Mets' Tommy Tanous on MLB Draft, scouting Pete Alonso and team's farm system

The MLB Draft, which starts on July 11, is right around the corner. For Mets VP of amateur and international Scouting Tommy Tanous, he is still like a kid on Christmas waiting to open up his presents in the form of draft picks. 

Tanous joined the Mets as a professional scout prior to the 2011 season and then took over as the scouting director before the 2012 season, when Chad MacDonald left the team. The first draft under his watch was in 2012, and he was promoted to VP overseeing both amateur and international scouting in 2017.

Tanous has overseen the drafting and signing of impact big league players like Michael Conforto, Dom Smith, Jeff McNeil and Pete Alonso. One thing fans may not realize is that at times, the drafting of a prospect is legitimately years in the making from a scouting perspective.

In the latest episode of Mets Prospective, presented by Verizon, Tanous told us the story of scouting and drafting Alonso, where the Mets were the first team in the league to meet with him back when he was in high school.

“It doesn’t matter anymore if you are the first team in on a player necessarily, but with Alonso we were the first team in," he said. "Veteran scout Les Parker in Florida saw him at Plant High School, talked to him and put him on our radar. At the time, Pete was not quite ready to enter pro ball out of high school, but that is what started it.

"For us, it was not a difficult scouting job to like Pete. He had the swing we liked. It came off the bat with enormous power. The biggest thing was when we looked at him analytically, we had a power hitter with a short swing who only struck out 13 percent of the time in college. We saw him as more of a whole hitter than just a power hitter.”

It’s not all about the big leaguers you see today, but the big leaguers you are going to see in the future. We can talk about Francisco Alvarez and Ronny Mauricio, but there are prospects that maybe get less national attention that the Mets are very high on.

Carlos Cortes is an infielder/outfielder playing in Double-A Binghamton who actually is ambidextrous and throws right-handed from the infield and left-handed from the outfield. He currently has a .904 OPS with nine home runs for the Rumble Ponies, and the Mets are impressed with his bat-to-ball skills.

“He’s a professional hitter. We liked him so much we drafted him out of high school, then again after two years at South Carolina,” Tanous said. “His hit ability, the way he manipulates the barrel of the bat. He has a tremendous feel for hitting.”

Mark Vientos, who was the Mets' second round pick in 2017, might be one of the hottest hitters in all of the minor leagues. At just 21 years old playing for Double-A Binghamton, Vientos hit .324 with an OPS of 1.182 in June, adding nine home runs, 20 RBI and some impressive exit velocity numbers.

“I am not sure we have a player in the minor leagues who hits the ball harder off the bat than Vientos,” Tanous said.

It's been well-noted that the Mets, led by former Dodgers employee Ben Zauzmer, have increased their analytics department presence. Not only will the analytical changes in the organization benefit the big league club, but there now is a team dedicated to the amateur draft from an analytical standpoint that had not been there in the past.

“They are breaking it down much more efficiently than we could have in years past,” Tanous said. “Not only are we finding players from that, it is more reaffirming what we see as scouts.

"Sometimes the scout seats are 200 feet behind the plate and I think I am seeing sink, but it is run which is a different movement. It’s nice to be able to go back and trace, what did I exactly see? For me, it’s a great safeguard.”

I have put out three mock drafts for the Top 10 picks of the 2021 MLB Draft, and in my most recent I had the Mets taking right-handed pitcher Ty Madden out of Texas. At times, fans like to poke fun at mock drafts, but they are a real part of the pre-draft process for teams.

Along with scouting the players and setting up the draft boards, carrying out mock draft scenarios set an organization up to be prepared for any type of situation that might unfold. The last thing you want to happen is for a player to fall into your lap that you didn't expect to be available.

“We absolutely do mock drafts,” Tanous said. “We do them several times a year, one in November where we’ll line up the board. We do another in January, and we have weekly calls every Monday with all of the regions talking updated lists.

"Five times a week I am on the phone informally with our scouting director Marc Tramuta and we are going back and forth for a two-hour car ride about who is going to make it to us, who we want to take.”

When it comes to this year's draft, the Mets will pick 10th overall, which is the same pick they had when they selected Conforto out of Oregon State in 2014. When you are picking inside of the Top 10, you have the ability to really find a potential impact player.

“I think we are going to land a good player,” Tanous said. “Historically when you pick inside of the Top 10, you are going to land a very good player. We are very excited about the options that we have for that pick.”

It will be really exciting to see what the Mets come away with in the draft on July 11th, and if history is any indicator, they should land an impactful piece to add to the farm system.