Every draft class has a lottery ticket buried in the middle rounds, and for the Mets in 2026 that ticket is Aidan Keenan. The Stanford righty went in the 7th round at pick 210, a slot valued at $287,800. New York blew past that number.
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.
That's the gap between where a guy gets picked and what teams actually think he's worth. Keenan's calling card is obvious: a fastball that sits mid-90s and has touched 99, with spin rates that reportedly ranked top-5 among multiple pitches he throws. At the MLB Draft Combine, arguably the biggest pre-draft stage there is, he reportedly ran his heater up near 97-plus average and turned heads.
The catch is he barely pitched this spring to prove it in games that count. An oblique injury wiped out most of Keenan's junior season at Stanford, limiting him to a handful of starts before and after the injury and leaving him with an ugly ERA in a small sample. Teams don't pay $350k on ERA, though. They pay on stuff, and on the belief that a healthy version of this arm looks nothing like the injury-shortened line score suggests.
There's also bloodlines here. Keenan's older brother Tyler went in the 4th round out of Ole Miss back in 2020, so this is a family that's been through the pro-ball pipeline before. Aidan was good enough as a high schooler in California to be draft-eligible out of the class of 2023, but he had the Stanford commitment locked in and passed on turning pro early. This time around, there was no reason to say no.
For the Mets, it's a classic buy-low on upside play in a farm system that just added a wave of names in this draft. A power arm with command questions is exactly the kind of project player development staffs love to get their hands on, and $350k is cheap insurance if the fastball translates. If it doesn't, it's a rounding error in the draft budget. Either way, the bet is now on the Mets' player development to turn a Combine standout with an injury-marred spring into a real prospect.