{"id":318234,"date":"2021-08-07T22:22:47","date_gmt":"2021-08-07T19:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-mets-drafting-kumar-rocker-went-so-very-wrong\/"},"modified":"2021-08-07T22:22:47","modified_gmt":"2021-08-07T19:22:47","slug":"how-mets-drafting-kumar-rocker-went-so-very-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-mets-drafting-kumar-rocker-went-so-very-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"#How Mets drafting Kumar Rocker went so very wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How Mets drafting Kumar Rocker went so very wrong<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

New York sports fans general<\/a>ly regard baseball\u2019s amateur draft the same way they look at NASCAR, or college football, or Republican primaries: as curiosities, shrugged off by the masses and embraced by the diehards.<\/p>\n

The Mets\u2019 selection of Vanderbilt right-hander Kumar Rocker with the 10th pick this year violated that norm and transcended the niche following to become a darn big story. It grew exponentially when the Mets, concerned by what they saw in the 21-year-old\u2019s physical examination, decided to not make Rocker an offer at all and consequently received the 11th selection in next year\u2019s draft as compensation.<\/p>\n

The sequence of events didn\u2019t merely enrage the Mets\u2019 fan base. It dominated industry talk, with people on both sides of the aisle, team and player representation, trying to make heads or tails of what went down.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s try to do the same, question-and-answer style.<\/p>\n

Q: OK, how badly did the Mets screw this up? Should they have been more wary of Rocker?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: Look, the talk of Rocker\u2019s diminished velocity during his redshirt sophomore season at Vandy was so prominent that Tommy Tanous, the Mets\u2019 vice president of amateur and international scouting, answered a question about it during a Zoom news<\/a> conference following the draft\u2019s second day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were aware of the velocity decrease in the middle of the year,\u201d Tanous said. \u201cI would say almost all Division I pitchers had a velocity decrease because this is the first time they had been extended [after the COVID-shortened 2020]. It\u2019s just he\u2019s such a highly visible pick and pitcher who was consistently throwing between 96 and 100 [mph], and when he does throw 92, 94, it\u2019s looked at. He was used quite a bit early in the season and his pitch counts were reasonable, but they were high. I think he had a little bit of a lull in the middle of the season. We saw it pick up at the end of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were well aware of it, and in some ways, hopefully this was the reason we were lucky enough to land him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mets\"
Kumar Rocker<\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Undoubtedly, that awareness factored into Rocker, ranked sixth by MLB.com, falling to the Mets with the 10th-overall pick. That didn\u2019t serve as the only factor, however. Rocker\u2019s ask (he and the Mets agreed to a $6 million draft-day signing bonus pending the physical) also played a role, as did the history of his adviser, Scott Boras, being a tough negotiator. If any team obtained a smoking gun that Rocker, who pitched regularly the past three seasons, suffered from real medical problems in his pitching arm, as opposed to simply hearing scuttlebutt, I failed to learn that through my reporting this past week.<\/p>\n

If you can justify the Mets\u2019 popping of Rocker as a reasonable risk mitigated by the safety net of next year\u2019s extra pick, the rest of the industry showed little sympathy for the team\u2019s plight because of how it wound up leaving $1.3 million unspent (and unable to be utilized in any other way) as a result of its other picks signing for below their slot values. The Mets did explore taking some high-end high-schoolers late, yet none of their targets app<\/a>eared willing to cancel their college commitments for anything in the $1.3 million neighborhood. The Angels found such a commodity, 12th-round pick Mason Albright, a high-school lefty, who agreed to a $1.25 million signing bonus. We\u2019ll keep an eye on him.<\/p>\n

Q: How big a hit is this to the Mets\u2019 farm system?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: It\u2019s significant because their cupboard is pretty bare because they have traded away several top guys since late 2018. You saw that at this year\u2019s trade deadline, when the Mets, unwilling to deal their top pieces (Francisco Alvarez, Bret Baty and Ronny Mauricio), fell short in their efforts to land another starting pitcher because clubs didn\u2019t like their depth. And they dealt outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, their top draft pick of 2020, to the Cubs for pending free agent Javier Baez. Without Rocker, the heat turns on the Mets to find a jewel or three from the draft picks they did sign.<\/p>\n