How To Fly
By Douglas Adams
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day and try it.
The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt.
That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
Why The Mets Are Hurt By Winning:
A look at the reverse standings will show you that the Mets have no shot of gaining a top 5 pick in 2014’s draft. That isn’t really the point. The point is… that they DO have a chance to have their 2014 1st round pick protected by losing more games than the Rockies, Phillies, Padres and Blue Jays (or whomever they need to be worse than to finish in the bottom 10) for the remainder of the season. This backwards way of thinking harkens back to the Miami Dolphin’s failed “Suck for Luck” campaign. Here is the reality:
The Mets will be spenders in this upcoming offseason. They are thought to be targeting Shin-Soo Choo and could be conceivably targeting other (assumed) protected picks like: Jacoby Ellsbury, Hunter Pence, Curtis Granderson, Nelson Cruz or Kenrys Morales. For a team to protect these picks in the upcoming draft they must offer the player arbitration in the form of a top 125 salary contract (approximately $13.76 Mil per year).
Teams with picks after the top 10 are subject to forfeiting their picks for signing these protected players. The Mets with their current 14th pick in the draft would be waiting around until the second or even third rounds before being able to draft players.
Some fans don’t see the problem. Getting a player like Michael Bourn would have clearly been worth giving up Dominic Smith but what they fail to see is that the Mets don’t lose a better pick, they lose that first round ENTIRELY. Let’s look at six first round picks from recent years:
2012:
- Carlos Correa (1) [#8 Overall Prospect]
- Byron Buxton (2) [#1 Overall Prospect]
- Mike Zunino (3) [Starting Catcher (DL) Seattle]
- Kevin Gausman (4) [2014 Rotation Baltimore]
- Max Fried (7) [#34 Overall Prospect]
- Michael Wacha (19) [2014 Rotation St. Louis]
2011:
- Gerrit Cole (1) [SP Pittsburgh]
- Anthony Rendon (6) [Starting 2B Washington]
- Archie Bradley (7) [#7 Overall Prospect]
- Francisco Lindor (8) [#5 Overall Prospect]
- Jose Fernandez (14) [Ace SP Miami]
- Kolten Wong (22) [Starting 2B St. Louis]
2010:
- Bryce Harper (1) [All Star OF Washington]
- Jameson Taillon (2) [#11 Overall Prospect]
- Manny Machado (3) [All Star 3B Baltimore]
- Matt Harvey (7) [Ace SP New York (NL)]
- Chris Sale (13) [Ace SP Chicago (AL)]
- Christian Yelich (23) [Starting OF Miami]
It isn’t surprising that the highest percentage of star players comes out of the early picks of the first round. While star players are selected in the later rounds it is not surprising that teams would want to hold onto their first round pick rather than pay a free agent lots of money to potentially break down and be essentially worthless (See Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton).
The Mets NEED to spend money this offseason and they should be looking at players listed above but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to sign those players without worrying about losing a draft pick? Which is more important to the readers of this article?
1) Finishing with a better record than Philadelphia and/or Washington?
2) Protecting our future when we invest in 2014?
Play out the year to win as many games possible!!!!! CASE CLOSED!! This not the NFL or NBA where Lebron James or Andrew Luck can make you instant playoff contenders…
So what year should we expect the Astros to contend? They’ve had the 1st pick the last 2 years, and will have it again this year. My guess..not any time soon, not even close!!!
Wrong is my guess. the Twins and Astros have two of the best farms systems in baseball. We can see the turnover happening in front of our own eyes. The Mets look better than the Yankees because the farm is ok and some trophy players are coming up or just arrived. On the flip side the Yankees keep doing everything that can to win, but it will be fruitless. They are done for and after Jeter, Pettitte, Kuroda, Arod, Ichiro et al pass into the history books shortly, there is nothing in NY, except the Mets, and the freight train that’s coming.
This year, as we have all known is a loss. I cannot for the life of me see the difference between 73 wins and 68 Wins, except being poised to draft better. Sure we have to do better, but the change of doing better is higher in the 1-10 slot. David is spot on. Of course with DePo and SA in charge, the odds diminish, but thats what we got. The is no meaning in beating the Phillies or Nats…they suck too. Either you make the playoffs or the season has no meaning from a standings perspective. Given the lack of crowds at Citi, losing 5 more games wont really have any gate ramifications. On the other hand, when the new kids come up, we see major gate improvements. We first have a chance at the post season in ’15 and should be making every decision with that in mind IMO.
LOL. Start by making better use of the PICKS YOU HAVE. You could have had three of those names if we weren’t the smartest guys in the room … er, taking a high school CFer, or a high school 1B.
Agreed, again, with Sean. Win games, and try to be the second best team in the NL East, not the second WORST.
Sorry Jerry,
I don’t see Nimmo and Smith as the issues.
Gavin Cecchini was a BAD pick. The other two were risky picks that at least had upside.
I just don’t want to have NO 1st round pick, and neither do the Mets. If we finish in the bottom 10, that is no longer an issue.
The Mets actually have a pretty favorable schedule for the remainder of the season. It going to depend on how they fare against the Phillies and the Nationals. How ironic is that! Let Harvey win all his starts and forget the rest.
In 2013, what is more enjoyable, watching the Mets play .500+ ball the past few months or being disgusted by the play in the first two months? It has been researched that when a team wins only 60 someting games in a year it erodes the fan base and takes two winning campaigns to get them back. Losing a lot is bad for financial reasons.Ethically, deliberately losing is totally against the grain of what sports is supposed to be about. The rule about top 10 picks being protected is the real problem. If any team signs a qualified offer free agent they should never lose a pick and that will alleviate why it took so long for Bourne to get a contract. Any team that loses a qualified offer free agent should get a pick in a supplemental first round after the first round in order of finish but weighted (like the NBA) so that there could never be inference of deliberate losing. Alas these aren’t the rules but this current backwards logic leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I happen to like this proposed plan.
I already had this discussion with you before, but here are some other thoughts I came up with.
1. Don’t you want Harvey/Wheeler to win some games? People are miffed that Harvey isn’t winning and that the team isn’t even winning his starts. Establishing a winning culture for the young players in the next month could translate over to next year.
2. Since May 15th, the Mets have pretty much been a .500 club. Historically, the 10th worst record needs around 85-89 losses, and this year it is probably going to be on the higher side of 89 losses. That means they will have to go 15-21 (or worse) to get the 10th spot. I think that’s not going to happen since they have been playing .500 ball for 3 months now and the fact that 25/36 (70%) remaining games are teams with sub .500 records.
3. Any good draft pick, if they pan out at all which is unlikely to begin with, is unlikely to contribute at the MLB level until mid-2016 *IF* all goes well and *IF* they choose a polished player(which is the opposite of what Alderson has done the past few years)
4. Continuing off point #3, at some point you have to break the cycle of thinking long-term and think short term. Like I said, this team has been a .500 team for 3 months now. With a few offseason moves and some development for the young kids, there’s no reason why the Mets can’t be in the discussion next year.
5. And finally i’d just like to repeat what Sean said again that there bona fida drafts picks in MLB is so rare(and if they appear are always #1 picks), and they definitely wouldn’t be appearing at slot #10.
I still see the reasons for victory as negligible compared to the reasons to protect the pick. Will a top 10 pick guarantee a star? No! Will not having a first round pick hurt the Mets in the future? You bet!
I argue that these years of hardship would have been less bad had we had not lost picks during the heights of the Minaya era.
I’m guessing that if you had your way, the Mets would always have one of 2 outcomes: make the postseason or finish with the worst record. Not the way i would do things, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Talent-wise, it makes sense to root for a bottom 10 finish, but if you consider the money aspect (after all baseball is a business) and it doesn’t make much sense, in my opinion, to root for failure.
You know me so well…
I think that each year is a judgement call. 2013 is a year with nothing to win. The Mets could compete in 2014 and I think that acquiring a top of the line offensive player is part of that.
I would rather be able to go after free agents with impunity in a year where the Mets basically HAVE to sign someone on the restricted list.
However to defy your profile on me, the 2014 Mets should be in it to win it. Then again the 2015 team has a less obvious need for a free agent acquisition.
Actually, if you are all-in in 2014, it makes more sense to win some games in September because it
1. Builds players psyche
2. Makes it easier to attract FA’s who want to win
and when they actually do sign someone, it
3. Gets the writers to churn out positive vibes on the team
4. Which in turn generates fan interest for next season
Yes, all of these things will cost the Mets something in the future, but you just stated that they should go for it right now!
Gunning for the pick to be protected gives me 2 impressions.
1. The players we have aren’t as good as we thought, which makes a run next year less likely.
2. We’re thinking about 2017 instead of 2014.
I think it’s 15-18, probably for real in 16 unless some real vet talent comes. By trade or FA
2014 is the first year where I think my focus switches from development to the major league team’s dynamic. They are not shooting for the World Series in 2014. They are shooting for the playoffs.
All the things Name brings up seem to be intangible benefits with little actual effect. Maybe intangibles matter more than I think.
I still think draft picks are important to the 2014 mets and this picks outweigh a bevy of intangibles.
This series with the Tigers is an calibration point against a team that is advanced playoffs level…as was the Dodgers series. We still have a long way to go, and improving things with a higher draft makes far more sense to me than worrying about a few more wins this year.
Complaining about the fact that they chose 3 HS players with upside is pretty ridiculous, IMO, since they didn’t have anything like a top 5 pick in the last 3 years and beyond that it’s REALLY a crapshoot. They went for long-term potential and chose who they thought was the best player available at their position. I can’t complain about that.
That all being said, I think this past off-season they made the right move in *not* giving up their 11th pick to sign Bourn. But that is in the context of where they seemed to think the team was at at that point. Specifically, they felt that Bourn was not worth sacrificing the pick going into the 2013 season. All signs pointed to them (for a while) as eyeing 2014 as the first real push into contention. To me, that means they probably wouldn’t mind giving up the pick *this* off-season if it was the right FA. Of course, it remains to be seen if that is what they end up doing.
Protected or not they need to sign a top flight FA.
I like upside. My complaint is that Cecchini has virtually no upside and Smith’s upside seems limited.
If everything broke right with Nimmo, they’d have a 5-tool CFer, another Carlos Beltran. If everything broke right with Cecchini, they’d have Ruben Tejada with 30 SB. Smith seems to have more upside but what’s the best-case scenario with him? 2012 vintage Adrian Gonzalez? .300 hitter, 20 HR and an .800 OPS? That’s a nice player but what’s the odds he hits that upside?
This is an issue…you know the Senior Management is looking at this. Why would Philly fire Manuel with 6 weeks left to play if they didn’t see the value of finishing behind the Mets and competing for one of the protected draft slots? It seems like there is little chance now though that the Mets will finish in the bottom ten. I believe (and I could be wrong here) that once you sign a top-FA and surrender your 1st pick, you don’t lose another pick by signing a second top-tier FA. So if the Mets are going to finish out of the bottom ten, they will consider signing TWO top-tier FAs.
I am not 100% sure on that. They altered the rules.
Exactly…Try doing some research…It’s really rocket science now.
I read through something before publishing to make sure what info I had was still relevant.
I simply remember the nothing we got when Miami signed Reyes and wonder.
If we can only lose one pick:
“In for a penny, in for a pound.”
*Compensation Picks
Kevin Plawecki (Mets-1s) – Supplemental Pick for loss of Free Agent Jose Reyes
Matt Reynolds (Mets-2) – Pick from Marlins as compensation for Free Agent Jose Reyes
I, for one, do not mourn the loss of Jose Reyes. He’s terrible defensively, and has been for years. When he left the Mets everyone knew he was going to be getting $20-22M for his later age years … and the high likelihood that he wouldn’t play full seasons.
So what’s happened? He’s predictably put up less in WAR since he played for the Mets over two seasons, as he did in his last single season.
And now the $22MM contract years will pile up. I guess he’ll make a passable 3B one day.
I read yesterday where one blogger was trying to make a case for the Mets to try and reacquire Reyes from Toronto.
As long as the mets don’t have the whole contract or give up too much I am for it.
How long is Reyes current deal? How many years left? Another deal with Toronto would be crazy.
Here is the issue:
Reyes is signed through 2017 at $22 mil per year with what seems to be a vesting option for 2018.
The Jays would need to cover 50% of that contract and the. Look at getting a pair of Montero-like prospects.
I wouldn’t do it if I was them.
I wonder if the Jays would go for a deal like that.. the argument against it is that the best years of his career are behind him.
In reverse standings we are now at 10. It’s volatile in this 15 gb region of the NL. With Harvey and Wheeler dialing down and Dice K a Met, Sept may be quite a bumpy ride. If it ends the Collins reign of terror, then all is not lost.
I still think they won’t finish bottom 10 with only 8 of their remaining 33 games facing teams that are over .500
With Wright out, the Mets have only 1 above NL average offensive position player, Byrd, and that explains why September should be a bumpy ride. It is hard to play .500 ball with seven sub average offensive players.
2, if the Mets ever decide to play Duda over Davis.