Mets RHP prospect Mike Vasil details 'humbling' MLB Draft experience, how coaches already helped him in minors

When Mike Vasil passed on potentially life-changing money in 2018 as one of the top high school pitchers in the country, pulling himself out of the MLB Draft and fulfilling his commitment to the University of Virginia, he was confident that he was merely delaying his big payday by three years.

Except college didn’t go quite as planned. Vasil had his share of success at Virginia, but inconsistency in both velocity and performance caused his stock to drop. He fell to the eighth round of the 2021 Draft, where he was selected by the Mets.

“It was a humbling experience,” Vasil said by phone this week. “I was still hoping for late second round. And so, when I was finally taken, I knew I’d left money out there (he bypassed the draft in 2018). One hundred percent those thoughts came into my mind.

“But after the first few days, I told myself, ‘OK, I can continue to think about this or I can just move on and make the most of the situation.’ And as soon as I started working with the Mets after the draft, they made changes that helped me get better results right away, and I knew it was the right fit. Now I feel like I wound up in just the right spot.”

For the Mets, the feeling is mutual. After making the changes to his delivery that Vasil referenced, they say his velocity spiked from the 92-93 mph range to 96-97, closer to what he’d looked like coming out of high school in Wellesley, Mass., and as such couldn’t help thinking they may have gotten quite a steal.

“We need to see more but he got off to a super impressive start last summer,” says Tommy Tanous, Mets’ VP of Scouting. “I give huge credit to our player development people. The changes they helped him make jumped his velocity and allowed the athlete to come out in his delivery.”

Yes, obviously, it’s way too early to make any real judgments on a 21-year old righthander who pitched just seven innings last summer in Florida Complex League games for newly-drafted players.

But for an organization desperately in need of young, home-grown pitching, this is why the Mets selected 12 pitchers among their 20 picks in last summer’s draft, and eight in their first 10.

Because, as Tanous says, “You never know with pitching. With later-round picks, a little change here and there can unlock certain guys. It’s a very volatile stock.”

The Mets have the ultimate example, of course, in former ninth-round draft choice Jacob deGrom. And though the circumstances were quite different, as deGrom was a converted college shortstop, Vasil now looks at the Mets’ ace and sees hope for himself getting back to the pitcher who once was a projected first- or second-round draft choice in high school.

“I know there’s more work to do,” says Vasil, “but I’m really excited about the changes the Mets helped me make. I’ve seen a lot of pitchers increase their velocity as they understand their mechanics, and deGrom did it well into his career. It makes me think I’m capable of it as well.”

At 6-foot-5, 235 pounds, Vasil has the size that scouts love. It’s part of what made him so attractive in high school. But whether he ever recovers the bonus money he lost by going to college remains to be seen.

Scouts say he had first-round talent but was more likely headed for the second round because the injury risk makes teams wary of using their first-round pick on high school pitchers, especially right-handers.

Even so, that probably still would have landed him a bonus of over $1 million, perhaps well over with college as leverage. Instead, he wound up signing with the Mets for $181,000, according to baseball-reference.com, which is nice money for any 21-year-old but far from what he could have had.

At the time of his decision to pass up the draft, Vasil says that “in terms of life experiences and being fully ready for pro ball, I thought college would prepare me better. It was my choice. It’s what I wanted to do.”

He had reason to believe he’d continue ascending. He was motivated enough as a high school kid to get on a train at 5:30 every morning so he could travel from the suburbs to attend Boston College High School, a private school.

Vasil was also plenty athletic, playing basketball as well as four years of varsity baseball for a very prestigious program. And though he says his velocity didn’t take a big jump into the 90-plus-mph range until he was a junior, his potential was such that he says Virginia offered him a scholarship in his sophomore year of high school.

So what went wrong at Virginia?

Vasil downplays any difference of opinion with the coaching staff, making a point of saying the overall experience left him with “some amazing memories,” including pitching well in a College World Series game last June.

Yet he admits the pitching part of it never felt quite right there. He doesn’t go into detail, but says, “My overall style of pitching, my mechanics, how I learned to pitch, set up hitters, everything that goes into pitching, was a lot different with what matched up at Virginia.”

He says his struggles as a freshman led his college coaches to turn him from a four-seam fastball pitcher who had always been able to throw the ball past hitters to more of a two-seam sinkerballer. That, in part, resulted in his velocity coming down a couple of ticks from high school.

As Vasil recalls, “I was told, ‘You’re a two-seam guy: Throw sinkers at the bottom of the zone and get ground balls.’ But a lot of my two-seamers got hit hard, even if they were on the ground. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it wasn’t the pitch I needed to be throwing.

“I got to the Mets and right away they told me, ‘No, you’re a four-seam guy.’ And they showed me how I could use my other stuff to make my four-seamer more effective. Also, the drills they had me do so that I was more athletic in my delivery and getting more extension, that made my fastball better too.”

Scouts say Vasil also has a curveball and a changeup that should complement his fastball well in the pros. And indeed, he says he wanted to throw his curveball more in college but couldn’t because the game was called from the bench by the coaches.

What’s it all mean? The Mets think Vasil has the potential to be at least a No. 3-type starter in the big leagues, maybe better if he continues to make strides as a pro.

Meanwhile, Vasil himself now sees his slide to the eighth round as something of a blessing in disguise in that he landed with what he believes is the perfect fit in the Mets’ organization.

Yet he also says his fall in the draft is constant motivation to prove people were wrong about him.

“It’s something that pushes me every day,” Vasil says, “to get in the gym, to do my throwing, to do my mobility stuff, and my work on my mechanics. I use it as fire.”

And if that fire pushes him hard enough, perhaps he’ll prove he was indeed a steal in the eighth round. Better yet, for his own peace of mind, maybe he’ll even wind up making the kind of big-league money to forget he ever said no to a million bucks as a high school kid.