Reese Kaplan -- The Poor History of Mets Drafts and Development

One of the things that comes up among baseball fans is how poorly the club does when it comes to scouting future ballplayers.  To be fair, the new regime has not had its hand in the game long enough to deserve criticism more ingrained in Wilpon bad memories.  Sometimes it was a matter of money.  Other times it was indeed bad scouting.  More often it was poor training, development and healthcare in the minor league infrastructure.  

Now everyone thinks it's easy to look at a ballplayer and envision him as the next Mike Trout or the next Jacob deGrom.  It's simply not that easy to make value judgments nor to project how someone will develop.  It's not a matter of looking at the stats and seeing who has the most home runs, the highest batting average, the most stolen bases, the fewest fielding errors, the highest speed fastball, the greatest number of strikeouts or the lowest WHIP.  You have to consider the level of competition they're facing and realize that what they do now may already be the peak of their performance trajectory.  

Think back to watching Little League games.  Weren't there always a few seeming stars who jumped off the scorecard at you based upon their early development?  Now think about others whose talents didn't pique your interest who seemed to come out of nowhere a year or more later to perform at a level you'd never thought possible.  That's a good example of how picking strictly based upon current capabilities is a crap shoot because there is no guarantee where they will be in the future.  Many who think they can hit anyone's fastball have their knees turn to jelly the first time they're faced with a curve.  Others who always pull no matter what don't know why their numbers tanked when opposing teams learn about using defensive shifts or pitchers tend to start pitching them to the outside.  

Now more forward to your experience watching Mets drafts and player development over the years.  Who here remembers when Benny Ayala was going to be a big thing?  Gavin Cecchini was going to be a doubles and contact hitting machine.  Jay Payton managed to flesh out a career for himself, though not at the All Star level.  Others like Fernando Martinez and Lastings Milledge never even got to the starting level in the majors.  

The same is true for pitchers.  Right now look at seemingly lost cause Thomas Szapucki.  He was posting some eye popping numbers before his health worked against him.  Even now if you look at his minor league transcript you start to salivate -- the 6'2" southpaw has a minor league career ERA of 2.80 with 11.2 Ks per 9 IP.  His walks are high at 4.1 over the same span, but when you look more closely you see that he's only managed to log 49 games and 186 IP over a period of five minor league seasons.  Ugh!

He's not alone in this regard.  What about the big hype for the Paul Wilson?  How about Eddie Kunz?  Does Billy Traber ring a bell?  What about Philip Humber?  Was Bill Pulsipher a star on the mound?  I could start to recite relief pitchers, too, but we'd be here all week.  I'll just mention one -- the awesome strikeout talents of Jack Leathersich who made parts of two seasons for three clubs in the majors but hasn't been seen since his brief 24 game trial over 2015-2017.  

Going forward money shouldn't be an issue with the new ownership.  Whether or not training and medical care improves is anyone's guess.  They do seem a bit more active in some of the international markets, but it's not clear they are looking at the free agent options for the major leagues.  Someday that reservation will change and we will stop hearing about how it didn't work for Shinjo, Masui and others (while conveniently forgetting quality players who helped the team like Takahashi, Nomo and even Aoki.)  Scouting is more complex than many believe it really is.