He'd have made a fine pick several rounds later, but not the 3ed round. 

At the time, he was touted in the draft listings, I saw somewhere as high as 34th overall, and another example that the draft is a crap shoot.

Mack's take at the time was this:

Milton Ramos may be a very special player and could easily turn out to be the most talented shortstop in the Mets organization. This was a stroke of genius on draft day, who shouldn’t have been around when the 84^th pick came up. He was easily one of the top 50 ballplayers available for the draft that year.  

But…is Ramos going to be another in a serious of excellent defensive Mets shortstop prospects who get their bats knocked out of their hands by quality pitching?

Mack was right - it is hard to tell, especially for real young kids, and yes, he mostly got bats knocked out of his hands thereafter.

Round 4 had Eudor Garcia, who seemed to be an emerging hitter of some promise, but PEDs made him short-lived and submerging.  A solid .282 in 940 career ABs with 131 RBIs - then, suddenly, poof, gone.

Call his selection what you want. I'll call it: Bust pick.

Round 5 - Josh Prevost - the 6'7" pitcher was big and bad - but "bad" in a bad way, not a good way.  

Bust pick.

The only other 2014 pick that made the bigs was the traded Brad Wieck, a very tall (6'8"), very high strikeout pitcher with control issues.  He was a PTBNL in the deal that brought the Mets big hat bust wild slinger Alex Torres.  Big Brad has 89 Ks and 24 walks in 59 innings in the majors, after 459 Ks in 326 innings in the minors.  Nasty. But TJS got him; perhaps he will resurface post-surgery at age 32 in 2024. He also lost some serious time due to the following:

"(The Cubs) transferred lefty Brad Wieck from the 10-day IL to the 60-day IL, per a club announcement. Wieck, who is sidelined by an irregular heartbeat, will undergo an ablation procedure in an effort to address the issue, tweets Jordan Bastian of MLB.com. He had a similar procedure performed in February 2020."

I hope he makes a big comeback.

All in all, quite a terrible draft for the Mets, after the “all-too-obvious” Conforto selection. Which, compared to Trea Turner, turned out to be a less-than-optimal pick, especially since he was a huge obstacle to the Mets while playing for years with his drafting team, the Nationals.

Next up?  The 2015 Mets Draft Post-Mortem.

CABBAGE, LOTS OF CABBAGE:

From the NY Post: 

The Mets will pay a record luxury tax of $100.7 million, according to the AP, which obtained the numbers from MLB.