Two years after Trent Baalke reportedly acquiesced to Mike Singletary’s demands and selected USC safety Taylor Mays in the second round of the NFL draft, the 49ers general manager drafted the anti-Mays in the sixth round Saturday.

Michigan State safety Trenton Robinson (5-9, 193) is six inches shorter and 37 pounds lighter than Mays. Size, however, no longer matters so much when it comes to drafting safeties in an increasingly pass-happy league.

Sure, intimidation is still nice, but coverage skills are a necessity for safeties routinely matched up against ultra-athletic tight ends such as New Orleans’ Jimmy Graham and New England’s Ron Gronkowski. With today’s spread offenses, they can also find themselves locked up against one of the four or five wideouts on the field.

This brings us back to Robinson, who entered Michigan State as a cornerback and flashed his ball skills at his new position, collecting eight interceptions in his two years as the starting strong safety. Mays (6-3, 230), in contrast, had five interceptions in his 50-start college career, including two picks in his final three seasons. As a rookie, he didn’t have an interception in six starts, was benched late in the season and traded to the Bengals last summer for a seventh-round pick in 2013.

Mays was fast … when moving straight ahead (he ran an official 4.43-second 40 at the 2010 combine). But he lacked fluidity when moving laterally, had poor balls skills and, as a result, was a liability in coverage.

On Saturday, Baalke didn’t mention Mays by name when he was asked about Robinson. But this quote was telling: “In this day and age, the way the game has changed, you want guys on the field that can cover,” Baalke said. “The old box safety that you used to hear about, the guy that would invert down and play the run, the way the offense is playing now, they’ve kind of made that guy a dinosaur in today’s game. If he’s on the field, he’s easy to find. And what you want to do is create a balanced attack defensively so you don’t have to get into all these sub-packages and change personnel.”

Baalke mentioned Robinson’s versatility – noting he’s physical in the run game (“he’s not afraid to mix it up”) and has solid coverage skills (he’s “shown the ability to make some things happen in the back half”).

There are no guarantees, Robinson, a sixth-round pick, will net a huge return.

But Baalke no doubt feels better about his hand-picked safety than Mays, a second-round investment the 49ers couldn’t unload for more than seventh-round pick a year after he was drafted.

Given the changing landscape, the lack of interest in Mays wasn’t surprising. After all, who wants a dinosaur these days?