NY Mets front office showed loyalty to their farm system last week

The New York Mets were unwilling to meet a lot of the prices teams had at the trade deadline. Rather than flush away any of the top prospects to get a star player on the roster, the team went with two other impactful moves they’re hoping pan out.

The Mets managed to add Rich Hill in a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays. A deal no one saw coming, it’s hard to hate.

On the final day of the deadline, the team made their biggest splash. In a trade with the Chicago Cubs, they brought infielder Javier Baez and pitcher Trevor Williams to town. The cost was prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong; a guy drafted by the previous regime who has barely played as a professional.

Trading Crow-Armstrong did little to damage the minor league system. The Mets viewed him as expendable with a much different opinion about the rest of the biggest names down on the farm.

Are the Mets being too loyal to their top prospects?

A fun game you can play whenever you’re bored is to look back at old prospect rankings of the Mets and see how players turned out. Almost always, you’ll find some duds the experts believed were the next great thing.

Nobody is immaculate at predicting which of these prospects actually develops into a star player. Every top prospect list has its share of hits and misses. Whatever Mets ranking you want to lean on heaviest right now has its own faults.

Rather than pick and choose which prospects they want to move forward with and which ones they’d trade, the Mets held onto everyone but one guy. Despite no clear MLB path for Ronny Mauricio, third basemen Brett Baty and Mark Vientos competing and possibly even changing position, and a couple of other pieces we could see shopped in the future, no trigger was pulled on any major deal.

There could be another explanation for it. Maybe the Mets aren’t solely responsible. Maybe other teams just aren’t as impressed with the farm system as the front office at Citi Field is.

The Mets did well at the trade deadline, but it’s hard to feel completely satisfied. They are different better. But are the NL West better?

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Whether through interviews or social media, the three main figures in the front office (Sandy Alderson, Zack Scott, and Steve Cohen) have all made a point to discuss how important the farm system is. They have an eye toward the future. The only problem with this is they may get too caught up and miss what’s right in front of them: a chance to win it all right now.