Canuck Baseball

The #Mets have an unbelievably rare opportunity to graduate an incredible wave of impact talent during the 2025 and 2026 seasons. It's almost impossible for teams to stockpile the amount of talent the #Mets currently have at their disposal. The primary reasons they have this rare opportunity is because: 1. Steve Cohen literally spent over $50 million in dead contract salaries, when he traded Scherzer and Verlander, in order to acquire Luisangel Acuna, Ryan Clifford, and Drew Gilbert. 2. The #Mets also drafted extremely well, but with a heavy focus on college starters, in order to match up the development timelines of their recent draft picks with the hitters currently in their system. These recent draft picks are on the same timeline as high school prospects they drafted years ago, which have also graduated to the MLB level, specifically, Mark Vientos and Brett Baty. 3. The #Mets also did an excellent job acquiring the right prospects whose development timetables matched up perfectly with their current crop of International free agent signees which were signed years ago. Such as Francisco Alvarez and Ronny Mauricio specifically. The foundational components of any MLB farm system are: 1. International Free Agents 2. Highschool draft picks 3. College draft picks. To have your best prospects from these three foundational components aligned to graduate together is extremely difficult to achieve, and has only been achieved by teams like the Devil Rays, Braves, and Brewers. These three teams have set the gold standard of utilizing all three groups collectively, because their limited resources make them primarily depend on developing the bulk of their starting lineups from within the system. After they identify their nucleus of young talent, that's when they focus on targeting 1 or 2 high-profile, big money veterans via free agency of trade. As the Brewers did when they acquired Christian Yelich a few years ago, or when the Rays made sure to sign Wander Franco to a franchise record contract, rather than trading him away like they usually do. The #Mets have the opportunity to not only execute this operating model, but they have the chance to do it better then it has ever been done before because of the considerable resources provided by Steve Cohen and the excellent job their scouting department as done in recent years in regards to signing talent from Latin America and thru the draft. Francisco Alvarez Mark Vientos Luisangel Acuna Brett Baty Jett Williams Ryan Clifford Drew Gilbert Ronny Mauricio Are extremely impressive impact position players all on the same development timeline, providing a tremendous amount of opportunity for the #Mets to incorporate 2-4 of these players. Rather then needing all of these prospects to establish themselves, they've increased the size of the pool of prospects to choose from, providing a higher probably of ascertaining the target number of players they hope will become major league regulars. Brandon Sproat Christian Scott Nolan McLean Jonah Tong Blade Tidwell Ryan Lambert Raimon Garcia Jonathan Santucci Jack Wenninger These pitching prospects represent the bulk of the pool of pitching prospects who are also on the same development timeline as the hitters mentioned above. Similar to the pool of hitting prospects, the #Mets only really need to develop a couple of these guys as potential options for their rotation, and a 2-3 of them as options for their bullpen. By increasing the size of the pool of potential prospects to choose from, they have increased their chances of being able to develop the minimum number of impact players they need. This is why the #Mets flat out refused to seriously entertain big $$ free agent SP's in during the last couple free agency periods. Their pursuit of Yamamoto was nothing more then an attempt to drive up his price, everyone and their mother knew Yamamoto had a pre-arranged deal with the #Dodgers, as did Sasaki, as does 1st base prospect Murakami who'll sign with the #Dodgers this winter after establishing what his market value is by pretending to be interesting signing with other teams. There is a sense of urgency to win, but that sense of urgency is not going to supersede their commitment to winning the right way. Sign your nucleus of Tier 1 stars, and then supplement those stars with impact talent developed from within. That is why Soto made multiple references to the #Mets minor league system as being an important component as to why he felt the #Mets were the best fit for him. After losing the World Series playing for the Yankees, who really only had Aaron Judge, and then a bunch of veteran mercenaries on his team, he realized that business model doesn't stand a chance against teams like the #Mets or #Dodgers who have considerably more depth in terms of hitting and pitching. Why trade for Alcantara when we can duplicate production that is close to what he can provide by using a younger player like Sproat or McLean? Why trade for veteran like Luis Robert, when we can utilize a player like Jett Williams who will produce better numbers than Robert after he's promoted? Not only do the #Mets save tens of millions of dollars, they give themselves a better chance to compete using players who will be just as productive in some cases, if not better. Conclusion: Patience is a virtue. Especially when you have a game-changing collection of young, controllable talent that can significantly tip the scales in our favor by creating a truly sustainable winner the likes of which hasn't been seen in quite some time, if ever. This is why Cohen specifically targeted David Stearns, and this is the operating model Cohen is expecting Stearns to execute. Either get on board or go join a pickleball league, because these two have a tactical strategy in place and the right mixture of players who believe in their strategy. They don't give a flying fudge about the NY media or the talk shows and are completely immune to public pressure. It's marvelous to see, and because of their dedication to the strategy we have in place, #Mets baseball is going to be exciting to watch year in and year out for quite some time.

Scarlet Raiders win! Danny Reardon earns the win 6 IP 9 K’s, Roger Dantoni finishes it out. Offensively Scarlet Raiders with 11 hits, highlighted by Ryan Lebow 2-3 6 RBI & Gianmarco Acevedo 2 hits & a run. Back in action tomorrow DH against St. Joe’s Brooklyn #RollRaiders