The Small-Market Mets, Pitching Prospects, and Other Oxymorons

Some of my favorite stories from this early leg of training camp have been the typically (and in some cases literally) glowing reports on the progress of the top Mets prospects. It doesn't take much to win me over to their bandwagon - an honest quote or a little emotion on the playing field will do - and I generally find it easier and more fun to root for the young and unproved whose rising star I've tracked with my own eyes than a free agent signing whose value and interview quotes are both predictable. When our young players struggle or don't pan out, it isn't as devastating to me as when ownership hires or trades for a crop of likely free agents who turn out to be, hypothetically speaking, fat and lazy and unprepared. That's because my expectations for a youth movement are always tempered by the knowledge that the talent gap between the minor and major leagues yawns as wide as I did when watching Danny Garcia and Jeff Duncan hack last season. There's no absolute guarantee of future success, and it always seems to me that with the exception of a few near-lock Mark Priors, drafting and developing players is a crap shoot.

The addition of Dr. Rick Peterson to the coaching staff, proud patron of a blogosphere-approved Biomechanical Science Laboratory, is one example of the Mets' attempts to maximize the potential of their farm system. I'm happy that we've got him taping phosphorescent ping pong balls to our Spandex-clad young hurlers and poring over their mechanics, because I think it's possible he might prevent a couple career-threatening injuries or even improve the performance of pitchers on the cusp of success.

That's all well and good, but from everything I've read and heard, it's still incredibly difficult to predict what young pitchers will become. I'm pumped that reputable sources like Joe and Dan's 500 Best Prospects Blog list a ton of Met pitchers in the upper echelon of minor league talent, but I won't be surprised if they all bomb. Kazmir could develop a blister problem that the lab's techniques couldn't track or correct, Peterson's stuff might not be good enough despite solid mechanics, and Royce Ring could get a little too interested in incorporating Eastern spirituality into his training regimen and decide to join a kickboxing academy in Thailand. We've gone from Generation K to Generation Eh before; it could happen again despite the organization's best efforts.

That Red Sox fan-esque eternal pessimism brings me to the reason I'm jotting these thoughts down. As most of you know, there appear to have been serious trade talks with Texas centered on bringing Soriano back to New York for some pitching prospects other than Kazmir. Soriano is much more of a known quantity than our young guns, though he has flashed some warning signs and is older than we thought. He would cost a lot more money than they would, but if we could sign him long-term (and it looks like he really wants to stay in New York) we might be able to get him for a good price. The downside of the trade is that we might be selling off a key component of the franchise's turnaround for a good or maybe great outfielder.

The key word in that last sentence is might, and if I knew how to make things blink in HTML and scroll across the screen, and if those effects didn't completely suck, I'd lay on the emphasis. I say packaging some of our pitching prospects other than the near-lock (the writers gush) Kazmir and sending them to Texas for Soriano is a move we should definitely make if we can, and here's why: We're not the damned Oakland A's.

I would love to root for all of our young pitchers to succeed, but I don't think it's likely that we've got Hudson, Mulder, and Zito in our organization right now, and what's good is that we don't need them. What we do need are a few very talented pitchers and positional players to supplement the team Duquette can assemble with a wisely allocated payroll of $80-$90 million. The idea that we need to develop the entirety of our major league roster internally is ludicrous. What's the reason? Do we need a core of really cheap players? Not particularly, if we spend our money right. Duquette needs to look for talent wherever he can find it, but he shouldn't be forced to play small-market ball in a big-market town. I'm a big fan of this exciting youth movement, but I don't think the Mets need to completely gut their product and refashion themselves in swaddling clothes. Developing talent and buying it obviously aren't mutually exclusive, and I'm optimistic because it appears my team is interested in using its resources and doing both.