James Woods via Perfect Game

We have our first 2021 draft update and the Mets will be picking 10th overall. The last two times the Mets picked in the top-10, they took Jarred Kelenic and Michael Conforto.

Kelenic was seen as the best prep player in the draft and Conforto was seen as the top collegiate bat available. I’m definitely glad that we can start analyzing the draft without making jokes that Brodie Van Wagenen is sending the pick to Detroit for Miguel Cabrera.

Jonathan Mayo and Jim Callis of MLB.com did a mock draft for the top-10 yesterday. I will caution, this can and almost certainly will change way more drastically than it did in previous years. There was not much for evaluators to use from 2020. Regardless, let’s take a look at who they are mocking to the Mets.

MLB.com believes that the Mets will take James Wood of the IMG Academy in Florida. Jim Callis was making this pick for the Mets on their podcast (the 23:30 mark for those who want to listen to it). Callis was raving about Wood’s 6’6″ frame and the very fact he is a “definite” center fielder.

Callis seemed to indicate that he has plus tools across the board. Wood has been climbing the ranking per Callis and Mayo. According to Mayo, Wood has risen a lot as of late and is going to go in the first half of the draft.

Here is some tape of Wood:

There was quite a bit of info on James Wood once I got past the search results for James Woods. Perfect Game had this to say about him:

“Extra tall and long limbed athletic build, strong with the potential to get stronger. Left handed hitter, very easy and loose swing with outstanding extension, creates easy leverage at contact, lots of pull side carry and lift, has hand speed and some feel for the barrel for an extra tall hitter, huge potential.”

Baseball Factory was able to acquire some of the Statcast metrics of his swing.  His maximum barrel speed is already at 70 MPH. This essentially measures bat speed for us. To put that into perspective, the 90th percentile of D1 college players have a max barrel speed of 71.1 MPH.

Lookout Landing did us the favor of contextualizing the data for us. Essentially, he is already producing exit velocities of 109 MPH. According to them, Wood had a max barrel speed of 74 MPH so perhaps the Baseball Factory info was a little older but regardless, both are very impressive. Remember that he’s just a teenager. He will get stronger and in turn, his bat speed will increase as well.

As of now, Wood is committed to Mississippi State but that probably will not stop him from getting drafted in the first round. Judging by all the early things I have been reading on Wood, he might not even be available for the Mets to pick but everything is still very early though.