Tom Brennan - THE MINORS LEAGUES ARE MORE DARWINIAN THIS YEAR - AND THAT IS GOOD

The first baseball fan - he eventually evolved into a Mets fan

American Idol?  Most of us have seen it.

A show Charles Darwin would no doubt watch.  Survival of the fittest.  

They keep voting people off the show. The goal is to be "the last one standing" - you either survive - or soon enough, you leave and go back to singing in the shower.  

In baseball, with each franchise losing multiple minor league teams, many more marginal players have not survived and others will not last very long. 

Heck, the draft is coming right soon, Paw.  Some of those guys may be left in training camp, but others will be added to St. Lucie. the Mets' Low A team.  Room will have to be made via cuts, I'd imagine.

There are just 4 minor league teams now for the Mets - wow, that is some sort of haircut.   Come draft day, we'll see where some of those guys get assigned.

Dozens of minor league players have been jettisoned or "retired", or gone into limbo, like a Michael Paez, who is still listed as a Rumble Pony but has not played.

But there is a flip side to fewer minor league teams...the quality of the players who remain will (theoretically, at least) make for far more talented rosters.  

Gone will be the hitters who can't really hit, like a Champ Stuart, who last 6 years in the Mets' minors (2013-18) back when there were a less-Darwinian seven minor league teams, Champ hit .219 with a K every 3 times up.  

With 4 teams, would he have stuck around for 6 years? Nah. 

(Of course, the way upper minors Mets hitters are scuffling so greatly makes one wonder about survival of the fittest). 

Pitchers will just have to be BETTER against the hitters who remain, who on the whole CAN hit a lot better.  

Gone are the pitchers who can't pitch, or pitch OK but aren't hard throwers, who couldn't deal with big league hitters, like a Tyler Pill, so the hitters won't get to fatten up on them anymore.  

Those surviving hitters will face a steady diet of tougher pitching - just like Michael Conforto does now in the big leagues.

The minor league players will have to dig deeper - as the slope will have gotten steeper - and competition is just better.

But the best talent, the talent that ultimately makes it to the big leagues? Yes, the ones most ordinary fans care about?   

It seems to me it ought to accelerate those cream-of-the-crop players' arrivals in the big leagues.  

Because as you "increase resistance", as weight lifters do, the talent "muscle" will grow.  The hitters won't be as easily able to delude themselves they are making OK progress if they are hitting .240 against tougher pitching - far easier to delude yourself as a .280 hitter hitting against pre-Covid diluted pitching talent.

Pete Crow Armstrong, who likely would have been in pre-season rookie ball pre-COVID, will instead face consistently better pitching - and undoubtedly adjust and grow faster.

Mets' pitchers like Tylor Megill will face consistently better hitters - learn from the challenge - and adjust faster.  

A pitcher's pitches that would have gotten some weak hitters out previously will not get 2021's overall better hitters out, and it will be more obvious that their pitch quality will have to sharpen, and fast.  Adjust and survive, or send out resumes.

Hopefully, a PCA or Mauricio or Baty or Alvarez or Vientos will be more greatly and consistently challenged, adjust quicker, and it will accelerate those best players to the big leagues.  

Which is what all Mets fans really want.  

I want the best guys to get up to the Mets as quickly as possible.  

Don't you?

Get our top prospects up here with the Mets, sooner rather than later?  I love that prospect.

I somehow think that if Charles Darwin was a baseball fan, he would agree.  Do you?

I wonder what Darwin would have to say about Syracuse and Binghamton being a combined 3-20.  Perhaps that they might become extinct species.