2026 Mets Draft profile: Shane Sdao

A Montgomery, Texas native, Shane Sdao attended Lake Creek High School in Montgomery, a school that opened in 2018 due to overcrowding at the city’s primary school, Montgomery High School. The left-hander helped turn the school’s fledgling baseball program into a winner. In their first year of existence, the Lions went 7-7 on the season. In 2021 and 2022, the two years that Sdao lettered and pitched for the varsity team, they went 20-12-1 and 23-6, respectively, advancing to the Texas Region III-5A quarterfinals both times. In both years, the left-hander was named to the First All-District Team, the Second All-Greater Houston Team, and was the Texas District 5A All-State honorable mention pitch in his senior year.

Despite the accolades, Sdao was far from a draft follow. The left-hander garnered very little attention from scouts and evaluators due to his relatively uninspiring repertoire and advanced age. The southpaw already had a commitment to Texas A&M in place, and after no MLB teams called his name in the 2022 MLB Draft, Sdao attended the College Station institution.

The left-hander appeared in 22 games in his freshman season with the Aggies, starting two games and coming out of the bullpen for the remaining 20. In total, the 19-year-old posted a 4.78 ERA in 43.1 innings, allowing 54 hits, walking 15, and striking out 46. He was used in a similar manner in his sophomore season, starting 5 games and coming out of the bullpen for the remaining 15. Sdao was better in virtually every regard, posting a 2.96 ERA in 48.2 innings, allowing 42 hits, walking 9, and striking out 55. The Aggies made it to the 2024 College World Series finals, losing to the University of Tennessee, but they did so without the left-hander, who injured his elbow starting against the University of Oregon in the Super Regionals.

Sdao’s injury turned out to be the worst-case scenario: a UCL tear that required Tommy John surgery to fix. The left-hander redshirted in 2025, missing the entire season. Despite being injured, Sdao received numerous financially lucrative bonus offers from multiple MLB teams who were looking to float a deal with him while he recovered from surgery. He ended up rejecting those offers and decided to return to Texas A&M in 2026.

The results were not exactly there for Sdao in his redshirt junior season. More important than anything else, he was able to take the mound and his stuff was more or less where it was before the Tommy John surgery, but the results were ugly. Appearing in 17 games, starting 13 of them, Sdao posted a 7.03 ERA in 71.2 innings, allowing 98 hits, walking 20, and striking out 83. In particular, the longball was a problem; he allowed 16 home runs over the course of the season.

The 22-year-old Sdao stands 6’3”, 185-pounds. He throws from a three-quarters arm slot, extending off the mound well and incorporating a high leg kick and a long arm action through the back. He is a strike thrower, and keeps hitters off-balance with a deep repertoire that includes a four-seam fastball, slider, curveball, cutter, and changeup. At present, none of his pitchers are better than average offerings, but as he continues recovering from Tommy John surgery, his fastball and slider stand to improve the most.

His fastball sits in the low-to-mid-90s, and in the past the left-hander has been able to ramp it up and hit the high-90s with the pitch. Even before the ligament surgery that kept him off the field in 2025, Sdao lacked consistency with the pitch and its velocity often fluctuated, more often settling into the lower end of that velocity band and rarely exceeding 95 MPH. The pitch lacks the power to be a true strikeout offering, generating below-average whiff rates, but Sdao still has had success with the pitch thanks to his ability to command it and its rising action; in the past, it has been measured possessing 2300 RPM, an average-to-above-average spin rate for a fastball.

The left-hander’s slider is his main secondary pitch, and he uses it against left-handed and right-handed batters alike. A sweeping slider in the low-80s, the pitch has a bit less horizontal movement than most sweeping sliders, but Sdao has become skilled at dropping his arm angle a bit when throwing it, telegraphing the pitch but at the same time giving it the illusion of having more lateral movement than it actually does.

Against right-handed batters, Sdao utilizes a mid-80s changeup, but the pitch has been supplanted in usefulness by an upper-70s curveball and an upper-80s cutter that he recently added to his repertoire.

In 2026, as mentioned, Sdao had a problem with home runs, but in general, he had some major issues keeping the ball down. As compared to his prior two seasons with the Aggies, where he averaged a 41.7% groundball rate, 20.9% line drive rate, and a 37.5% flyball rate, the left-hander had a 31.7% groundball rate, 24.3% line drive rate, and a 43.9% flyball rate in 2026.