The 2015 Mets, the last team in franchise history to make the World Series, had 14 homegrown players on the Opening Day roster. This year’s Mets will have fewer than 10 homegrown players when the season gets underway, despite there being an extra roster position this time around. Nowhere is that discrepancy more noticeable than in the starting rotation. Four of the five starting pitchers in 2015 came up thru the Mets’ system. This year, assuming all the veterans are healthy, it will be only one.
Most people would prefer to have more homegrown players on their favorite team’s roster. No one wants to be a fan of a team comprised mostly of mercenaries. At the same time, if the Mets’ collection of players that started off somewhere else wins the World Series, my guess is that few would complain. We’ll celebrate them all as if they were Mets lifers.
Let’s see how the rotation came about:
Jacob deGrom – Ninth-round pick of the Mets in the 2010 Draft
Max Scherzer – Free agent signing following the 2021 season
Chris Bassitt – Trade with the A’s following 2021 season
Carlos Carrasco – Trade with the then-named Indians following the 2020 season
Taijuan Walker – Free agent signing following the 2020 season
There’s at least some question around the availability of Carrasco and Walker for Opening Day. If so, they’d likely be replaced by homegrown products Tylor Megill and David Peterson. In 2015, it was the other way around, in a way. Homegrown Dillon Gee was on the Opening Day roster but he made just seven starts for the club. Noah Syndergaard, who spent time in the Mets’ minor league system but was drafted by the Blue Jays and acquired by trade, was a mid-season addition who ended up making 24 starts.
The four homegrown starters in 2015 were: deGrom, Gee, Matt Harvey and Jon Niese. The lone import on the Opening Day roster was Bartolo Colon. So, which one is more representative of Mets teams to make the World Series? Was it home grown staffs like 2015? Or is it imports like the presumed 2022 staff?
It’s harder to find Opening Day rosters as you go back in time. Fortunately, that’s not much of a problem for the 2000 Mets. That year’s team had their primary five starters make 151 starts and the most starts from another hurler was the five made by Pat Mahomes, who definitely wasn’t in the Opening Day rotation. Bobby Jones was the only homegrown player. Mike Hampton, Al Leiter and Glendon Rusch were all acquired via trade and Rick Reed was a free agent signing.
The 1986 squad, one that is remembered so fondly today, had three of its five Opening Day starters come from somewhere else. Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez and Bobby Ojeda were all acquired by trade, leaving Dwight Gooden and Rick Aguilera as the homegrown starters. Aguilera got two starts that year before Ojeda got his first. Aguilera made another start before being replaced in the rotation by Bruce Berenyi, who was a trade acquisition. Still, Aguilera ended up making 20 starts in ’86.
Because of what happened in the World Series, many people assume George Stone was in the rotation at the start of 1973. But Stone didn’t make his first start until June 2. Instead, backing up Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Jon Matlack were Jim McAndrew and Harry Parker. Matlack and McAndrew were Mets draft picks, while Koosman signed with the club as an amateur free agent before the draft was instituted. Parker was acquired via trade. The wild card in this is how you want to view Seaver, who was originally drafted by the Braves yet never pitched a game for them before he was declared ineligible and had his contract voided by the league office. Regardless of how you view Seaver, the ’73 rotation was more homegrown.
Which brings us to the first World Series team in 1969. Seaver, Koosman and McAndrew were also in the rotation for ’69, like ’73. The other two were Don Cardwell and Gary Gentry. Cardwell was a trade acquisition. Gentry was drafted three times and did not sign. He finally inked a deal when the Mets took him in the third round of the June secondary draft, when he was the 60th player selected. So, just like ’73, this is a 3-1 split for homegrown, with the final margin being how you classify Seaver.
The bottom line is that you didn’t have an issue with either the 1986 or 2000 Mets rotations, the fact that four of the five guys from 2022 came from other places shouldn’t bother you too much, either. Now we just have to hope that the preferred five guys come close to the 151 starts of the 2000 club. Mike Korn of PointsBet sportsbook established the over/under for deGrom + Scherzer starts this year at 43.5 when asked by Joel Sherman.
Every player wears a jersey that says Mets across the front. Thats enough for me. I’d take a 100% non homegrown talent roster if it brought a ring back to Queens.
In the past decade (Id need to dig) the Mets fielded an entire team of homegrown talent, Im tempted to say for the first time ever. Cool as a trivial pursuit thing, but does it matter?
It wasn’t an entire team – it was that day’s lineup.
In the end, a dominating regular season capped with a championship is what truly matters. But there’s a difference between Bassitt, Carasco and Walker compared to deGrom, Harvey and Niese.
Correct, I meant to say the opening lineup. I even got a ball from that game.
“In the end, a dominating regular season capped with a championship is what truly matters.”
100% endorsed by me.
4/26/2012
I also could not care less who drafted whom. As I have said several times recently, the farm system means less and less these days in terms of filling out a roster, and more and more about acquiring what’s needed for such.
I want a team with good players who show some discipline playing the game correctly. I’d like to see players make good adjustments in the box, run the bases aggressively, battle with two strikes, and drive in two-out runs. In the field, I’d like players who play hard, take good angles to the ball, and make strong throws to keep opposing runners from taking advantage.
I have a lot of confidence in Buck to make strong decisions. I just hope the Mets bullpen can measure up to getting nine outs when needed. I expect the Mets to win a lot of games 5-2, 6-3, 7-4 this season. In other words, not that close.
I believe that a mix of home grown talent supplemented through free agency and trades is the ideal route. When I think of home grown talent it doesn’t necessarily mean that the player would have to be drafted by the Mets, even though I understand that is really the definition of home grown. I think of it as someone who makes their MLB debut as a Met, even if they were acquired through trade. I prefer having a core of younger players who we would expect to see grow with the team and (hopefully) get better as the years go on rather than players in their 30s who are on shorter deals and that we will be rooting for for just a year or two. Ultimately I want to see a winning team, but would prefer to see a core of young talent supplemented at the right time through trades and free agency. It’s great to have players like Wright who spend their career with the team. I’d love to see deGrom do the same.
I was going to say what Bob P said but wanted to add on that not even the Rays are constructed by only players they drafted. We can say that Syndergaard was gotten in a trade too. So, was Wheeler… The bottom line is that they aren’t mercenaries in the context of the point in the article.
There is satisfaction to be gotten from identifying and getting minor leaguers from other teams and making them major leaguers. Ron Darling and Walt Terrell came from Texas for Lee Mazzilli; great job by Cashen and certainly we all feel Darling is “our guy”. Alderson made several good trades too. It was his free agent signings that were horrific. If Khalil Lee becomes what his tools call for, I will still call him home grown even though he came from KC. The question I ask myself, can we say that of Nick Plummer? I guess if you can improve a player, he’s your product. If you get a ready product from somewhere else, then he isn’t.