The 2026 MLB Draft didn’t just hand the Mets a fresh batch of prospects. It also gave the rest of the NL East something to chew on, especially in Atlanta and Washington.
Bleacher Report’s first-round review linked the Braves and Nationals to two familiar former Mets names. Atlanta’s pick, AJ Gracia, was compared to Michael Conforto. Washington’s selection, Chris Hacopian, drew a Jeff McNeil comparison.
That’s a pretty interesting pair of comps when you think about where those ex-Mets stand now. Conforto is a role player for the Chicago Cubs, while McNeil is floundering with the Athletics.
But both were once central pieces in Queens. Conforto spent several seasons as a steady middle-of-the-order bat, and McNeil was a batting champion and a two-time All-Star.
Gracia, a left-handed hitting outfielder from New Brunswick, NJ, earned the Conforto nod because of his plate discipline. In college, he walked more than he struck out, and his scouting report praises his pitch selection and suggests he could handle center field. Still, if Conforto taught Mets fans anything, it’s that a player projected for center can wind up in a corner.
Hacopian’s path is a little different. The Nationals took the second baseman, a right-handed hitter, and the McNeil comparison seems tied to his contact skills and ability to move around the diamond. His scouting report also includes “raw power,” which makes the comparison even stranger considering McNeil didn’t hit a single home run at Long Beach State.
The draft slotting adds another layer to the whole thing. McNeil went to the Mets in the 12th round, while Conforto was the 10th overall pick.
Gracia went 9th, and Hacopian arrives with expectations of his own. Gracia is expected to zoom through the minors.
Of course, comps are only comps. Mets fans know that better than anyone after Harold Reynolds called Brett Baty “ Freddie Freeman with power ” on draft day. Still, Gracia has the look of another Conforto-type bat, while Hacopian feels a lot less likely to follow McNeil’s exact path.
In Other News...
Rangers Fans Are Learning The Jacob deGrom Routine The Hard Way
Jacob deGroms latest turn in Texas has become familiar to anyone who has followed his career closely: the stuff is there, the results have mostly been there, and the health questions never seem far behind. In his fourth year with the Rangers, he has given them a solid season with 18 starts and a 3.49 ERA, enough to matter in a race where every reliable arm counts.
The problem now is less about performance than timing, because the Rangers are not sure when he will take the mound again. DeGrom has said he believes he can pitch through the discomfort, but the club has to balance that against the risk of asking too much too soon, especially with a pitcher whose availability has long been as important as his dominance. [Read more 🡒]
The Mets Have Made This Painful All-Star Move Five Times
The Mets history with in-season All-Star trades is a reminder that even a player having a star turn in one summer can still become part of a deadline deal before the year is out. Since 1992, the club has moved five All-Stars in the same season they were selected, a list that stretches from David Cone and Bobby Bonilla in the early 1990s to Rick Reed and Armando Benitez in the 2000s and Carlos Beltran in 2011.
Each one carried its own kind of sting, because these were not fringe pieces but players who had already earned league-wide recognition before the Mets decided to cash them in. Some of those moves were made with an eye toward the future, others with a sense that the present had already slipped away, and the long view has made a few of them look even more consequential in hindsight. [Read more 🡒]
How Mets Futures Game Prospects Really Turned Out Over Time
Since the All-Star Futures Game began, the Mets have had a long enough run of prospects through it to tell a pretty revealing story about how talent travels. Some of those names turned into core pieces in Queens, others were flipped in deals that changed the roster, and plenty simply never became what the organization once hoped, which is the nature of any prospect list that stretches across eras.
The more recent group keeps that same mix of promise and uncertainty. Francisco Alvarez and Carson Benge are already on the MLB roster, while Jonah Tong and Ryan Clifford are still in the part of the story where projection matters more than proof, and the next few seasons will decide whether they join the Mets success side of the ledger or become part of the long list of what-ifs. [Read more 🡒]