I Was Very Pleased When the Mets Drafted
This Guy’s Power Bat
I have repeatedly written articles on effective drafting philosophy - simply:
Draft Power Arms and Power Bats.
I reached that conclusion because so, so, so, so many Mets draftees in recent decades just didn’t have a power bat or a power arm, or even world class sprinter speed, and therefore should’ve been passed on.
Only draft players with the best tools - period - and most of those players won’t pan out, but a few each season will, and they probably will turn into stars. The Mets have had far too few hitting stars come out of their farm system via the draft in the last quarter of a century.
Simply:
Draft power arms and power bats.
Case in point:
In 2022, the Mets drafted Kevin Parada with the #11 overall. Good college power for a catcher, but they drafted a catcher with skills, not the most toolsy guy available. Mistake, seemingly.
- Parada has mostly struggled in the upper minors.
And then, with # 14, drafted Li’l Jett, an all around player of short stature.
- Jett is now struggling at AAA in the Brewers system.
They could have drafted Jacob Misiorowski, instead. Regarding that lad, pitching against MLB HR leader Kyle Schwarber in a recent June game, the following was written by Matt Reigle, Outkick Sports:
“…the Misiorowski pitch was officially (clocked at) 104.5 mph, which was the fastest pitch ever thrown by a starting pitcher.”
“As hard as it was, though, there's a good chance Schwarber didn't notice it being much faster than any other pitch that at-bat. That's because all five pitches he faced were north of 103 mph, with the third pitch of the at-bat, a called strike, also hitting the 104 mark.”
He is a Jacob deGrom arm, but a higher performance deGrom model.
The Mets passed on him. I would have drafted that guy. Not the short guy, at # 14. Misio has a Power Arm Extraordinaire.
Sure, other teams passed on him, too, but one of those early Mets picks for Parada and Jett should have been for the Misio Man. Why?
Draft Power Arms, Power Bats.
That mantra also includes hyper-speedsters like AJ Ewing. Power legs.
Draft only top tier tools players only, until none remain on the draft board.
So, OK - make it Draft Power Arms, Power Bats, AND Power Legs.
Can you deviate? Yes, if you have a guy like Carson Benge that you are absolutely convinced cannot miss.
Otherwise, stick to the mantra.
TWO UNSERIOUS HITTING PROSPECTS
The Mets’ Top 30 prospects list has Ryan Clifford at # 2, Jacob Reimer at # 3.
Based on their 2026 results so far, those rankings are so unserious that I have to ask, “Are you serious?”
Thru Friday:
Clifford was hitting .197, just 40 RBIs in 311 PAs, 113 Ks in 75 AAA games.
Reimer was hitting .212, just 17 RBIs in 214 PAs, 57 Ks in 50 AA games.
COMBINED? .206, 20 HRs, 57 RBIs and 170 Ks in 525 PAs.
That normally should exclude you from a Top 30 list altogether.
Past the basic stats, here is a key indicator they are unserious:
Just 2 HBP in 2026, in 525 combined plate appearances. None since April 26.
No one likes to get hurt. But, as Mark Canha the ex-Met learned, learning how to absorb HBPs gets you on base, which increases your OBP, and higher OBPs make you more valuable.
Mark was hit 141 times in 4,100 PAs. That added a lot to his career OBP.
And, I contend, helped keep him in the major leagues longer.
One other huge negative: 170 Ks in 525 PAs? Crazy high.
Do they teach guys to choke up and put the ball in play with 2 strikes anymore?
Do these guys take too many pitches?
I don’t have stats on hitting with two strikes for them. Using Mark Vientos as a proxy, Mark is simply horrendous on two strike counts. And he currently is a decidedly better hitter than these two prospects, by a wide margin.
By extrapolation, these two need to stop being unserious on two strike counts.
I did see this excerpt from a 2024 Baseball America article on Clifford, confirming what I suspected:
“While he has double-plus raw power, Clifford has one of the lowest swing rates in the minor leagues and can be too passive at times, especially when challenged by upper-level pitchers. He hit with two strikes nearly two-thirds of the time in 2024, with his chase rate nearly doubling in that situation.”
It seems nothing has really changed there in 2026. 113 Ks in 75 games.
These two Mets prospects need to get SERIOUS, or they may never even get to that ballpark in Queens.
Clifford at least is durable.
Reimer was again on the IL as I wrote this and has missed a huge amount of time to injury (mostly in 2024, and to lesser degrees in 2025 and 2026). You need to play a lot to improve.
C’mon, guys. Get SERIOUS. Your career clocks are ticking.
19 comments:
Technically, Jett Williams fits your power legs category, and Parada definitely fits your power hitting category with his performance at Georgia Tech. Sometimes, prospects just don’t work out.
To me, Reimer and Clifford are the two most important bats in the Mets organization because all other upper level bats have been promoted. Morabito will probably be a bench player and Suero has catchers stats. Only Clifford and Reimer are close enough to help this team. Didn’t Clifford have LASIK surgery last year? Just very hard to make that last jump. Parada is at least hitting for average and I wonder how the defense has been.
I wonder if they pick Parada if he is not also a catcher. I think they thought it was a 2 for 1 special. It hasn’t worked out that way.
Jett was power legs, but to me, that is the trickiest tool, and the one least likely to benefit at the major league level. Ewing got caught stealing by Realmuto twice the other day. He was almost invincible in base stealing in the minors.
That said, he and Benge have enough power and speed to have made them good choices.
In order to reach a player’s power, he must make contact. I wonder if Houck was screened for whiff potential carefully enough. 103 Ks in 63 games (1.64 per game)? Worse still, he played 54 games at that same level last year, and his bad K rate there last year has further deteriorated. Someone needs to massively change his approach. AJ Ewing fanned just 66 times in 78 games (0.84 per game) in his brief Brooklyn stay last year, and he got up more since he was a lead off hitter. That K rate should be Houck’s goal. Nothing else matters for him like that does.
If Clifford had LASIK, I hope that was done properly.
Probably was. I just think he takes far too many strikes. Barry Bonds didn’t. He just got to see very few strikes. Clifford probably needs to ditch the power swing and look to line the ball up the middle. Let his power do the rest. This approach is not working.
As you know, in the past, I tracked draft eligible players
Kevin Parada was a worthy draft pick in that slot and I was quite happy when the Mets picked him. I felt they signed their future catcher for at least a decade.
Clifford and Reimer right now are hurting, not helping, their minor league teams. I still think Reimer has the higher ceiling…if he can stop getting hurt.
Very few hitters as short as Williams is turn out to be productive power hitters in the majors. Oh, there are always Kirby Puckett's but they are the exception
Mack, thanks. But do you feel in retrospect they compromised at all to get a guy who both caught AND had power? I could see the logic “big power AND a catcher, too.” Would they have drafted him at 11 overall if he wasn’t a catcher, too, though? Admittedly, I have not looked closely at other successes in that draft other than Misiorowski and Drake Baldwin.
David Peterson dominated yesterday in his Cubs debut
Figures
Gus, I simply think drafting a 5’6” player was too high a risk. So few in recent baseball history that are 5’6” or 5’7” that succeeded as hitters. There is real negative correlation there. He did OK in AA and below. This year in AAA, .221. LA Acuna would probably be a duplicate of his brother Ronald if he were 5 inches taller and the same height.
Mack, are we surprised? He is out from under the Queens Cloud.
Peterson gave up early homeruns and also walked guys early on. He just got away with it. Always been a pitcher that can walk three straight guys and then strikeout three straight guys, and I’ve seen him do it. Alot has been written about the Mets bad defense but I thought Semien was so good? I believe that Semien is a bad seed and the Mets were trying to move Nimmo too much and got caught in a hoodwink. It’s hard to believe that he played every game and I also believe that hip pointer is due to him being told he will be in the bench more. I don’t believe that for a second. As soon as he was getting benched, his hip started hurting. If the Mets didn’t sign Bichette to that contract and then proclaim him third baseman, he should have been at 2B by now.
Every hitter has value and I believe Williams can be very good if he plays to his strength. It was said of him that he barely swung and missed and had a great eye. But I see a hitter swinging out of his shoes to show that he’s got power as a little guy. I would have liked him to be an on base guy that steals bases and hits .320. Besides, power is the last variable to be mastered and he has time to learn that. I didn’t mind losing him, but I wanted to keep Sprout and send off Tong.
Semien’s attitude is fine. All the player’s attitudes are fine. Except, if they were really fine, there would be more wins. Clearly.
Oddly, and I never do this, I looked at overall International league hitter stats. The best hitter there is short: 5’7” Luis Lara of Nashville. 21 years old, .328/.436 OBP, 20 steals. AND… just 43 Ks in 71 games. The Brewers are Nashville.
His fellow short teammate Jett is 110 points lower in both categories. 22 y/o Jett has fanned 74 times in 72 games.
I think the Mets recent draft strategy is correct: arms and athletes. Not a fan of power. There are shockingly few real power bats in the majors. You'd be wasting a lot of draft picks if you focused on power bats. I also think the optimal draft strategy should reflect age and experience. The athlete part should be most important for super young players. I believe hitting mechanics, plate discipline, approach and relevant bat to ball skills other than timing can be taught. Reliance on timing can be reduced as well. College players should be more finished products and so one has more information about fit for organizational needs, etc.
You can't have enough quality arms given injuries, length of careers and the obvious fact that pitching travels in BB the way defense does in basketball. You need excellent pitching more than anything else because it is the only thing that you can count on to consistently keep you in games.
Power arms are valuable but I also would put weight on thoughtfulness, knowing the game, being a bulldog, fearless and resilient. Most pitchers don't last long enough to learn to pitch rather than to throw. Very few have that internalized early in the career the way Maddux and Glavine did; That's a real longevity producer.
When I was pitching, and I wonder Tom, if your brother had the same experience, I was taught that the order of priority for a pitcher was control of three pitches first; location 2nd (and requires 1), movement (which also requires 1 as well), and then speed (comes last, but which becomes a superpower if accompanied by capacity to control, locate and put some movement on it.)
Athletes is essential because of the versatility and optionality it provides. The best athletes right up threw the pony leagues, high school and even college, were 90% either the SS or pitchers or some who did both. When I didn't pitch, I played 3B and RF. I should have realized this was a bad sign, especially because I lacked any power and speed. It was more fun for guys like me in the old days, I'm talking turn of the century (20th, not 21st).
I think my greatest skill was foul tipping pitches. The virtue of reaching your peak in LL is that you begin to take schoolwork seriously and relegate your athletic ambitions to daydreams and obtaining a good TV set or having a sufficiently remunerative job to be able to attend lots of sporting events in person. :-)
'through college' not 'threw college' I was not referring to point shaving
And now, you can get it all by writing for a baseball blog. The work is hard though and the salary non-existent. But worth every minute devoted to it. It's the best way to keep baseball in your life for those of us who had more ambitious dreams (even those of us who had to adjust their dreams while still in diapers - even as we now face returning to that undergarment in the all too visible future) !
Talking about adult diapers is a rash statement
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