NY Mets Friday Farming: 2 ways the Mets can improve the farm

It’s officially the post-season and all the New York Mets can do is root for one of the teams involved from the sidelines. They haven’t won the NL East since going to the World Series in 2015.

A lot of this has to do with the team’s mini-rebuild from 2017 to 2019 and a failure to rebuild the team’s farm. Drafting players like Pete Alonso, Tylor Megill, among others in recent years has certainly helped.

Mets front office has opted for “selling the farm” recently. Getting Javier Báez as a “last resort” only for the team to collapse in the final months is a perfect example. They’ve sold high-value picks, including Pete Crow-Armstrong and Jerrad Kelenic, and then failed to sign this year’s first-round pick, Kumar Rocker.

It doesn’t look great for the Mets.

I love Báez, but the Mets would’ve been better off to just try signing him in the offseason, rather than trade away one of the team’s biggest future assets. The result would not have changed. But if the Mets sat and did nothing, owner Steve Cohen would start breathing fire.

Right now, the Mets’ system ranks #22 according to MLB Pipeline, but they do have Francisco Álvarez which is a huge bright spot. Still, they planned this recent draft around signing Kumar Rocker then failed to sign him.

The teams sitting behind the Mets are the Atlanta Braves (which is the good news), Los Angeles Angels, Milwaukee Brewers, Colorado Rockies, Philadelphia Phillies (also good news), Oakland Athletics, Houston Astros, and Chicago White Sox.

In this installment of “Friday Farming,” we’re going to gloss over how the Mets can build back up the farm system, what it entails, and how they can avoid their current situation moving forward.