Lots of free agents who were not winning and getting hurt, Their farm was in FAR WORSE position than the Farm Omar has provided and Now look at how many Yanks, Phillies and Braves brought up in their first wave of CORE and tell me how many compared to Murphy, Davis, Thole, Mejia, Neise, Gee, Duda, Niewenhuis, Flores, and Havens count below that….

You are including the Dudas and Flores’ of those respective franchises in your counts and you don’t count our merely because we have not yet bought them up.

12 Years for the Yanks to get there
13 years for the Phillies to get there
Forever for the Braves

And Omar may have done that in 6 short years!

You go all the way back to McIlvane who did way more to hurt our Farm than anyone simply because he drafted guys he could NOT sign! Wasted a ton more picks than Omar did in all his years combined. Yes he made a mistake and blew a pick on the Wagner deal, But the other guy wasted ALL his picks because he didn’t sign them!
Signed guys he couldn’t sign and who didn’t want to play here! Boston signed Clemons and truth is thats one guy I am glad we never had!

You can’t indicte Omar or the Owners for what transpired over the last 20 years!
What happened over the last 20 years is too short a time and cherry picked to coincide with the worst years of this franchise!

It wasn’t the lack of farm that stopped us from winning a WS it was a lack of pitching. And we did quite alright with that under Omar. Neise, Mejia, Gee are all fine candidates and one or two may even become an ace!

We have a ROY also ran at 1st and pretty decent hitter at Catcher and scores of 2B prospects waiting in the wings to come up.

And you still are running away from the real question here…

If the Braves and Phillies have been doing it so right then WHY in the last 20 years have they won 2 WS titles between them?

Did the Yankees win all their WS because of the farm or the fact they went out and bought every good pitcher that has been available since 95?

95 – Cone, and McDowell
96 – Rodgers, Gooden, and Key
97 – Wells Cone (Rodgers sucked that year)
98 – Wells Cone Irabu and Hernandez
99 – hernandez, Cone Clemens Irabu (see the pattern yet?)
2000 – Clemens, Hernandez and Cone (who had a horrible season)
01 – Mussina Clemens Lilly (Injuries abound)
02 – Mussina Wells Weaver Clemens hernandez
03 – Mussina Wells Clemens Weaver
04 – vasquez Loaiza Lieber Mussina Brown
05 – Johnson and Mussina
06 – johnson Mussina and Wright
07 – Mussina Clemens Vizcaino
08 – Mussina and Ponson
09 – Sabathia and Burnett
10 – Sabathia Burnett and Vazquez

The pattern there is no rotation was ever the same year to year, And in many cases two new players were brought in at the same time! OVER investing maybe but it was effective. They always had a decent pitching staff with Pettite thrown into the mix with the exception of a year or two where someone blew up the home grown discount!

Nice to focus on Pettite and Rivera and the fact we didn’t get clemons. But the pitching above is why the Yankees won as much as they did, not that home grown core. Braves had it and the Phillies just got it and in all they won only two times in 20 years. Phillies are trying to do what the Yankees did, They may or may not succeed but they will be in the game!

What you really are not considering though is just because we didn’t sign those picks means we lost any chance to get those players back for no more than it would have cost us to resign them once they were FA. All the money spent up till that date was not incurred. The Yankees didn’t have to pay Clemeons and take the time to develop him they simply went and paid for him!

While it is a good practice to draft well it alone is NOT ENOUGH! You have to not only find, pick and develop YOUR farm you have to be willing to go after the guys from those farms that do succeed in developing them.
Yankees didn’t have to pay Celemons’ signing bonus yet still got him! If you want to ask why didn’t they get Clemons thats fine. But don’t blame them for not signing a guy who has pretty much proven to be an asshole in all his dealings with people! Same for Ramirez!

Only recently have the Yankees developed any pitching. And the ones they HAVE developed have been disappointments or banished to the pen!

The Braves farm produced a good rotation and yet it was never able to sustain it! And while it produced a pretty good rotation it certasinly lacked in the regular players needed to go all the way. They have never achieved what the Yankees did despite you saying they had the same exact plan. Well same plan there must be a difference in EXECUTION!

I still fail to see how any of this has anything to do with Omar who has even more players on the cusp of being promoted than any GM since cashen!

And some of it is even Pitching as you desire!

Now if you believe they are all going to be failures then all I can say is nice opinion but you could be dead wrong!

And you can’t say it is broken until you see how well it works!

Cause that would be as dumb as you think picking a player and not signing him because you don’t think he is going to be worth it is, no?

What is your point about subsequent drafts? That none of the players they did draft/sign had anything to do with them going to the playoffs 15 out of 16 years?

Metsie, they had 12 of their 25 come up through the farm on last season’s roster.

We all understand that the NYY live in an alternate universe than the rest of us but I was pointing out how much help even the alternate universe Yankees get from their farm. Forget about how their farm allows them to pick up so many other players.

The NYY have had BIG TIME production from players they have drafted, they have have gone overslot in order to get the best talent. They have traded from their farm for even more talent. They are huge in the IFA market.

It is a fallacy that the NYY only rely on the free agent market. Posada/Cervelli/Montero Home grown, Tex FA, Cano HG IFA, SS Jeter HG, 3B A-Rod, trade (from farm) LF Gardiner HG, CF Granderson trade (from farm) RF Swisher trade (from farm)

Everyday starting 8 has 1 FA, Rotation 2, Bull pen 1 (this year) bench zero.

I guess you don’t see any correlation at all between the success a team has in getting to the post season and the time effort and resources put into their IFA’s and draft but the NYY, Boston, Atlanta, Tampa, Minn, Philly, SF, LAD and Col can and so can their fans. More than that some of these teams can see how bad their results have been in the years following the big free agent/low priority farm system method. Most especially us with just 3 post seasons in 20 years of that approach.

If your a competitive franchise (which we were during the time you mention as we were the main competition for the Braves) you can not build that young core.

Wrong about the Yankees Metsie. How can you be so wrong about this?

The facts are that the Yankees spent 12 years out of the playoffs before their recent 15/16 run.

The first 8 of the years they were out of it was a continuation of their checkbook baseball. The next 4 were spent assembling Jeter, Posada, Pettite, Rivera, B. Williams, G. Williams, Kelley, R. Rivera, Leedee, Mendoza.

Some good trades (Tino, Brosuis, O’Neil), high end IFA’s (El-Duque, Irabu), AND free agents is what turned this thing around. Without the farm none of those other guys would have mattered.

Last year the Yankees had 11 homegrown players on the team many of them filling the most important roles as their best players.

Slag SF as much as you like but in 20 years they’ve won 90 or more 8 times, we’ve done it 3 times.

Knock Philly because they had no success before drafting and developing well but that is my point. Now that they have received help from the farm with Rollins, Utley, Hamels, Howard and rule 5 victorrino and non tender Werth they have had success. Without those guys their trade/free agents wouldn’t have mattered and their farm is what enabled them to get Halliday, Oswalt, Blanton and Lee the first time.

The regular season is a much better test of a teams overall talent level than a 3-7 game playoff series anyway.

Boston, NYY, Tampa, Minn, Oak and Texas success in the regular season is in a large part due to their farm systems.

Atlanta, Philly, LAD, SF, same thing.

A GM can build for tomorrow AND today at the same time you know.

Drafting Dustin Pedroia at #65 didn’t prevent Boston from winning the World Series a few months later but it did help them win it a few years later. So what if they had to go over slot. It beats paying Matsui 3/21 M and Castillo 4/24 M.

We draft guys who we can sign for less instead of drafting guys who will help us win and in the case of Cashen, Harazin, Hunsikker and Mcillvaine didn’t even sign guys when we did draft the right ones because the Wilpon didn’t want to go over slot.

Who’s to blame for that? Mr. Met?

Boston was doing nothing until they traded for Martinez (Omar Pick)
Philly has won once, If they never win one again can you say their way is best? Boston Redsox won two after nearly 100 years of losing.

Did they win with that farm? NO!
Every team you cited who had homegrowns would make the playoffs and FALL SHORT!

The Yankees are the only ones who didn’t and that is cause MOST of their players were BOUGHT!

All of the teams you mentioned save maybe Boston had been long time worst in league teams who eventually managed to develop a core to build around.

It wasn’t because they were so good at drafting or didn’t let players get away it was cause they had years of picks to build with.

We went to the WS in 2000 and almost again in 2006.

I know you think that drafting perfect is the key to winning but I am trying to point out to you that of all the teams you mentioned, only ONE had a decade of dominance which translated into one WS win. Yet the Yankees who have done none of the constant within replacement that you speak of has won more than all of the teams you mentioned combined.

And I still don’t see how the Wilpons are to blame for not signing those guys…It was the GM’s decision to sign or not sign them. If the bonus’ are as you say then there is no reason why the Wilpons would get involved.

Big difference between drafting guys who go on to have good ML careers and don’t get signed compared to guys who do get signed and don’t make it to the Majors. Big difference.

Phillips drafts produced 3 future ML starters in 6 years, one of which Duquette traded. Duquette drafted none signed Kaz Matsui and traded Kazmir. Add in the last Mcillvaine draft in which 3 future major league starters were drafted and not signed and your looking at ONE STARTER AND ONE BACKUP IN 8 CONSECUTIVE DRAFTS. Amazing when you consider other teams routinely bring up one well groomed prospect every single year.

What do you mean nobody builds a team from the farm system? Almost everyone looks farm system first, then trade/free agent/non tender/waiver/rule 5. Your just used to what WE do. What WE do bears very little resemblance to what most teams do.

Boston and Atlanta aren’t above signing the occasional free agent but each has a new prospect on the team every year. More than half the team is from the farm system.

Where do you think SF finishes without their homegrown players?

Where do you think Philly’s original success came from?

How do you think they got Halliday, Lee, Blanton, and Oswalt?

Tampa, Toronto, Minnesota, Colorado, LAD?

Texas and KC have huge farms, Colorado, SD and the White Sox same thing. We’re still trying to unearth the next Vince Coleman, Bobby Bonilla and Luis Castillo.

Don’t just look at what we do, look at how the teams that routinely go to the post season do it.

It’s nice to think that if you make every pick perfect you will have an all star team.

what you seem to forget is that Minaya isn’t the one who didn’t sign them. MacIlvane was! He was the GM. It those things that left Omar with a crap farm not Omar’s wasted picks themselves.

“Desperate for a second basemen.” “No other first basemen available.” LF same thing. Wonder why that is Metsie, think giving away our 1st or 2nd round pick might have anything to do with that?

Do you know that you could fill out a complete 25 man ALL STAR team from 2nd round draft choices ALONE?

Not if it’s more important to shaft the fan than to avoid offending your Bud. but other than that yes, it’s very possible.

Atlanta’s gotten GREAT production from draft choices everywhere from 2-53. Anywhere from 1 guy to 5 guys every year, year after year. Then they trade some of them for even better guys and bring others up to take their place.

Their idea seems to me to be about 5 times more successful than our idea.

It is a complete fallacy that you have to draft 1-10 in order to get great players in the draft.

Atlanta also has a direct pipeline to Latin America and imports the best talent possible. Sure we have Reyes and a couple of interesting young guys like Mejia, Tejada and Flores but Atlanta’s had them coming through for years.

Furcal, Prado, Andruw Jones, Diaz, Soriano. They sign 5 a year, it’s part of their budget, a reinvestment in their product.

We haven’t had anywhere near the play from our draft choices or IFA’s that they have.

They have made very few free agent signings and consequently very few bad ones. Kawakami was one but their not living with him. He’s still in Japan awaiting word on where he’s going to be shipped unlike you know who.

This year or next their going to have 12 – 13 guys on their 25 they brought up here.

I’d say their model works a hell of a lot better than ours.

1 – It won’t cause their rent to go up!
2 – It won’t cause them to lose their job (unless of course they work for the Mets)
3 – Their significant other won’t love them any less
4 – And it wouldn’t cause them to go bald if they just relaxed and didn’t pull their hair out of their head because something happened in a GAME!

if you are ~ a .500 team, you are in the mid 1st round, and it is more like 1mill+/- for a bonus.

for prospects, like you said, not all hit, so you need to have as much volume as possible to get more keepers.

Another sidenote on Pedro, I kind of noticed that our Pitching problems did seem to take a turn for the worse (guys like Pelfrey and Perez) when Pedro wasn’t around any longer.

Yeah but at 5-10 Mil per prospect Signing Bonus, does it really matter if you spent 20 Mil per ML players or 60-80 Mil before you found one draft pick that really made sense paying that amount? I mean isn’t a 3 year 60-80 mil contract a better use of your money than 60-80 Mil on maybe’s who may or may not actually offer you any value as a Major League player? You at least know your getting an ML ready player for three years where with all the prospects you not even sure you will get at least one?

Spending money is risky in both cases but the risk in FA is really about Injury or Decline. The risk in a prospect includes those AND the risk he may never be more than he was when you drafted them!

Look at FMart (granted he wasn’t drafted) and how much money they paid to get him and look at how much he has failed to contribute.

Those draft picks would be every bit as risky as that.

As for getting guys on their last legs well you get who is available!
Beltran wasn’t on his last legs, Pedro may have been he had known back issues. Wagner signing was not a last legs signing but it turned out that way.
Delgado was a known injury risk but he was the only 1B available at the time. And at the time he did put up some decent numbers his first two years before those injuries really came to roost. Pedro as well.
K-Rod and Bay were not last leg guys either but one had a self inflicyed injury (albeit not the reason for last season more a product of it) and Bay tried so hard to win over fans he lost due to his bat and ran through a wall!

Perez and Castillo are possibly his worst signings, Castillo came here hurt but we were desperate for a decent 2B. Didn’t Easley have an ankle injury that forced Omar to go after Castillo? We were in a Pennant race at the time.

Except guys like Harry and all the media guys who have insisted year after year that we needed to go after ‘INSERT PLAYER HERE” because he was going to be the BIG CONTRACT that would write their stories for them until spring training and slammed Omar last year for not going after Halladay as if his pitching would have turned a .220 hitting team into winners in August

You are wrong that people wouldn’t expect them to win! They ALWAYS expect them to win and they are not happy if they don’t do something to make them feel better about it.

I also think you are REALLY overestimating how easy it is to replenish a farm. Out of every 20 guys you draft about 1 in 15 actually ever plays well enough to make your club. It’s only after trading those big contracts and getting multiples do you find enough wheat among the chaff.

the teams that stockpile picks are the ones who allow FAs to walk and you have to have someone good your going to lose to even get that supplemental pick.

Omar would be a hero right now if he had gone and got more pitching at the deadline in 2006. Problem is there really wasn’t much to get because we had not had enough time to develop a farm to the point it would net you that pitching. It really is all about the timing and at some point you have to suck long enough to get all that timing aligned.

Thats the point I was trying to get accross to you in the 20 Year thread. Both the Braves and Phillies sucked for so long that they were able to get the timing and financials aligned. They could do that because they are the only team in their respective towns and with much smaller media attention than we have. There is no alternative team to go see if they suck so when you want to go see a baseball game they are it win or lose. suck or success. Constant team support because they have a monopoly on the sport.

And with all the good work Atlanta did in dominating a decade they still only managed one WS win in all that time.

If that happened here Cox would have been history before half the decade was done!

Baseball is a gift to those who appreciate it and I’m seeing that here.

I believe you’re right about Pedro Martinez and Omar. I wish the Mets could have kept him, too. He was the right fit for the Mets team, even though age had taken some of his skills. Also, he’s another one who can teach and pitch for the team.

I’m enjoying this walk and talk about the Mets past – and I think the future for this team is bright.

Even if the players we drafted and didn’t sign were all about the money, once they got their signing bonuses they were going to the minors and then coming up and making league minimum, followed by arbitration just like anyone else.

For a big market team like ourselves to quibble about that and then go out and get so many guys who are on their last legs is just incredibly stupid.

Everyone knew how bad our farm system was when Omar got here. No one would have expected a post season berth and NL East title in year two. The new Stadium wasn’t even ready until 2009. If he had just stopped with the free agents after 2006 and built towards 2009 he would have escaped all the bad moves and added 5 more guys through the draft and could have picked up 5 prospects in other teams systems and we wouldn’t have crashed.

There is nothing wrong with having a couple of non tenders sharing LF for a year and then dealing one of them off for a prospect in high A ball. Nothing wrong with grabbing a rule 5 instead of Julio Franco. Nothing wrong with a couple of waiver wire acquisitions for your pen and a deadline deal that brings something not yet major league ready into the system.

I don’t think Omar ever looked at anyone else’s farm system after 2006. After that season the whole impetus was on THIS YEAR, EVERY YEAR.

Of course if your ownership is more interested in pleasing their Bud then in acquiring the most talented roster possible, anyone would have had difficulty but at least by raiding other teams systems we could have gotten something worthwhile for the long run or some pieces to trade for it.

The team was owned by the league at that time and he had no money to spend. He produced a lot of good players there but had to trade them all away because he couldn’t afford to keep them.

If I’m not mistaken thats how Boston got Pedro Martinez!

You can not survive in NY by simply having prospects.
Even if he had a flow of youth the peanut gallery and press would be comparing us to the Pirates or Marlins.

Yes he might have built up a young core that someone else would be building around right now (and from the looks of it thats exactly what is happening.) but he would not have survived even this long to see the fruits of his labor!

We need to be patient with the farm building, it takes awhile to build one. As long as you are not raping the Minors to trade for those big name players you are not actually harming the farm by bringing some in for cash. Sure you might miss out on a draft pick but then again if the player you get gives you more in the next 3 years as the draft pick might have then there really is an equitable tradeoff.

I agree with you it is better to grow HOF guys than Buy them, but drafting is never a sure thing. Who you draft is only as good as who you scouted. So even with every pick you had coming your still going to strike out and have nothing if you didn’t scout properly and do all the other things WAY more important to a successful draft than how many picks you had.

Did guys get away because we would not sign them? I’m sure many have as you listed quite a few…I would note that Clemons and Ramirez all have been caught up in Roid rumors and both have been players that exhibited an “All about the Money!” attitude towards who they sign with.
And in the end that has as much to do with us not signing them as any inability to be able to afford them or feel they were worth the money they wanted. They were unproven at the time!