2021 Mets Draft profile: Carson Seymour

Born in Poway, California, Carson Seymour attended Great Oak High School in Temecula, California, where he was a two-year letter winner and team captain in 2017, his senior year. Transitioning from the infield to pitching that year, the right-hander posted a 1.88 ERA, earning All-Southwestern League and Riverside County All-Star Team honors. A very good student, he went to Dartmouth upon graduating.

In his freshman year at Dartmouth, Seymour made eight appearances as a reliever, allowing 15 earned runs in 7.1 innings, giving up 13 hits, walking 7, and striking out 2. That summer, he played for the Southampton Breakers in the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League and began considering the possibility of transferring schools. He reached out to Buck Taylor, Seymour’s travel ball coach who had recently hired pitching coach at Kansas State. Dartmouth’s extremely high tuition coupled with his relationship with Taylor and the feel and energy of Kansas’ baseball program led Seymour to go through with the transfer.

Because of NCAA rules, he was unable to pitch in his sophomore year and redshirted in 2019. He stayed ready all that spring, played for the Harwich Mariners of the Cape Cod Baseball League that summer, and finally debuted for the Wildcats in the spring of 2020. The season was supposed to be a big one for the for the draft-eligible 21-year-old, but COVID-19 had other plans. The redshirt sophomore ended up appearing in 4 games for Kansas State- all starts- posting a 3.92 ERA in 20.2 innings with 14 hits allowed, 12 walks, and 25 strikeouts. Seymour ended up going undrafted in the extremely abbreviated 2020 MLB Draft. The right-hander played Northwoods League that summer and then returned to Kansas State in 2021. In 56.2 innings, he posted a 6.19 ERA, allowing 58 hits, walking 32, and striking out 57. He returned to the Cape Cod League after the Wildcats season ended, playing once again for the Harwich Mariners.

The 6’5”, 220-pound right-hander throws from a three-quarters arm slot with a quick, electric arm. He repeats his delivery well, but control has historically not been very great because his command of his pitches comes and goes. This has impeded him for much of his career, as he is often pitching behind in the count and can’t reliably utilize his breaking pitches to go after batters.

His fastball has above-average velocity, sitting in the mid-90s and touching as high as 99 MPH, but the pitch does not have much life or movement to it. Many scouts and evaluators feel that he may improve as a pitcher if he changes his grip and transforms his four-seam fastball into a two-seamer, trading in velocity for arm-side and/or sinking movement. He complements the pitch with a slider, curveball, and a changeup. His slider sits in the high-80s and even occasionally touches 90 MPH. With a relatively low spin rate for a slider, it has more vertical drop than horizontal movement, though its shape can sometimes be a little inconsistent and it gets slurvy. His curveball has more or less been retired from is in-game repertoire since he developed and began throwing his slider, but he still is able to throw the 11-5 bender. His changeup lags far behind both pitches but features excellent velocity separation, roughly 10-15 MPH behind his fastball.