Regardless of your feelings about how the Mets handled the 2023 trade deadline, one thing that’s pretty clear is they significantly improved their farm system as they took advantage of a sellers market. MLB Pipeline ranked the Top 40 prospects that were dealt at the deadline, with the Mets having the top two and many more.
The Mets had seven of the prospects they traded for this week show up in Pipeline’s rankings.
- No. 1 Luisangel Acuña, SS/2B/CF
- No. 2 Drew Gilbert, OF
- No. 6 Ryan Clifford, 1B/OF
- No. 8 Marco Vargas, SS/2B
- No. 15 Justin Jarvis, RHP
- No. 23 Ronald Hernandez, C/1B
- No. 25 Jeremiah Jackson, INF
We should also note that the two prospects –given their rankings on the Mets’ Pipeline list– they acquired for Eduardo Escobar, righties Coleman Crow and Landon Marceaux, would’ve been on the top 40 list as well.
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That means, according to MLB Pipeline, the Mets added nine players via trade to their Top 30 prospects list. Notably, Pipeline hasn’t updated their list with draft picks and haven’t made their midseason adjustments that will come soon. Also notable is that writers from Baseball Prospectus have indicated that Acuña, Gilbert, Clifford, and Vargas are all likely to be in their next edition of MLB’s Top 101 prospects that comes out this offseason.
When my updated prospect lists come out on Friday, I will have 10 players that the Mets acquired via trades in my top 35. I will also likely have four to five players the Mets just drafted this year on my list as well. That means at least 14 of the Mets’ top 35 prospects were not in the system this time last month.
Billy Eppler and the rest of the Mets front office were able to do a rehaul of the farm system in only a few days; that’s not something you see often.
