MLB Draft First Round: Red Sox Take Marcelo Mayer
!!!
The mock drafts were wrong! I know you’re surprised. It’s hard to believe. I’ll pause while you compose yourself. Take a breath, take a sip of water. Now take a big gulp of water and hold it in your mouth for a moment while I tell you who the Red Sox picked with the fourth overall pick in the draft:
Marcelo Mayer!
I said water, Arsenio…
The point is the Red Sox got Marcelo Mayer! That’s great, you say. Who is Marcelo Mayer? Well… we’ll get to that. Let’s set the scene first.
Just about every mock draft I read said the first overall pick was going to be Marcelo Mayer, a high school shortstop from Eastlake High School in California. Just about every mock draft I read said the Red Sox wanted Jack Leiter, the starting pitcher from Vanderbilt University, but if he was gone they’d take Henry Davis, a college catcher from Louisville University. Just about every mock draft from Sunday morning said Leiter would be gone by four and Davis was going to Boston.
With Davis, it seemed he was going to be good enough to make a major league roster, but how much impact was he really capable of? That was (and still is!) the question. But it doesn’t fall within the purview of this newsletter because Davis didn’t go to the Red Sox at four. The Pirates took him first overall and that really set things in motion for the Red Sox.
Once Davis was off the board, there were three guys who were all high ceiling prospects left in Mayer, Jordan Lawlar, and Jack Leiter, exactly the kind of player who the team should be selecting in that spot. It seemed Detroit, sitting in front of the Red Sox at three, would go in a different direction, so the Red Sox were likely to get their shot at two of those three. Who depended on what the Texas Rangers did at two.
Those jerks took Jack Leiter. [cue booing]
(I get points for the South Park reference.)
But while it was disappointing in the moment, it meant the Red Sox were going to get one of either Jordan Lawlar or Marcelo Mayer. The dream scenario was unfolding for the Red Sox. Even if Detroit took Mayer, the Sox could still take the second best high school shortstop, and likely the one with the highest ceiling of the bunch.
But Detroit did not take Mayer. They did not take Lawlar either. They took high school pitcher Jackson Jobe from Mississippi. Jobe has the best stuff in the draft according to many reports, but he’s a high school pitcher and those guys bust so often it’s very difficult to justify taking one at three. Jobe could be the guy we look back at and wish he had fallen to the Red Sox, but the danger there is so extreme.
More importantly the Red Sox found themselves on the clock at four with Mayer, Lawlar, and Kahlil Watson, another high ceiling high school shortstop whom I forgot to mention until now, all on the board. It’s hard to imagine a better scenario for the Red Sox.
But the gem there is Mayer. The other two are great prospects, but Mayer was mocked to Pittsburgh with the first pick repeatedly for a reason, and it wasn’t because Pittsburgh was connected to him through anything. It was because all those scouts and experts thought he was the best player available in the entire draft.
So there the Red Sox were at four with the consensus best player in the entire draft still on the board. They likely weren’t expecting this and as such likely had other plans, but credit to them, they adjusted on the fly and took Mayer, as they should have.
Getting back to the question from before, who is Marcelo Mayer? He’s a high school shortstop with good defensive skills, some power potential, and a lot of hitting ability. He’s not small at 6’3 so there’s still room to fill his frame out with more muscle as he’s only 18 years old. He can put the bat on the ball and hit for some power now, but there’s potentially more power down the road, all while adding value with his defense.
The whole package is something along the lines of Corey Seager with the Dodgers. Seager, for those who don’t know, is a plus defender who has hit just below .300 with a good on-base percentage (think ~.360) and a slugging percentage over .500 most years. He’s a different player than Xander Bogaerts, but he’s not dissimilar in overall value. That’s the kind of player who just fell to the Red Sox.
Now, Mayer is just out of high school so there’s absolutely a chance he doesn’t make it out of Double A. That should be (and is currently being) acknowledged. The entire industry could be wrong about him. But look at this:
This is from poster Eric Van on the Sox Prospects message board. Eric kindly compiled the average rankings of the players in the draft by various sites and you can see the consensus is Mayer was the best player available in the whole draft. It wasn’t unanimous by any stretch. This was an odd draft that way, and there are no guarantees in general, but the Red Sox weren’t picking Colton Cowser fifth or Frank Mozzicato seventh, or Trey Sweeney 20th. They got the guy experts thought was the best guy available.
More importantly than what the experts thought, the Red Sox thought he was the best guy.
It’s one thing when Jim Callis of MLB Pipeline says Mayer is the best, or Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs says it, but it’s another thing when the Boston Red Sox and the millions of dollars they pour into scouting and analyzing these players say it. The mere fact the Red Sox picked him is a point in his favor.
But beyond that, his skillset is extremely exciting and a huge add to the Red Sox minor league system. Yes, he’s not Jack Leiter, but I think in the end there’s a pretty good possibility he ends up being more valuable than Jack Leiter. This was the best case scenario for the Red Sox. This was perfection. Things probably shouldn’t have worked out like this, but they did, and there was no better possible outcome than this.
There are issues that come along with this pick though. The Orioles took college outfielder Colton Cowser with the next pick partially because they liked Cowser, but mostly because he’s signable for less than the slot value of their pick. This gives the Orioles extra money from their bonus pool to use to sign other high-priced players later in the draft. That’s something that the Red Sox will likely now struggle to do due to the money they’re going to have to spend on signing Mayer.
It’s not clear what Mayer will require to sign, but the Red Sox will sign him and it will take up a large portion of their bonus pool to do so. That means getting other big money players later in the draft might be difficult, or more difficult than had the Red Sox pursued the Cowser stratagem.
The Red Sox do still have money available and they will select some potentially good players with their remaining picks. It’s just not clear if they’ll be able to afford guys like Joshua Baez or other players who still have college eligibility remaining and thus can command big money for their talents.
But that’s the way these things work. Sometimes it makes sense to save money and make a play later in the draft, and the Red Sox did that in last year’s draft primarily because they didn’t have a second round pick. This year, picking fourth overall, there was no reason to mess around. And when the best player in the draft fell into their laps, smartly, the Red Sox didn’t mess around. They pounced.
I was all-in on Leiter mainly because I was trying to look at realistic options at #4. All indications are that Mayer is the best all-around player in the draft and he seems to have a great attitude. He'll take some time, but he should be a Top 5 player in the farm system almost immediately.