Can Carson Wiggins be the Mets next star pitcher?! | Presented By Your Local Ford Dealers

This is Straight Outta Flushing brought to you by your local Ford stores. Ford F-150 is the official truck of the New York Mets. So we talked about the numbers with the pitching, right? 12 pitchers selected here in this draft and we got to start with the first pick that they had in this draft and that was taking Carson Wiggins. Now, Joe, this looks like a very interesting prospect. 102 on the gun is what this guy can hit. Didn't have that many competitive innings above high school. So the Mets really seem like they're betting on the fact that, look, we like his stuff. We like his upside. He did have an injury, did deal with surgery, Tommy John surgery, but do you look at this move as a home run swing to keep a baseball term here for the Mets, Joe? Or did they just simply say, hey, we really like this guy's projection and where we think he can go with the 27th pick? What did you make of the move of drafting Carson Wiggins? Maybe both of those things. And I wrote about Carson Wiggins that you could read at SNY.TV and I actually called it a home run swing of a pick. So I have to be consistent. I think it's a home run swing of a pick. And as you mentioned, from a pure stuff standpoint, Carson Wiggins has as good stuff as anybody in this entire draft class. It's a elite fastball that will average 99 miles an hour. As you mentioned, touch 102. He had a wipeout slider in the mid to upper 80s that got a 74% swing and miss rate on in college. Curveball, he shows the ability to really spin it. It's a little inconsistent, but he's got the natural feel to spin it. And a changeup is a pitch that he hardly threw and kind of lags behind. As you mentioned, just 14 innings at Arkansas underwent Tommy John surgery with the internal brace, but he is fully healthy right now. He threw at the MLB Draft Combine last month and he wasn't going full bore really in that bullpen session, but he was up to 97 miles an hour. And he said in his post-draft availability that he is ready to pitch right now. Rehab's over. He would get on a mound tomorrow if the Mets wanted him to. So I think they're drafting a healthy player. There's obviously some risk given the injury. Control and command are certainly things that need to take a step forward if he is to fulfill what is his ultimate potential. As Chris Gross, who already astutely pointed out earlier, the VP of amateur and international scouting, he said he could be a frontline starter. And I agree, but there is that high risk that he could end up a reliever if the control and command can't get to the level that you need it to be to sustain as a starter. So that in itself makes it a home run swing because you take a big swing, you might hit a fly ball left fielder, you might hit 450 feet to dead center. Wardy, do you like the team taking a swing here? I know some people are different when it comes to drafts in all sports. Some people might say, I'd rather you go with the safe pick with your first pick. Do you like that the Mets made, to take Joe's term again, a home run swing here with their first pick in the 2026 MLB draft? I think what the Mets were able to do following that first pick is what makes me like this pick so much more transparently because when we look at the slot bonus for him, he was right around, I believe, you know, close to three and a half million and the Mets got him around two. So the Mets were able to get him, you know, at an appropriate value, as well as bringing in someone who, as you alluded to, has the pure stuff. You know, you're not looking at the innings with someone like this. You know, I understand even going back to my younger self, you know, not being as versed with the draft and, you know, the buildup and kind of what you're looking for and young, talented players. It's not nearly as much necessarily about the amount of actual playing time they had, especially in the case of a pitcher, as it is this stuff. Like all you need to know is that if you have your entire pitching department, like advocating for this guy in the draft, then clearly there's a reason for it, as is the case with every other team in Major League Baseball, right? So knowing that he touches north of 102 and was sitting right around, you know, getting to 97, most recently coming off of injury. I also like the fact that the Mets actually are bringing in someone that just came off of a season-long injury because, you know, it's better for that to happen then than potentially for it to happen now. Now that it can't, not that it can't happen moving forward. We've seen guys, of course, get, you know, Tommy John twice or three times over like a DeGrom, for example, but it just feels like there might be a slight less likelihood of that happening. And if he can kind of take this by storm right away for the Mets and we see him on the mound sooner than later, then that's going to be a great thing for them. So to be determined exactly what the Mets are getting him, but absolute gas, I'm never complaining. I'm always complaining about a lot of things with the Mets, including not having proper flamethrowers. So I hope that this is a step in the right direction, both from the right side and then as we get into a little bit later, maybe some guys they brought in that are thrown from the left side.