This will leave the Mets three rookie teams (DSL-1, DSL-2, GCL) and four full season teams (AAA-Syracuse, AA-Brooklyn, A+ St. Lucie, A-Columbia).
Let's assume both Latin teams will remain stocked with International free agents. That leaves five teams times 30 players each, totalling 150 players.
Let's start off with this assumption....I expect the DSL players will remain there for up to an additional season. These kids are 16-18 years old and are a long way from being ready for a full season in Columbia.
Second assumption... the GCL Mets will be the landing spot for most incoming domestic draft picks and free agents.
This leaves our current minor leaguers to fill the full season teams.
Next assumption... Columbia will be stacked next year. Prospects like Matt Allen, Josh Wolf, Francisco Alvarez, Brett Baty, and Jake Magnum could all be there on opening day, pushing Jordan Humphreys, Ronny Mauricio, and Mark Vientos to Florida to play for St. Lucie.
I for one will mourn the loss of the B-Mets. It was a great place to play a baseball game. The staff there always showed respect to this site, either through press releases or press passes to the writers. This year was the first season we were going to have a local writer cover all home games. Our luck is the franchise gets shut down.
Pulling back, the loss of two affiliates does have a silver lining. My pet peeve has always been that the Mets moved minor league prospects up the chain too slowly, That simply becomes an impossibility with the loss of two affiliates. New domestic and International signs will automatically push all players along.
What you will have is the loss of 'filler' players that were always needed to fill out a roster after a team picked the 'best players available' in a draft and some teams were short on specific position players.
The end of this excess began with the 35 minor league players cut on Thursday.
Progress?
Your call.
Mack, you break it down very well.
ReplyDeleteEliminating two teams is bad for those cities, clearly. They ought to get real creative with excluded players playing games there, making it real fan friendly. The Long Island Ducks do it. So can they.
But it takes the training wheels off for everyone else who play on the remaining clubs by removing the lesser talented minor leaguers. Hopefully, increased competitiveness will push the good ones up faster - a good hitter will no longer be able to pad his stats against as much inferior pitching, for example. And a good hitter facing a steady diet of better pitching will have to adapt faster. Increased pressure to continue up the ladder and not get cut as well.
Black Shirts trashed Columbia and Charleston SC last night.
ReplyDeleteComing to my neighborhood today (Bluffton) and Savannah GA
Was alerted my a local official this morning.
I've felt for a long time that it would make more sense to have the short-season upstate to avoid the April weather there, and the full-season one in Brooklyn.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I heard, it was the Yankees who blocked the move,which they no longer can do.
As a Long Island resident, I like the idea of building a fan base for a team of players potentially a year or less from Citi. A natural rivalry with the Trenton Yankees enhances the experience for fans of both teams.
The Bingo fans will lose the chance to see the AA players, but this is countered by the proximity of AAA Syracuse. If our AAA team were still in New Orleans, the loss of Bingo would mean that the upstate fans had zero opportunity to see future Mets. They likely would develop a loyalty to the ML team whose farm team played in the area.
Except for the fans in the Kingsport area, the loss of that team will mean little, since we will still have 3 Rookie-level teams and 1 low-A.
I sympathize with the fans of the deleted sites, but the players will still have places to play within our system.
The Binghamton stadium is beautiful and it is a great fan experience for the fans that show up. And say what you want about Tebow. He brought people out. It was night and day when he hit and the rest of the game.
ReplyDeleteSo... we have coronavirus AND rioting and looting in the streets... and we expect baseball back?
ReplyDeleteBinghamton has been a Mets farm team since the early 90s. If I owned the Mets, I would try to help them succeed as an independent team. There have to be plenty of Mets fans in that area.
ReplyDeleteEvery team in MLB, including the Mets, will lose money this year. They are releasing many minor league players to save money.
ReplyDeleteWhy would ANY team help an Indy team to succeed in these circumstances?