Mike's Mets - Those Shiny New Mets and the Road Ahead

 

By Mike Steffanos January 10, 2021 

When Steve Cohen's purchase of the New York Mets went through, he was joined by new team president Sandy Alderson in a news conference where they shared their plans for the team. Both Cohen and Alderson spoke of the idea of building a sustainable winner with the Mets, which would necessitate improving the team's roster in the short-term while building out the farm system for long-term success. With the addition of SS Francisco Lindor and SP Carlos Carrasco to the roster, the Mets are well on the way to acing the short-term goal of being more competitive in 2021.

To accomplish that, though, they had to take a step backward from their long-term goal. It was a very good trade for the Mets, and I have no complaints at all about them doing it, but the fact remains that they gave up two young, controllable major leaguers and two decent prospects from their system to pull off the deal. With the likelihood that the Mets will no longer be in the running for top free agents like George Springer and Trevor Bauer, most likely they will hold onto the second round pick that they would have lost when signing one of those guys. Still, today they're farther away from the system they hope to have  than they were before the trade.

I'm sure that this has been taken into account, and plans are already being implemented to work on the long-term solutions. I'd love to be the proverbial fly on the wall, listening in on how Alderson, Porter and the rest of the crew plan to accomplish that part of the mission. I'm sure that some of the plan would involve doing the best they possibly can to draft impact talent in the upcoming amateur draft. Drafting is an area where the Mets actually have excelled in recent years. Another road, where the Mets have not been doing as well, is signing international players. If there is one way for the Mets to really bring some talent into their system in the short-term, it through this route.

As with the amateur draft, teams are allotted a pool of international bonus money. If they exceed that amount they are assessed a luxury tax on the overage. If they exceed it by more than 10%, they are restricted in the amount of money they can spend on a single player in the following year. We've seen some clubs go really aggressive in their spending in a year, figuring that the one-time large infusion of talent would negate the penalty paid the next season. Now, it's quite possible that Cohen would want to avoid something that might possibly alienate other owners in that regard, but it's something to keep an eye on, at least. If the Mets really want to jump start their player development, that would be one way they could accomplish that task.

Barring a willingness to push the rules, I'd still like to see the Mets pick up their game in the international market. While it's generally not a secret which players will sign for the largest bonuses every year, doing a better job of ferreting out some talent among the less heralded prospects would pay some dividends. I've been trying to learn more about the international market lately, particularly why some teams seem to do so much better there than the rest, so I'm not going to pretend that I'm some sort of an expert here. It's not as if the Mets have been coming up completely empty in this area, either, two of the players that the Mets swapped for Lindor and Carrasco were Andrés Giménez and Amed Rosario. Even though Rosario in particular enjoyed some ups and downs in his MLB career, these guys do represent success stories for the Mets.

I'm sure that Sandy Alderson and Jared Porter are taking a hard look at their scouting operation in Latin America and the rest of the world, and will deploy Steve Cohen's money as needed to up their game in the international market. I'm also fairly confident that they will work to improve what happens to those kids once they make their way into the Mets system. The Mets have maintained a presence in the Dominican Republic for years now with their academy opened in 2008 and two different entries in the Dominican Summer League. I would expect that to continue and be augmented.

The other thing I would expect to see with the players from Latin America and, hopefully, Asia and other parts of the world, is more effort being made to help these players acclimate to playing here. Making it in minor league baseball is tough enough already, but for players who are young, far from home and faced with an unfamiliar culture, it's all that much harder. Admittedly, many of these kids are going to wash out anyway. That's just how it goes with young prospects. But anything that you could do to help them acclimate better — learn the language, have more familiar food to eat, help them to feel more a part of the community where they find themselves — can only help a precious few more of them to make it.

At his introductory press conference, new GM Jared Porter talked about finding players in many different ways. A good part of the reason he was hired here is a resume of identifying and promoting talent. In a lot of ways, the Lindor deal was the easy part of his job. The Indians were motivated to move the player, the Mets wanted him, and both sides were able to find a middle position where they were comfortable with what they were getting in return for what they were giving up. Porter, Alderson and whoever else in the front office that were involved did a terrific job here, but now it gets harder. Now the farm system is in need of major upgrading without the boost that tanking some seasons has given teams like the Padres and the Braves who the Mets will be competing against.

Being as good as they can be in the amateur draft and upping their game on the international side are all on the to-do list, but improvements to the way they scout other MLB teams and develop their own players are priorities, too. Whether it's a player you've identified in another organization with some unfulfilled potential or one that's already in your system that isn't maximizing his talents, you need an army of evaluators and coaches, all armed with the most modern tools and methods to do their jobs. Even if the Mets do become one of the smart, really well-run organizations in the sport, doing both the top-level and ground-level work exceedingly well, they're not going to be competing in a vacuum. There are other extremely well run organizations in the sport doing basically the same things. It won't be enough to simply get better at this stuff and then sit back and rest on their laurels. If they want to sustain success, they'll have to be willing to constantly evaluate everything they do and stay on the cutting edge of the sport.

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