Mets: Three Matthew Allan predictions for the 2020 season

The New York Mets are hopeful Matthew Allan can become a future star in the big leagues. What will the highly-touted prospect do in 2020?

A year after the New York Mets drafted, then subsequently traded away their first-round pick, the viewed-to-be-generational talent Jarred Kelenic, the team, including General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen, scouting director Tommy Tanous, and the Mets entire draft war room entered the 2019 draft war room with a mission: make a splash. And a splash they made.

After selecting the consensus top prep hitter in the draft in Brett Baty, not to mention fireballing Texan right-handed pitcher Josh Wolf, the Mets found themselves in a situation neither they nor anyone else anticipated. Consensus top prep pitching prospect Matthew Allan was unselected after the first two rounds and almost halfway through the third round.

In order to ensure at least a shot at signing the prep righty, the Mets had to make some major concessions, chief among them drafting college seniors with their remaining Day 2 picks to ensure they would be able to meet Allan’s high bonus demand. The bonus Allan originally demanded exceeded $4 million and had no team met his asking price he would have honored his commitment to play at the University of Florida. Ultimately, Allan signed for $2.5 million.

Though his 2019 season was limited to 10.1 innings between the Gulf Coast League and Brooklyn, Allan showed how dominant he could be by striking out 14 batters in his professional debut.

With Allan’s first full season coming up, there’s plenty of questions as to whether he’ll make a major leap, whether he’s the Mets’ ace of the future, and exactly what his future entails. Let’s take a look at what may happen in 2020.

An Appearance on MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 Prospects

While it was encouraging to see four Mets made the Pipeline top 100 Prospect list including 2019 first-rounder Brett Baty. there was one glaring omission. To be fair, the Pipeline top 100 list undergoes a lot of changes during the season due to graduations and the midseason update, and it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that Allan is likely one of those prospects that just missed the cut.

Still, an impressive start at Columbia, which is where he should start his sophomore campaign could force the issue with Jim Callis, Jonathan Mayo, and Mike Rosenbaum. The consensus in their “Best non-top 100 prospect by team” article was that Allan was next in line thanks in part to his projectability and arsenal.

There are quite a few prospects that are deserving of a major league call up, if not on Opening Day then definitely early on in the season, and when they graduate, Allan should sneak in in short order. He’ll probably start somewhere in the 90’s, but a strong season could potentially boost him another ten or 20 spots.

An Appearance on the Big Stage: The Futures Game

If Allan really wants to make an impression in his first full season as a pro, he will have to pitch his way into the 2020 MLB Futures Game. The Futures Game, which showcases MLB’s top prospects has seen its fair share of star Mets players in recent years, most notably Pete Alonso in 2018, Amed Rosario in 2017, and Michael Conforto in 2015.

It isn’t impossible to believe that a 2019 draft pick can pitch in the futures game the following year; the previous Futures Game had eight 2018 draft picks, including four that were drafted out of high school the previous year, one of which (Alek Thomas) was not a first-round pick.

Even if the Mets’ system is a bit more strong at the lower levels, Allan won’t be selected just because he’s one of the best prospects they have. Allan will have to dazzle in his first pro season.

By comparison, 2019 Futures Game representative Anthony Kay entered his Futures Game having already mastered Double-A Binghamton, pitching to a 1.49 ERA, 7 wins, and 70 strikeouts. Of course, by the time he was selected, Kay was already in Triple-A Syracuse where he admittedly struggled against the more advanced competition, inflating his season ERA by a full run.

Allan probably wouldn’t need to be as brilliant as Kay was in Double-A, but if he can at least be 70-75 percent of what Kay was, he definitely would make it a tough call for whoever is managing the NL team at the Futures game not to pick him. Still, even if Allan cannot compete statistically, he certainly can generate buzz with his filthy stuff.

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Regardless of what Allan does this spring, he is arguably the team’s most exciting pitching prospect in recent memory, and he should be on Mets fans radars for a long time.