Reese Kaplan -- Roster Protection Issues Are Never Easy

Tom Brennan has been doing an interesting exercise to examine how poorly the Mets have done with their draft choices over the history of the franchise.  No matter how you slice it, when more than 50% of your number one picks never made it to professional baseball as a career, there’s a serious problem in your scouting department.  However, there are other ways to make personnel decisions that can be just as bad (or good) depending on how and what you value most.

Let’s assume for the moment that the major leagues have decided to expand the collection of professional teams from 30 to a more numerically palatable number of 32 which is easily divisible by four.  That would enable them to migrate the divisions to four 4-team groups which would create an additional round of playoffs (which is where all the money is).  That would require adding a single team to each league to achieve this goal.  

When the Mets came into existence they were greeted with the prospect of drafting from other teams’ rosters to create their initial pool of possible ballplayers.  Obviously the other ballclubs were mostly interested in protecting their star players and letting their lower echelon talents walk if the newly formed teams had any desire to draft them.  

Needless to say, the Mets did themselves no favors by drafting an odd mixture of over-the-hill or injured players (like Gil Hodges), or not supremely talented youngsters.  Mostly what they got were the players the other clubs didn’t care about losing.  Needless to say, their 40-120 record is one that still stands in the books as a testimony to bad drafting and general incompetence.  

So going back to the trajectory, if there were new teams being added to each league who would the Mets protect and who would they leave to the professional draft?  You’d think that once again there would be some games with higher salaried players who were not delivering value.  A good example is the much maligned Robinson Cano.  No one is saying he’s a bad ballplayer, but as he enters the 2021 season at age 38 while still commanding a major paycheck, he would likely be exposed as a possible draft option.  

The same kind of projection could not be made on guys like Yoenis Cespedes, Marcus Stroman, Justin Wilson, Wilson Ramos or other free-agents-to-be.  They would not be property of the Mets at the end of the 2020 season, hence they could not be protected or reserved from drafting.  (The Mets do have an option for a third year of Ramos, but considering how poorly the pitchers regard his abilities behind the plate it’s unlikely they would exercise it.)

So that brings us to the younger or less expensive players where the tough decision making must take place.  Obviously, despite his awful 2019 season, a star hurler like Edwin Diaz earning just above minimum wage would be one of the first names on the protected list.  Good quality and inexpensive players like Seth Lugo and Brandon Nimmo would be withheld from the other teams’ list of options.  

Going down the current roster you would figure Pete Alonso, Amed Rosario, Jeff McNeil, Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz would be Mets next season.  They are either already stars, earning very little money or some combination of the two.  

After that it gets much dicier.  The Mets are comprised with a number of one-year contracts, including newcomers Rick Porcello, Michael Wacha, Brad Brach and others who do not benefit from guaranteed employment after this season ends.  They’re out of the picture. 

Then you have fringe players like Luis Guillorme, Jake Marisnick, catchers behind Wilson Ramos, Robert Gsellman and a host of minor leaguers who ran that Syracuse-to-New York shuttle multiple times already.  A Corey Oswalt could be in the outgoing option list but hot prospects like Andres Gimenez would be protected.  

So if this type of expansion was to take place, who would you protect and who would you allow to be drafted by the new teams?