Since Steve Cohen took over as owner of the Mets, there’s been one main theme: spending money, and lots of it. While he’s baseball’s richest owner and can spend however much he wants to help his team, it’s not something he wants to do forever.
A long-term goal of this new regime is to restock the farm system so it can consistently pump out elite talent to help the big-league club. This would be more along the lines of what the Los Angeles Dodgers, Houston Astros, and Cleveland Guardians have done over the years.
But who has been the best at developing talent that reaches the majors over the past decade? It hasn’t been the Mets. According to the below tweet, New York has been the worst. They’ve made 328 draft picks during this time, with just 30 of them reaching the big leagues (for any team). That’s a 9% success rate, and they’re the only team below the 10% mark. The only one!
The last 10 years of drafts – % of each MLB team's picks that made it to the majors (for any team) pic.twitter.com/skAf1T6vWN
— Jay Cuda (@JayCuda) July 12, 2023
As we can see, getting drafted to play professional baseball doesn’t guarantee you make it all the way to the show. The Astros have been the most successful, and their hit rate has been just 23%. But still, you look at the top four teams — Astros, Dodgers, Yankees, Guardians — and see a consistent theme. They regularly reach the postseason.
Houston has at least reached the ALCS each year since 2017. Los Angeles has qualified for October each year since 2013. While New York hasn’t been to the World Series since 2009, they haven’t missed the postseason since 2016. And as for Cleveland, they’ve participated in the playoffs six times since 2013.
That’s all better than what the Mets have done over the same span of time.
It takes a while to build up a farm system in the way Houston and Los Angeles have. But, that’s the goal. When Cohen conducted his recent press conference to discuss the Mets’ disappointing play, he made multiple mentions of the farm system needing a full rebuild. If this doesn’t serve as proof of why, then I don’t know what does.
You can reach Matt Musico at matt.musico@xlmedia.com. You can follow him on Twitter: @mmusico8.
