Mets taking home run swing drafting Carson Wiggins, whose stuff is too tantalizing to pass up

Following in the footsteps of his older brother Jaxon, who is a top prospect for the Cubs, Carson Wiggins turned electric stuff into becoming a high draft pick. Carson will have bragging rights at holidays in the Wiggins household though, as he goes No. 27 overall to the Mets in the 2026 MLB Draft while Jaxon went No. 68 overall in 2023.

Wiggins was a highly regarded prospect coming out of high school in 2024, where he first touched 100 mph as a 17-year-old. He ranked as the No. 78 prospect by Baseball America and No. 79 by MLB Pipeline in the 2024 MLB Draft. He ended up going undrafted in the 2024 class due to his strong commitment to Arkansas, where his brother also attended college.

He started his collegiate career pitching out of the bullpen for the Razorbacks, but after 14 innings in his freshman year, he underwent Tommy John surgery with an internal brace surgery and missed not only the rest of the 2025 season, but the entirety of his 2026 collegiate season as well.

When the 6-foot-5, 215-pound Wiggins is right, he possesses some of the most electric stuff in this year’s class, headlined by what MLB Pipeline graded as an 80-grade fastball that sits 99 mph and touches 102. His upper 80’s slider was untouchable in his small sample in college, generating a 74 percent whiff rate on it. He is also an excellent athlete on the mound, which is something the Mets have always sought. That athleticism would be evident if you looked up some of his high school basketball highlights.

The recently turned 21-year-old draft eligible sophomore helped his draft stock by proving to teams that he was healthy by throwing at the MLB Combine in Arizona last month. While not going full bore, Wiggins was up to 97 mph in that bullpen session and showed his patented slider as well as two pitches he seldom threw before, a curveball that he really can spin, averaging 2,719 rpm at the Combine as well as a changeup that lags behind the other offerings. The Mets also had eyes on him throwing bullpen sessions throughout the SEC schedule in the latter half of the college season.

While Wiggins was ranked as the No. 88 prospect in the 2026 class by MLB Pipeline, it was expected he would go much higher than that number. When I polled scouts, most believed he would go inside of the top 50 picks. One scout said “102 with a wipeout slider simply don’t grow on trees”.

Ultimately, if the Mets wanted Wiggins, they had to take him at No. 27. They did not have a second-round pick to hope for him to fall to, as they forfeited that as well as their compensatory fourth-round pick that they received for the Dodgers' signing of Edwin Diaz when they signed Bo Bichette who had a qualifying offer attached to him last winter.

The stuff is tantalizing, but this is going to be a bit of a project for the Mets' player development department. Wiggins has had control questions dating back to high school, and in the small sample of innings that he had in college, he walked 15.3 percent of the batters he faced. It goes without saying he has to throw more strikes at the next level.

The Mets will send Wiggins out as a starting pitcher with his increased arsenal and delivery that they believe will play as a starter. Mets vice president of amateur and international scouting Kris Gross called him a pitcher “with real frontline upside”. Starting is something Wiggins also wants, saying after being drafted: “I would like to be a starter if that opportunity comes to me, but I’m going to do whatever they (the Mets) need me to do”.

However, if starting doesn’t work out, Wiggins has the kind of stuff to profile as a late-inning reliever, perhaps even a closer type with a lethal fastball/slider combination alone.

This is a home run swing type of pick, with a wide range of potential outcomes, but given where the Mets were picking, they felt the juice was worth the squeeze.

Like his brother Jaxon, Carson had an elbow surgery that took out their final college season and both ended up high draft picks despite that. Jaxon ended up being a top 100 prospect in baseball entering 2026, and the Mets are hoping he follows in his brother’s footsteps, becoming a future top 100 prospect himself.