Jett Williams and the Mets' first-round picks in the 2021-22 Drafts

The Mets had the 10^th pick in the 2021 Draft and selected Kumar Rocker. It seemed like a steal at the time yet once the club got a look at his medicals, they were scared of what they found and never even offered Rocker a contract. The following season, Rocker played Independent League ball in the Frontier League before being drafted third overall by the Texas Rangers in 2022.

Meanwhile, the Mets got a compensation pick for not signing Rocker, which was one spot lower at No. 11 in the 2022 Draft. Combined with their regular selection, the Mets had two high picks, with No. 11 and No. 14. With their first pick they selected catcher Kevin Parada and with their second, they chose infielder Jett Williams.

Parada has not developed as the club hoped but Williams is currently one of the team’s top prospects, somewhere between 1-3, depending on which source you place the most trust. We’ll talk more about Williams in a minute but first, let’s talk about an alternate universe, one where they signed Rocker and had just one pick in 2022.

Rocker ended up having TJ surgery and missing large sections of the 2023 and 2024 seasons. One could say this outcome justified the Mets’ decision not to offer him a contract. Yet the surgery is fairly common place and Rocker recovered and made his MLB debut late in the ’24 season. He’s back in the majors again this year, although the results (1-3, 8.10 ERA) are pretty bad.

If Parada was doing better as a prospect instead of being stalled in Double-A, you could say the Mets made the right decision. But with Rocker already having MLB experience, it seems like if they had the chance to do it all over again, they would have signed Rocker. Given that, what would they have done with their lone pick in the 2022 Draft?

The easiest thing to believe is that if both Parada and Williams were available at 14, the Mets would have taken the catcher. But things aren’t always that cut and dried. It’s possible that the club liked both players equally yet felt better about Williams being available at 14, so it took Parada at 11. We’d feel better right now if it played out with the Mets getting both Rocker and Williams, as it’s better to struggle in the majors than it is to do the same at Double-A.

As Rocker is in another organization and Parada looks like a lost cause, let’s focus on Williams.

A prepster from Heath, TX – a Dallas suburb – Williams had a scholarship to Mississippi State. But he signed with the Mets, instead. At 5’6, Williams became the shortest player ever selected in the first round of the MLB Draft, which began in 1965. He had a solid debut, posting an .803 OPS in 41 PA in the FCL in 2022.

Williams took off the next season. He had a strong full-season debut in Lo-A, posting an .832 OPS in 346 PA before getting the call to Hi-A. And Williams was even better at Brooklyn, where he slashed .299/.451/.567 in 162 PA, which earned him a cup of coffee in Double-A. The sky was the limit but Williams came down with a wrist injury in April of 2024, one which he eventually had surgery on in June of that season.

The wrist injury essentially made it a lost season for Williams. While he made it back to the field late in the year and competed in the Arizona Fall League, his lack of playing time had Williams back in Double-A for the start of 2025.

After a slow start to begin ’25, Williams is back to performing at a high level. In his last 21 games and 82 PA, Williams has a .304/.415/.536 line, with 10 of his 21 hits going for extra-bases. He’s also displayed good strike zone numbers in this stretch, with 13 BB and 15 Ks. The hot streak has his season-long OPS up to an .873 mark. It seems only a matter of time before he gets promoted to Triple-A.

In the lower levels of the farm system, the Mets have done a good job of having prospects play multiple positions, avoiding the situation where they kept top prospect Ronny Mauricio exclusively as a shortstop until he reached Triple-A in 2023. On one hand, a prospect will have greater trade value as a shortstop, so you keep them there as long as possible. On the other hand, the Mets have Francisco Lindor at short and no one else is playing that position any time soon.

Williams is a shortstop and this year he’s started at short in 21 of his 30 games. He’s played five games at DH and made three starts in CF and one at 2B. You can understand the Mets wanting to give Williams comfort and certainty by playing him mostly at short as he returned from the injury. But it’s time to give him the majority of reps at positions he’s most likely to play in the majors.

The big question is if the Mets see Williams as more of a 2B or CF. And part of that determination will be how they see Luisangel Acuna, too. With the Mets having Jeff McNeil under club control thru 2027 – the final year is a team option – it seems like the best shot for immediate playing time will come in the outfield. Hopefully, they give Williams a bunch of starts in center field going forward.

Getting back to our trio of players drafted by the Mets in the first round of the 2021-22 Drafts, it seems like the best player is Williams, who had the lowest draft spot of the three. Nothing is written in stone yet, meaning there’s still time for the order to be flipped before all is said and done. It would be nice to see Parada turn things around. But the best outcome for the Mets is for Williams to continue on his current path of raking while he is healthy, something he’s done in 2023 and so far here in 2025.