Things have been fairly hectic for me lately. I haven't been able to post here as often as I would wish. More on that later, but first, let's catch up on some Mets thoughts. My last post was a week before the trade deadline. Although I did expect the Mets to make a stronger push for a left-handed reliever, I wasn't surprised that the Mets didn't make a huge splash in the deadline market. The brain trust had pretty well telegraphed their thinking ahead of time, and it was clear they weren't going to trade top prospects for rentals.
There was a lot of opining afterward that the club should have been more aggressive at the deadline. I get some of the reasoning. They're built to win now in many ways. They have a terrific one-two punch at the top of their rotation, with no guarantees that Jacob deGrom will be back next year and that Max Scherzer will continue to be a top-of-the-rotation starter as he approaches his 40th birthday. There was strong sentiment that they should have cashed in some chips and went all in. But I agree with GM Billy Epler's front office's disciplined approach. They couldn't afford to keep trading away top pics, as has become a dubious Mets tradition for the past several years.
On the other hand, if one thing becomes more apparent every year, it's the paucity of teams self-identifying as sellers. The number of contenders and would-be contenders scrambling for available talent from this limited supply should make the Mets rethink how they approach building their roster in the off-season. It seems even more ill-advised to start a season with Chasen Shreve and Joely RodrÃguez as your top lefty bullpen options with the thought that you could always pick up a southpaw at the deadline unless the Mets manage to build out their farm system's depth much more than what exists now. Until then, I believe the Mets must be much more proactive in the offseason.
The Mets did an excellent job deepening their farm system in this year's draft, which should help in future years. But the job gets much more challenging going forward if the Mets sustain winning. The Mets will have to continue to improve their player development system if they hope to approach the depth of prospects that competitors such as the Braves and Padres were able to leverage.
These days, clubs seem much less inclined to dump useful players' salaries for dubious prospects who are unlikely to contribute anything in the future. The reason clubs were unwilling to deal for Mets' prospects beyond the top 5 or 6 was that there is little faith that the Mets' system can produce potential major leaguers from that next tier of talent. The Mets have improved dramatically in the past decade in graduating a few kids from their system into the big leagues, but the next challenge will be having players develop from lower down in their top 20.
I wrote a piece a couple of months ago on Junior Tilien, a 19-year-old infielder in the Mets' system. Tilien is enjoying a breakout season for the Low-A St. Lucie Mets in the Florida State League. Playing primarily shortstop and second base, Junior is slashing .260/.315/.440 with 13 2B and 12 HR in 295 PA. He has 22 BBs and has struck out 69 times. Those aren't bad numbers for a teenager in that league. In contrast, much-heralded 19-year-old prospect Alex Ramirez slashed .284/.360/.443 with 13 2B, 6 3B, and 6 HR over 306 PA in St. Lucie before his promotion to Brooklyn. Ramirez had 28 BBs and struck out 68 times.
Now I'm not trying to utilize dubious stat line scouting to claim that Tilien is equal to Ramirez as a prospect. That's clearly not the case. But Ramirez was one of the prospects the Mets were unwilling to ship out at the deadline. Alex is number 4 in MLB.com's top 30 Mets prospects, while Tilien didn't even crack their list. But the Mets signed Ramirez for $2.05 million in 2019. Tilien signed the same month for $185,000.
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Tom and I are big fans of Junior too. Might have a live one here.
ReplyDeleteLove Junior Tilien
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