Mets and Yankees select Arkansas pitchers in first round of MLB Draft

The Mets went for Carson Wiggins with their first-round pick in the MLB Draft. The Yankees went for Hunter Dietz with their first-round pick. There are three ties that bind them — the University of Arkansas, pitching and elbow trouble in their past.

But both are healthy again and offer a lot of promise. And so the local teams took the two Razorbacks Saturday.

“That is very fun for me,” Wiggins said over Zoom about the two of them being drafted by the New York teams. “I’m excited to see him out there for sure.”

Wiggins came via the 27th overall selection. The 6-5, 215-pound righty brings just 14 innings of college experience after not pitching this past season as a sophomore. He underwent internal brace surgery on his right elbow in May of 2025.

So his final college numbers included a 1-1 record with a 3.21 ERA and 20 strikeouts over 14 relief appearances as a freshman before he got injured. He’s done with his rehab. But MLB Pipeline had him ranked 88th on the list of draft prospects.

“I’m obviously very thankful,” Wiggins said. “Did not see this coming at all. I think the Mets taking a chance on me is very surreal to me. I’ve wanted this since I was a little kid.”

The prime attraction now that he’s healthy again? He throws very hard.

He reached 102 mph twice as a freshman and averaged 98.7 with his fastball. He said his “velocity is back up to where it should be.”

But he also throws a slider, curve and change. Wiggins, whose brother Jaxon pitched for Arkansas and is in the Cubs’ system, showed he was good to go at the MLB Draft Combine last month in Phoenix.

“Tremendous athlete, tremendous size, and we’re really excited about the repertoire he’s working with,” said Kris Gross, the Mets’ vice president of amateur scouting and international scouting. “He’ll flirt with triple digits. He has two high-spin breaking balls. The change has really come along during the rehab.

“… We think he’s going to be a really damn good pitcher. … We see this guy as a starter, a frontline-type starter.”

Dietz came via the 35th overall selection. MLB Pipeline had him ranked 17th. The 6-6, 235-pound lefty had 1 2/3 innings to show for his first two seasons with the Razorbacks. He needed surgery for a stress fracture in his left elbow in the fall of 2023 and then had more problems with it.

But he was healthy and excelled this past season as a redshirt sophomore, going 7-4 with a 3.57 ERA and a team-high 131 Ks over 16 starts and 85 2/3 innings.

He has sat mostly at 94-96 mph with his fastball and touched 98, and he owned an especially effective slider and cutter. And he was the first college lefty to go.

The Yankees went for another lefty, Sean Duncan, in the second round, 63rd overall. The 6-3 alum of Terry Fox Secondary School in British Columbia has a good changeup in a three-pitch mix. But he underwent Tommy John surgery last month.

Oklahoma catcher/outfielder Brendan Brock was the Yankees’ choice at No. 99 in the third round. And Cal State Fullerton outfielder Paul Gutierrez-Contreras, at pick No. 127 in round four, was their final Day One selection in the 20-round draft in Philadelphia.

The Mets, meanwhile, didn’t have a second-round pick. They were surprised to see Aiden Robbins available in the third round at pick No. 92 — MLB Pipeline had him ranked 29th — and were happy to take him. The righty-hitting outfielder batted .422 for Seton Hall in 2025, then batted .333 and launched 24 homers this past season after transferring to Texas.

They finished the day by drafting Shane Sdao. The Texas A&M lefty underwent Tommy John surgery in the fall of 2024 and missed 2025. He went 4-4 with 83 strikeouts in 71.2 innings spread over 13 starts and four relief outings in 2026. The Mets like him as a starter.

“The strikes come easy for him,” Gross said.

Leading into the draft, it was a question of who would go first overall, UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky or Grady Emerson, the shortstop out of Fort Worth Christian School in Texas.

The answer became Cholowsky first to the White Sox and Emerson second to the Rays.

“I fell in love with Chicago when I went out there a couple of months back,” Cholowsky said on NBC, which carried the first 10 picks. “… And I’m ready to get to work.”

Then there was the latest Lombard to be drafted. Jacob Lombard went 14th to the Marlins. The shortstop out of Gulliver Prep in Miami is the brother of Yankees top prospect George Lombard Jr., the shortstop who went 26th overall in 2023.

So Jacob won when it came to who went higher.

“We’ll fight over everything, whether it’s Ping-Pong or soccer, anything,” he said on MLB Network. “But I think in this case we’re just happy for each other to finally get closer towards our dream, which is possibly playing with or against each other in the big leagues.”