Just Get the Best Players You Can Get

By Jack Flynn
Posted Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Ignore the slot recommendation, and get the best players you can.

That’s the most important piece of advice for General Manager Omar Minaya to consider today, as his team puts the final touches on their plan for 2008 First Year Player Draft on Thursday. The Mets have three of the first 33 selections in this year’s draft and if they want to begin rebuilding their farm system in a big way, they absolutely must ignore the wishes of baseball commissioner Bud Selig and select the three best players, regardless of the size of the signing bonus they might be commanding.

Anything less that that will be a capitulation to a foolish plan hatched by the commissioner’s office to artificially control amateur signing bonuses, a plan that is hurting competitive balance in Major League Baseball even more than the eternal struggle between big market and small market clubs.

The ongoing monitoring of amateur bonuses by the league office has served only to push the best players with high bonus demands to the richest teams who are willing to take a chance on them. That, of course, is the exact opposite intention of the amateur draft, which was created in 1965 as a way to more fairly distribute amateur talent among teams so that market size or wealth would not play a prohibitive factor in maintaining competitive balance.

Not surprisingly, Selig has been missing the boat on this particular issue for years, preferring instead to focus on bullying cities into providing publicly-financed baseball stadiums and impotently lamenting the economic disparity between big-market and small-market clubs. Unfortunately, someone else has been missing the boat on this issue as well – the amateur draft hierarchy of the New York Mets.

The Mets have a nearly barren farm system and a shoddy record of drafting amateur talent over the last 42 years. Part of the reason for that, particularly in the past few seasons, is the Mets have generally behaved like good little boys and consistently acquiesced to the wishes of the commissioner’s office. One of the most recent examples of this phenomenon is that of Pedro Beato, a teenage pitcher who the Mets allowed to get away because they didn’t want to go beyond the league office’s recommended bonus for a player drafted at his spot.

A 17th round pick in the 2005 Amateur Draft, the Mets and Beato ultimately never agreed to a contract because the Mets toed the commissioner’s line on bonuses. Beato was quickly snapped up by the Baltimore Orioles in the supplemental round of the 2006 draft and he is now slowly progressing through the O’s minor league system.

The Mets are one of the financial big boys, with spending power unmatched by nearly every other franchise in baseball, and on Thursday they have to flex those muscles. There can be no more Pedro Beatos who are allowed to slip out of the franchise’s control because of a signing bonus dispute of less than a million dollars. The Mets must simply gobble up every good player they can find and pay him whatever it takes to get him into a minor league uniform. If they do not do so, everyone involved in the Mets’ organization – from the Wilpons down to Minaya and Amateur Scouting Director Rudy Terrasas – will have done the team and its fans a terrible disservice.

Three teams in particular have done very well for themselves by blowing off MLB’s slot recommendations and drafting (then paying for) the best talent available in recent years. The Detroit Tigers, the Boston Red Sox and the Mets’ cross-town rivals, the Yankees, have all built their farm systems into fertile grounds for big league talent by ignoring the commissioner’s office and picking the best player available.

The Tigers added prep school star pitcher Rick Porcello with the 27th pick in last summer’s draft, because his perceived bonus demands were higher than what MLB recommended for even the first overall pick. The Tigers, as has been their wont in recent years, simply ignored MLB, nabbed Porcello and gave him what he wanted. You know what happened? Nothing! The Tigers got their man, the commissioner’s office gnashed their teeth and life moved on.

The Sox and the Yankees have been especially active in the later rounds by going well over slot recommendations to sign players who, for various reasons, dropped in the draft to a level below what their talent should’ve dictated. Again, there was no penalty for doing so – both teams just improved their farm systems and put themselves in a better position to contend for the future.

This is what the Mets have to realize – they have nothing to lose by going beyond slot recommendations for bonuses and everything to gain by replenishing their farm system with players who the other teams are afraid to sign. There is no stated penalty for going above slot and therefore no reason not to do so.

So much was made of the 2002 book Moneyball, chronicling the exploits of former Mets farmhand and current Oakland general manager Billy Beane. It is perhaps the most misunderstood baseball book of all time. At its core, the concept of “Moneyball” was always about discovering player market inefficiencies and exploiting them for your team’s gain, not worshipping at the altar of on base percentage or demonizing the running game.

There is no greater market inefficiency in MLB today that the Amateur Draft. The formula is very simple – most teams today will pass on the very best players if that player suggests that he is expecting a contract or a signing bonus that exceeds the wishes of the commissioner’s office. Those players are left available to be snatched up by franchises who are willing to ignore the dirty looks from Bud Selig and pay a few extra bucks to get those players into a uniform.

On Thursday, the Mets must play their own version of Moneyball – and put the franchise in a position to succeed for years to come.

Read more from Jack Flynn at his blog, Productive Outs and Crackerjack.

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