Mike's Mets - Thoughts on Changes to the Minors and Our New GM

 

By Mike Steffanos December 14, 2020 

If you're someone who follows baseball pretty closely, you're probably aware that big changes are coming to the minor league affiliates of major league teams. The Mets used to have five A Ball affiliates, ranging from rookie level up to advanced A. Next year there will be only two, which will lead to some interesting choices in what to do with many of their young players. Both Sandy Alderson and Steve Cohen have stressed the importance going forward of developing homegrown talent, and new GM Jared Porter spent a good chunk of his career with the Red Sox, a model large market club when it comes to scouting and development. They're all going to face a new challenge of developing talent under the new minor league setup, and with a prospect base who missed out on an entire minor league season in 2020.

For a while we were hearing that Major League clubs were only going to be allowed to have 150 minor leaguers under contract, which was significant because that works out to about 30 per team. With injuries, that would likely necessitate having almost all of the players assigned to one of the five teams. But Baseball America is reporting that the limit will be 180 players, and that could be significant for a team like the Mets who wishes to maximize their player development in order to sustain competitiveness year after year. With three fewer options to assign players at the A ball level, it's likely that there will be prospects that don't perfectly fit into the 2 remaining levels. Now teams can work with some of these players within their complex rather than try to pigeonhole everyone onto one of those two clubs.

I could foresee further advantages where a player is really struggling and the team could pull him back into the complex for a time for some intensive one-on-one work. This seems preferable to me to the old method of leaving the player to figure it out while continuing to play games. So, while I won't say the minor league contraction is a good thing for all of the places losing their affiliated team, I do think the new system could be well utilized by the type of smart organization that the Mets are working hard to be. Still, undoubtedly there will be times when a team is going to struggle to get playing time for everyone who needs it with the reduction in teams, particularly if it's a club that drafts and develops really well, which I hope is what the Mets become in the not too distant future.

I'm really psyched for this upcoming minor league season to see how the Mets manage their prospects. In 2020 they were able to utilize the alternate site to work with a handful of players. They also ran something in their complex after the season for a bunch of them, but I heard it was cut somewhat short thanks to our old friend the coronavirus. So, on top of the challenge of figuring out how to get by with three fewer teams, there will be the added complications on plugging whatever holes this past year left in their development. It will definitely be fascinating to watch.

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