Johan

About two months ago I examined the current "price" of pitching in baseball, and came to the conclusion that there are only two ways to acquire solid pitching, through player development and trades. It is becoming more evident every year that strong free agent classes are only a notion of the past, and that the lack of quality pitching in baseball today makes acquiring an established starter a very difficult task. Such is the predicament of the New York Mets currently. Faced with a rotation that lacks consistency, the Mets are making a hard push for probably the best pitcher in baseball right now, Johan Santana. Now in order to acquire this player the Mets are looking at a four or five prospect package in return, a move which would cripple their already weak farm system. So do the Mets sell the farm for a known ace, or do they put all their chips into their system with hopes to develop an ace of their own?

In baseball developing a player, in particular a pitcher, is pretty much a crap shoot. You never know when you are going to find the 15th round draft pick who dominates the league (Jake Peavey) or when you are going to draft the highly touted first round draft pick who is an absolute bust. In all honesty when looking at a draft it is a safe bet that any player you draft, in particular a pitcher, has a worse chance of making the major leagues as a consistent player, then of not reaching the majors at all. Between 1993- 2003 there were 58 pitchers selected with a top 10 pick in the June amateur draft. Only 33% managed to become a solid major league contributor by their fourth year. Last year none of the top 10 ERA leaders in all of baseball were drafted in the first round, and only three of the top ten pitchers in wins were selected in the first round. So what does this tell me? It tells me that a prospect is just that, a prospective major league player who, despite all the hype he may recieve, is nothing close to a sure thing. So basically the only chance to achieve good player development is to have a deep system, not neccesarily a system that has a few of the top prospects in the game, but a system that has depth at nearly every position throughout the organization. This depth is epitomized the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, how on a yearly basis can have a player emerge from their system to become an effective player, this year it was Reggie Willits, last year Jered Weaver, and so on and so forth back to when they won the World Series in 2002, with the help of september call- up turned phenom, Francisco Rodriguez a.k.a. K- Rod. This type of system should be the standard of every major league organization.

So how do the mets achieve this type of organizational depth by trading the majority of their farm? In all honesty they don't, but when looking at the current system, or at least in the upper levels of it, you basically see the reminants of an old, ineffective regime. While there are some highly regarded prospects in that group, it is probably in the best interest of the Mets to cut the ties with the old regime players and, beggining with the Kevin Mulvey draft, start to implenent a new system of player development. Despite it being very early on in their development it appears that the 2007 draft was a strong one for the Mets, and that the 2008 draft, which has the mets drafting twice in the top 22 picks, has the potential to be even better. Combine those two drafts with the strong Latin signing classes of the past two years, you have the foundation for a strong and deep farm system for the future.

I would love to see the Mets keep one of Martinez or Gomez out of the trade for Santana, but I would still do whatever it takes to acquire him. If the season started today the Mets would most likely begin with a starting rotation of Pedro, John Maine, Ollie Perez, El Duque, and Mike Pelfrey. Based solely on their individual seasons last year that would give the Mets starting rotation an average ERA+ of 117.2, which would most likely be tops in the NL. (This is assuming that the progression of the younger players is equal to the regression of the older players). It would also give the rotation an average of 2.52 Earned Runs per 5.86 IP. Now while the ER total is pretty good considering the Mets averaged 4.96 runs per game last year, the 5.86 IP is not. Basically the Mets current rotation would force their bullpen to record an average 10 outs a game, and based on the way the bullpen pitched last year, that worries me a great deal. Santana on the other hand pitched nearly an entire inning more than the current Mets rotation averaged last year, pitching 6.64 IP per game in a "down year" for him. Not even taking into account the high probability of a rebound year for Johan, or the effect of switching to the National League, Santana proves to be a significant upgrade in the area where our starting pitching was weakest. In short Santana will be 29 to start the season this year, and 7 years of Johan in his prime is the best thing for the Mets right now.