The Boston Red Sox selected shortstop Marcelo Mayer with the No. 4 overall pick in the 2021 MLB Draft, and it was met by near-universal praise.
“Mayer is a scout’s dream,” MLB Insider Kiley McDaniel said on the ESPN broadcast after the selection. “This is exactly how you want a frame to look if you’re going to project a guy to make a leap to be a Corey Seager, a Christian Yelich, whoever that might be. This is what those guys look like at that age, broadly speaking.Â
“… Right now the tools are average to above, but this is what really good players look like when they’re 18,” McDaniel continued. “They’re not fully formed at this age, but this has all the parameters you want to see in an All-Star.”
MLB Network analyst Harold Reynolds added: “I’ll tell you what, he fell to the right team for him. You think about (Xander) Bogaerts and his development, what they’ve been able to do with the third baseman (Rafael Devers), Alex Cora and the program they got going…”
ESPN’s Chris Burke said much of the same.
“Well, I think they got a superstar. Not too often evaluators throw out names like Adrián González, who by the way, he went to the same high school as Adrián González, and Chipper Jones,” Burke said. “… So when you talk about an athlete that can stick at shortstop and swings the bat with comparisons to González and Chipper Jones, and these kinds of super talented former No. 1 picks, you got to feel like the Red Sox got a steal at No. 4.”
Mayer was the top prospect according to MLB.com, Fangraphs and CBS Sports, while ESPN and Baseball America had him as the second prospect. There were not many who thought the product of Eastlake High in Chula Vista, Calif. would fall to Boston.
Mayer, standing 6-foot-3 and 188 pounds, is a left-handed hitter who recorded 14 home runs in 34 games his senior year. He committed to the University of Southern California, but certainly sounds like someone ready to go pro.
