Mets select high school shortstop Colin Houck with 32nd overall pick
The MLB Draft almost never brings an organization or its fans the immediate impact felt on draft day in the other major sports leagues. A pick reaching the big leagues that season is a rarity. Still, these are important days for the Mets under owner Steve Cohen, who sees elevating their middling farm system as the path to contending every season.
The Mets’ bid to do that continued when they selected high school shortstop Colin Houck in the first round with the 32nd overall pick and University of Florida righthander Brandon Sproat in the second round at No. 56 on Sunday.
The Mets selected Sproat in the third round a year ago but couldn’t sign him. Mets director of amateur scouting Drew Toussaint said: “High-90s fastball touching 100, ability to spin the baseball with a changeup, a strike-thrower.”
Houck, 18, was projected to go at least 10 picks higher in many mock drafts. Steve Martone, assistant to the GM for draft operations, said, “He was one of the top names on our board and sometimes it falls to you.”
“You can’t look at those as concrete,” Houck said of pre-draft rankings. “I knew there was a chance this would happen. Things happen that are unexpected, and I’m very excited the Mets picked me up.”
He starred for Lilburn Parkview High School in Georgia and was named the 2023 Gatorade Georgia Player of the Year. The Mississippi State commit batted .487 with eight home runs, 50 RBIs and 56 runs and was 16-for-17 in stolen-base attempts. The 6-2, 193-pounder also played quarterback at Parkview and entertained scholarship offers from Power 5 football schools. “Last summer is when I decided just to stay with baseball,” Houck said. “I knew I was always a baseball kid at heart, so it wasn’t [that] hard of a decision.”
The No. 32 pick has a slot value of about $2.6 million; No. 56 is about $1.4 million.
Sproat, 22, was 8-3 with a 4.66 ERA for the Gators. The 6-3 starter pitched 106 1⁄3 innings this season, allowing 87 hits and striking out 134.
“We obviously selected him with our third-round selection last year [and] couldn’t reach an agreement,” Martone said. “[We] had to get his consent to be re-selected this year, which he did. Brandon decided to go back to school, bet on himself and it worked out, got selected a round higher this year.”
In addition to enriching the farm system, Cohen wants a World Series title soon. He added Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Mark Canha and Eduardo Escobar before the 2022 season, which pushed the payroll over $270 million and cost the club 10 spots Sunday, falling from No. 22 to No. 32 per competitive balance procedures. They will be docked again in the 2024 draft after assembling the most expensive team ever.
Cohen has been adamant since buying the Mets that he is playing a short-term and long-term strategy.
“When I measure my success as an owner, obviously you want to win a World Series,” he said in February. “But I’m also going to measure my success on building a farm system so we can create sustainability year in and year out. That’s really important to me. That’s how you really create something that’s special.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
