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Mets vice president of amateur scouting Kris Gross didn’t think Mitch Voit’s cocaine-snorting celebration that followed a triple during a March game for Michigan was “an issue,” saying Monday that they spoke with Voit about it in the spring.
And the No. 38 pick, at Citi Field on Friday after signing his contract following the draft, echoed the sentiment.
“Obviously, we addressed it, and we had conversations about it,” Voit said from the dugout before the Mets and Reds opened a series. “But, I mean, you guys saw what I said online. That describes it: spur of the moment. Doesn’t describe me at all.”
In a March social media post on X, Voit apologized for the “immature gesture in the heat of the moment” while also taking “full responsibility for what I did.”
He ripped a bases-clearing triple against USC for the Wolverines, and after sliding into third base, he imitated snorting a line of cocaine along the baseline.
“He made a big play for his team and made a mistake,” Gross said Monday after Day 2 of the MLB draft. “And he’s made an apology for it, and owned up to it and handled it with class. We did a ton of research after the fact with multiple sources about his makeup. We know this isn’t an issue. We feel comfortable with Mitch moving forward.”
Voit, a two-way player in 2023 and 2024 before undergoing elbow surgery and then starting every game at second base for the Wolverines as a junior, took batting practice with the Mets on Friday before heading to Port St. Lucie for a “deep dive into everything.”
As he stepped into the hitting turtle at Citi Field, his mind instantly shifted back to when he took pregame batting practice for the Wolverines.
Michigan’s Mitch Voit (55) during an NCAA baseball game on Sunday, March 3, 2024 in Los Angeles. APHe also watched the beginning of Juan Soto’s “surgical” batting cage routine, in addition to other interactions with Mets players and coaches.
His final collegiate season featured a slash line of .346/.471/.668, with Voit launching 14 homers and finishing with 72 hits and 60 RBIs across 56 games for the Wolverines.
He doesn’t know if he’ll play games yet this summer, but said he’ll be developed as a position player and that the pitching experience will “always be there in my back pocket” if needed.
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“If it comes down to it and the only opportunity is to be a pitcher in the big leagues for the New York Mets, yeah,” Voit, whose first big purchase was gifting his mother, Sharon, a Chanel purse on draft night, said. “But our plan going forward will be as a position player.”
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