Thoughts on the Mets’ farm system and minor league depth

The Mets have seven U.S. based minor league teams, which means they have a minimum of 175 guys in their farm system. Factoring in the disabled list, it’s a little more than that – let’s call it 180. Typically, in any year there are somewhere in the vicinity of 40 guys who will one day play in the majors scattered throughout the system. So we are looking at three-and-a-half times as many guys who are “org filler” – guys who will never make the majors but who serve a purpose by giving enough bodies for the major league guys to play real games against.

One big issue is that you can never tell for certain all of the guys who are wheat and all of the guys who are chaff. Sure, Amed Rosario started off likely to be wheat and Dale Burdick started off likely to be chaff. But for guys in that 25-75 range, it’s not always so easy. Let’s give an example. In 2015, the Mets had two LHP make their professional debut

Player A: 11th-round pick, 6’2, 189 pounds, 18 years old. In 16 games in the Gulf Coast League, he was 2-0 with a 2.84 ERA and a 1.500 WHIP.

Player B: 13th-round pick, 5’11, 192 pounds, 21 years old. In 17 games for Brooklyn, he was 0-1 with a 0.00 ERA and a 0.588 WHIP.

If you had to pick one of those guys to be a top prospect, which one would you pick? Player A was a higher draft pick, with more size. And he was younger. Player B played at a higher level and had much better production. Now, it might be easy for you to prefer one over the other. But if forced to make a pick and assign it a level of assurance – does that change the equation for you? Can you say beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’d prefer one over the other? Or that you’d give one player a 60% chance of reaching the majors and the other a 5% chance?

For what it’s worth, Player A is Jake Simon, who currently has a 7.99 ERA at Brooklyn. Player B is P.J. Conlon who is in Double-A and is one of the club’s top 20 prospects. Let’s do another comparison and with the added feature that you have to include one of these two guys into a trade:

Player A: 21 year old, former 12th-round pick. At age 20 in the Lo-A South Atlantic League, he was 9-1 with a 2.01 ERA and a 1.005 WHIP. At the time of the deal, he’s in Hi-A with a 4-5 record, a 3.36 ERA and a 1.227 WHIP.

Player B: 21 year old, former 13th-round pick. At age 20 in the SAL, he was 10-6 with a 2.56 ERA and a 1.345 WHIP. At the time of the deal, he’s in Double-A with a 3-5 record a 4.31 ERA and a 1.417 WHIP.

How confident are you about which one of these players is going to play a key role in the 2016 playoff push? Both players made the majors in 2016. One was 1-2 with a 6.57 ERA and the other was 4-2 with a 2.42 ERA. Which one do you trade? And how confident are you?

Player A is Robert Whalen and Player B is Robert Gsellman.

One last comparison, with the same situation as above – you have to trade one of these guys.

Player A: 25 year old, former 34th-round draft pick. At age 24 he’s 8-3 with a 4.11 ERA and a 1.314 WHIP at Hi-A. He’s advanced to Triple-A and at time of trade between the two levels, he was 8-6 with a 3.75 ERA and a 1.242 WHIP. He was 6-5 with a 3.80 ERA and a 1.266 WHIP in Double-A.

Player B: 24 year old, former 3rd-round pick. At age 23 he’s 10-4 with a 4.64 ERA and a 1.438 WHIP in Hi-A. At the time of the trade, he’s 4-8 with a 3.46 ERA and a 1.245 WHIP in Double-A. Which one do you trade? How confident are you?

Both guys pitched in the majors in 2016. Right now, one guy has an 8.14 ERA in the Pacific Coast League and the other is 5-2 in the majors. Player A is Seth Lugo and Player B is Matt Koch.

The Mets traded Whalen and Koch and kept Gsellman and Lugo. Maybe you correctly identified which pitcher was the preferred option, maybe you didn’t. But would you have been up in arms at the time if the Mets had traded the guy they ended up keeping? If your answer is yes, I’m going to say you’re being less than honest.

It’s easy to say with the benefit of hindsight that when the Mets traded away pitchers to make their playoff push in 2015 that the only guy they gave up who you’d like back is Michael Fulmer. But whether through smart player identification or pure dumb luck, the Mets held on to two guys who have been assets to them while trading guys who ended up disposable.

And that’s one of the advantages of depth. If the system doesn’t have multiple guys performing reasonably well, you end up having to trade the guy who’s most likely to make an impact at the major league level. If you have multiple guys, you’ve got a shot to keep the guys who work out and trade the guys who don’t. Because no one should know your system as well as you do.

If the Mets were in the situation this year that they were in both 2015 and 2016 and being absolute buyers, they could pick among Conlon, Chris Flexen, Marcos Molina and Corey Oswalt to deal for a proven major leaguer. If they traded, say, Molina and Oswalt – and Molina never shook his injury troubles and Oswalt bombed, while Conlon and Flexen both ended up contributing – that’s a case of depth winning out and not merely “the guys they traded stunk.”

No minor league system has 20 guys who are going to be #1 or #2 starting pitchers or productive everyday players. If you think a farm system can only be good if its cup runneth over with those types of prospects, well you need to reevaluate things. The reality is that the best systems may, and let’s stress the word “may” here, have half of that.

You need to have guys who look like they can fill those roles, even if they don’t end up doing so. My favorite example of this is the early 90s Braves and the trade they made with the Padres to get Fred McGriff. The Braves farm system was loaded. You might recall that the 1992 Greenville team is one of the greatest teams in minor league history.

The Braves ended up trading the following three guys, the first two who played and starred for Greenville the year before:

A MLB-ready SP who was 8-5 with 99 Ks in 103 IP at Triple-A
A 21-year-old CF in Triple-A with a .789 OPS in the International League
Another 21-year-old outfielder who had a .293-14-64 line in Hi-A

Atlanta was able to hold onto minor leaguers who ended up with long, productive major league careers like Chipper Jones, Ryan Klesko, and Javy Lopez. The New York Times article on the trade when it happened had Tony Gwynn lamenting that the Padres weren’t able to get Mike Kelly, who never amounted to much in the majors. Two of the three they did get made the majors but never became impact players. But the Braves’ depth allowed them to presumably draw the line at including Jones and Lopez yet still have enough to pull off a big deal.

The fact that Donnie Elliott and Melvin Nieves and Vince Moore didn’t develop into major league stars is not a black mark against the Braves’ farm system. Some guys will thrive in the majors and some guys won’t; that’s just the nature of the beast. The main takeaway is that the farm system produced guys that other teams felt were attractive enough to trade for and trade something very good to get.

The Mets in 2015 were able to trade guys away to allow them to add pieces which brought them to the World Series. And they still had two pitchers who came up and played key roles in the team making the playoffs in 2016. While the Mets likely won’t make the playoff in 2017, the pitching staff that was counted on to lead the way was either injured or ineffective. If Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard had been healthy, they would have had the depth to pull off more trade deadline deals, with four interesting starters at Double-A to dangle as trade bait. They just didn’t have pitchers at the Triple-A level ready to step in.

In 2012 the system delivered Harvey, Jeurys Familia and Josh Edgin
In 2013 it was Zack Wheeler
In 2014 it was Jacob deGrom
In 2015 it was Syndergaard, Steven Matz, Hansel Robles and trade chits for Yoenis Cespedes, Tyler Clippard , Addison Reed and Kelly Johnson
In 2016 it was Gsellman and Lugo plus trade chits for Jay Bruce and Johnson.

They didn’t have a pitcher ready to step in this year in May. Perhaps in the future we’ll point to this year as the one where the team added Flexen and Paul Sewald as multi-year contributors.

That’s a five-year stretch where the system delivered five different pitchers who made the All-Star team and two who claimed Rookie of the Year honors. I think it deserves one year of not having someone ready to step in during May without being crucified. Especially since there seems to be good pitchers at Double-A.

For a point of comparison, from 2012-2016, the Nationals’ system delivered: Ian Krol, Nate Karns, Tanner Roark, Blake Treinen, Joe Ross, Felipe Rivero, Koda Glover and undoubtedly some trade chits. Definitely good pitchers there in Roark and Rivero and possibly others. But give me the Mets’ production without a doubt.

When evaluating a farm system, you cannot judge it simply by how prepared it is to deliver a top prospect at the exact position you need at the exact moment you need it. You have to look at the big picture. You need to consider what’s been recently delivered, what’s ready to deliver now and what’s likely to be delivered down the road. And you need to understand that no team delivers five impact players year after year after year after year.