How many NY Mets draft picks have made the majors in the last 10 years?

2019 and 2020: The Brodie Van Wagenen era

Brodie Van Wagenen was known for a lot of things for his two-year tenure with the New York Mets. Most of it was negative. He had a “win-now” mentality with a lack of consideration for the future. It’s almost as if he knew he wasn’t going to last lost in the job.

BVW had only two opportunities to help draft the future. The 2019 and shortened 2020 draft (which lasted 5 rounds, the Mets had 6 picks) gave him a more limited opportunity to actually build the future through the draft than some others. It’s still fair to criticize him for many of those picks. After all, only two of the 46 players drafted by BVW ever made it to the MLB roster with the Mets.

Oddly, it’s the first and last picks taken by Van Wagenen who made their way through the Mets farm system and to the big league roster. Brett Baty was taken in the first round in 2019 with Eric Orze coming to us in the fifth round in 2020. Baty is still trying to find his place as a regular in the big leagues. Orze, who debuted in 2024 with a number of appearances you could count on one hand, is now with the Tampa Bay Rays following an offseason trade.

Baty is the lone player taken by the Mets in the 2019 draft to make it to the majors for any team at all. It was a draft built around third-round pick Matt Allan. The Mets saved up their bonus slot money to offer the high schooler $2.5 million to convince him to skip college and go directly to playing professional baseball. As a result, the next 37 draft picks were mostly out of college and had lower than average bonuses.

It wasn’t a complete waste of a draft, though. Second-rounder Josh Wolf was used in a trade to help acquire Francisco Lindor. Seventh-round pick Luke Ritter continues to mash in the minors with hopes of making it to the majors eventually. A few other names might be familiar, but none ever became a top prospect nor have they gotten to the major leagues more than 5 years later.

The situation is slightly different in the 2020 draft yet not much more impressive. First-round pick Pete Crow-Armstrong has a major league career, just not with the Mets. He was used at the 2021 trade deadline in an equally as debatable trade as the Cano-Diaz deal when he was sent to the Chicago Cubs for Javier Baez and Trevor Williams. We’ve already reviewed Orze. But in the second round, the J.T. Ginn selection adds just a fourth player from the 46 picks to make the majors. He did so in 2024 as a member of the Oakland Athletics a few years after he was packaged for Chris Bassitt.

Going just 4 for 46, Van Wagenen’s draft picks are currently batting .087 as far as reaching the majors goes for the players taken in the draft.

2019 draftees who debuted with the Mets – Brett Baty (1)
2020 draftees who debuted with the Mets – Eric Orze (1)
2020 draftees who debuted for another team – Pete Crow-Armstrong, J.T. Ginn (2)