Mets make splash at No. 11 with highly touted catching pick

NEW YORK -- On Sunday morning, the Mets boasted one of the top catching prospects in baseball. By Sunday evening, they had two of them.

With the 11th overall pick in the 2022 Draft, the Mets selected Kevin Parada, the first of four Draft selections on a day that saw the Mets restock their farm system with an influx of talent. In addition to Parada, whom the Mets took with the pick they received as compensation for not signing Kumar Rocker last year, the team grabbed three other players on Day 1 of the Draft: infielder Jett Williams, pitcher Blade Tidwell and outfielder Nick Morabito.

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Assuming Parada signs, he will join catcher Francisco ?lvarez -- the No. 2 prospect in baseball, who could be due for a big league promotion as soon as this season -- in the Mets organization. The fact that Parada is also a catcher is little more than coincidence; the Mets, like most teams, have a policy of taking the best available player on their Draft board regardless of position.

Still, it’s difficult not to think about what the future could look like in Flushing with both ?lvarez and Parada in the pipeline.

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“I think they’ll coexist, especially at that position,” vice president of amateur scouting Tommy Tanous said, likening the situation to when the Mets drafted first baseman Pete Alonso in 2016 despite having Dominic Smith already in the organization. “If you look around the Major Leagues, how much catching has become more of a split-time [position] now that we have the DH, there’s a lot of ways our big league club will get really good bats in the lineup.”

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As far as catchers go, Parada does not lack for pedigree. He is the latest in a decades-long line of notable Georgia Tech backstops including fellow first-rounders Jason Varitek, Matt Wieters and Joey Bart. Parada became the 16th consecutive Yellow Jacket starting catcher to be drafted, dating back to Varitek in 1994 and including his own Draft advisor, Mike Nickeas, a former Mets catcher who recently entered the business side of baseball.

“It’s a brotherhood like no other,” Parada said. “I know that if I ever need anything, I can definitely reach out to any of them and get some advice.”

One of the top prep hitters entering the 2020 Draft, Parada could have been selected in the second or third round coming out of high school. The Pasadena, Calif., native instead chose to attend Georgia Tech, which made him one of the highest-profile players to go undrafted in the abbreviated, five-round 2020 event. Two years later, that decision paid off, as Parada established himself as an even better Draft prospect as a sophomore.

Finding immediate success with the Yellow Jackets in 2021, Parada batted .318/.379/.550 with nine home runs and 20 doubles en route to consensus freshman All-America honors. He parlayed that success into a strong summer with the U.S. Collegiate National Team, further solidifying his status as a likely first-round pick.

This spring, Parada emerged as one of college baseball’s most productive hitters, posting a .360/.453/.715 slash line. He finished the regular season ranked sixth in the nation with a school-record 26 home runs, including 15 to center or the opposite field. Parada also ranked second in total bases (174), third in RBIs (85), fifth in runs (74) and 35th in hits (85), while maintaining a 51.2 percent hard-hit rate. For his efforts, Parada earned consensus first-team All-America honors and was named one of three finalists for the Golden Spikes Award, college baseball’s highest individual honor.

Parada became only the second college catcher the Mets have drafted in the first round, after Alan Zinter in 1989. (They have selected four high school catchers in the first round, most recently Kevin Plawecki in 2012.)

“Power hitting catchers are very hard to find,” Tanous said. “Power hitting catchers with great history of success in college like Kevin had are even harder to find. We were very surprised he was there.”

That the Mets even had a pick that high was due to their decision not to offer Rocker a contract after they selected him 10th overall last season. At the time, the Mets harbored concerns over the medical reports of Rocker, who underwent shoulder surgery months later.

Rocker wound up going third overall to the Rangers in this year’s Draft, which surprised many around the industry. That pleased the Mets, and not only because of their fondness for Rocker as a person. Texas’ early selection of Rocker allowed players such as Parada to slide one pick closer to them.

“It kind of changed the dynamic, in a way, of the first 10 picks,” Tanous said. “So when it happened, I was surprised -- I think we all were a little bit surprised. Not surprised at the talent [of Rocker], and that goes without saying. But it started to occur to us when that happened, like, we’re going to get a player here we might not quite deserve. So it really worked out well.”