Nobody's circling seventh-round picks on their calendar in June, but this is exactly why teams still grind through all 20 rounds. The Mets took Aidan Keenan out of Stanford in the 7th round of this year's draft, and instead of nickel-and-diming a project arm, they went well over slot to get him signed before he had a chance to think about school.
Jim Callis broke the signing bonus and the scouting notes on Keenan's fastball.
7th-rder Aidan Keenan signs w/@Mets for $350k (slot 210 value = $287,800). @StanfordBSB RHP, fastball up to 99 mph, threw well at @MLBDraft Combine.
The number itself tells the story. Slot value for pick 210 was $287,800. The Mets handed Keenan $350,000, more than $60K over slot, the kind of overpay clubs reserve for guys they think are getting stolen that late. For a 7th rounder, that's a real vote of confidence, not a token bonus to get a paper signed.
So why the buy-in? Keenan's a 6-2, 202-pound righty who sat mid-90s and touched 99 this spring, backed by a four-pitch mix that includes a sweeping slider scouts liked as his best secondary, plus a cutter and changeup. He wasn't just a radar-gun heater guy either, he carried that stuff into the MLB Draft Combine and reportedly threw the hardest pitch of the event, all while posting top-5 spin rates on multiple pitches, exactly the kind of underlying data that makes player development departments perk up.
Stanford has become a legitimate pipeline for this kind of workhorse arm, and Keenan was part of a group of Cardinal players who heard their names called across the draft. For the Mets, who've leaned on scouting and paying up for upside in recent drafts under their current front office, locking up a power arm with a track record of missing bats at this price is low-risk, high-ceiling business.
None of this means Keenan's projected as a rotation piece in Queens anytime soon, seventh-rounders are lottery tickets no matter the velocity. But a fastball up to 99 with a bat-missing slider and clean combine data is the profile player-dev staffs love to tinker with. If the cutter and changeup keep developing, this becomes one of those under-the-radar picks Mets fans look back on and wonder why nobody else was in on him.