2018 Mets draft profile: Duke Kinamon

Name: Duke Kinamon

Born: Peachtree City, Georgia

Age: 21 (9/04/96)

Height/Weight: 5’10”/190

Position: 2B

Bats/Throws: R/R

School: Stanford University

Duke Kinamon comes from a family of athletes. His father played football at Air Force, his brother boxes at Air Force, his sister is a gymnast at Brown University, his aunt was a gymnast at Stanford University, and his uncle played baseball at Stanford. Duke excelled at baseball and football while attending McIntosh High School, making the all-region team three times and the all-county team two times in football and making the all-region team three times and the all-county first team once in baseball. After graduating, he left Georgia to attend Stanford University. He played in 38 games in his freshman year in 2016, starting 26 of them, and hit .243/.313/.330. In 2017, he appeared in 58 games and started all of them, hitting .284/.365/.379. Kinamon was set to play in 2018, but ended up missing the entire season because of an oblique injury.

At the plate, Kinamon stands square at the plate with slightly bent knees. Using a slight leg kick, he has a level, compact swing, spraying line drives to the opposite field, the “Stanford swing”. An above-average runner, he has good base running speed and has shown good instincts while on the base paths.

Kinamon is a smooth fielder. He made the Pac-12 All-Conference Team in 2017 mostly due to his fielding prowess; that year, he led the conference with 188 assists and made just four errors in 305 chances, a .987 fielding percentage. He has a quick first step and has plenty of range at both shortstop and second base. His arm is just average, which makes playing shortstop for prolonged periods a stretch, but Kinamon has the ability to make the routine plays.