9 total NY Mets prospects lost in the Rule 5 Draft, only 1 is worth biting your nails over

A part of the MLB Winter Meetings gaining a little more attention in recent years is the Rule 5 Draft. An opportunity for teams to pluck away players who’ve yet to make a club’s 40-man roster, we’re mostly familiar with the MLB version of this draft. There’s also a minor league part with less stringent rules. Unlike the MLB Rule 5 Draft where a player must remain on the 26-man roster for the full season, the minor league portion doesn’t have such restrictions. Because of this, the New York Mets saw a whole bunch of prospects leave the system on Wednesday.

Among the 9, only one is worth biting your nails over. The 8th player selected in the MLB version of the draft, the selection of Nathan Lavender is frustrating.

Mets fans should be a little upset to see Nate Lavender go in the Rule 5 Draft

Leave it to the Tampa Bay Rays to steal this promising lefty reliever from the Mets. He pitched to a 2.98 ERA in 2023 and this past spring became a guy many fans were hoping to see crack the MLB roster at some point. An early season injury limited him to just 5 games. The thought behind the Rays selecting him is to stash Lavender on their 60-day IL as long as possible, if not all season long. This isn’t that uncommon of a strategy. The San Francisco Giants did this with Dedniel Nunez several years ago. He was later returned to the Mets. Fans of Lavender’s can only hope for the same.

Along with Lavender, Mike Vasil was taken by the Philadelphia Phillies. They took a page out of the Mets’ playbook and quickly traded him to Tampa Bay for cash considerations. While less frustrating because of how poorly Vasil has pitched in Triple-A for two straight years, the fact that the Phillies were able to send him elsewhere guarantees he won’t be coming back to the Mets who did this same thing last year when they drafted Justin Slaten then turned around and traded him to the Boston Red Sox.

These are the other seven players the Mets lost:

1) Joseph Yabbour, Chicago White Sox
2) Hobie Harris, Boston Red Sox
3) Junior Tilien, Detroit Tigers
4) Drake Osborn, Arizona Diamondbacks
5) Nolan Clenny, Chicago Cubs
6) Landon Marceaux, Kansas City Royals
7) Jawilme Ramirez, St. Louis Cardinals

It’s a mix of names you might know or not. Joseph Yabbour was actually the first selected in the minor league portion of the draft. Hobie Harris was just picked up by the Mets back in November. Landon Marceaux was the last remaining piece from the 2023 trade that sent Eduardo Escobar to the Los Angeles Angels.

The Mets added one player, a pitcher named Michael Hobbs from the Los Angeles Dodgers. The 25-year-old was 2-1 with a 2.97 ERA in 57.2 innings in Double-A last season. A 10th round selection by the Dodgers back in 2021, his poison seems to be throwing strikes consistently enough with a walk rate of 5.2 per 9 since going pro.