Last night, during an event for season ticket holders at Citi Field, Sandy Alderson said that Michael Bourn was not worth losing the 11th overall pick.
I was never all that excited about getting Bourn and could have gone either way. I wouldn’t have had a problem signing him or taking a pass. About that first round pick, Iv’e heard mostly two debates regarding losing or keeping it, but there is another side that seems to get overlooked a lot.
Sign Bourn and sacrifice the pick. Get a solid year out of him, and then trade him next offseason for a lot more than what you would have drafted with the first rounder anyway.
You can probably get a top outfield prospect who is closer to the majors and and has already shown some success in the minors. Who knows, maybe you can even get two prospects for him. The bottom line is this:
1. Signing Bourn makes our outfield significantly better for the 2013 season.
2. Signing Bourn buys some time until a better option comes along in free agency or trade market next Winter, or perhaps someone emerges in the minors.
3. You can trade Bourn for a nice package in the offseason rather than keeping a pick that has a 75% risk of failing. If Bourn has a big year, he’ll be worth a lot more with a team friendly deal than the value of that first round pick.
4. Another plus is that you don’t have to wait 3-5 years for whoever you would have selected with that first round pick anyway. That’s assuming he does eventually make the majors, the odds are that he won’t.
5. Finally, it’s good for the Mets image. The Mets will stop appearing to be a low market team and that they’re shopping in the steak aisle again.
Basically, you end up renting Bourn for the season – a season that you could certainly use him – and then you move him for whatever you might need in 2014 when we are expected to be competitive again. No harm, no foul.
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We received a nice comment from Dave In Spain that really made our minor league guys feel good, especially our new Minor League Analyst, Mitch Petanick, a former player himself and current coach.
“This is the kind of analysis I wish I saw more often on other Mets fan sites that will go unnamed, but which frequently recycle posts endlessly with bad proofreading. I’ve recently discovered Mesmerized, and it´s a breath of fresh air.”
Thanks Dave. I see some other sites “cutting and pasting” their minor league content all day long, and quite frankly I don’t know how they get away with it, plus it’s so unprofessional. It’s nice to know that our readers see the originality and quality we put into what we do on MMO.
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James Preller of 2 Guys Talking Mets Baseball, made a great point in our comment threads yesterday regarding the Mets system:
A quibble, but I think a significant one: These high-ranked prospects are in no way a tribute to the Mets “system,” which I take to mean a combination of the club’s scouting, drafting, and development.
It’s one thing to trade away established major leaguers for somebody else’s prized prospects. It’s entirely something else to demonstrate the smarts to develop those prospects on your own, within your own system. Then you’ve got something to crow about.
So, I’m not buying the idea that the Mets system is suddenly anything worthy of respect and recognition. Not yet. Where are the position players?
This was in response to John Sickels ranking the Mets farm system 11th best in baseball. I never looked at it that way, but he makes a good point.
