Next Saturday, June 1st, the First Annual United Baseball Blogger Mock Draft will take place and I (representing Hot Foot) will be making the selections for the Mets. Erik from Future Redbirds, a St. Louis Cardinals blog, was kind enough to help organize it and some of the better baseball blogs out there will be representing their respective teams, such as Athletics Nation (Oakland), Bryan Smith from Baseball Prospectus (Cleveland), Bucco Blog (Pittsburgh), and River Ave. Blues (Yankees).

As I wrote in an earlier post for Hot Foot, the future of the Mets’ solely lies on their three first-round selections. It is absolutely critical that Minaya get valuable players from at least two of the three players selected. The Mets will select 18th, 22nd, and 33rd in the June 5th draft. The 18th and 33rd selections came from the Atlanta Braves as compensation for the signing of Tom Glavine.

In my earlier post, I predicted that the Mets would select Yonder Alonso, University of Miami 1B with the 18th selection, but my wishful thinking got the best of me. Nearly all reports are stating that there is no chance the slugging switch-hitter will fall out of the top 10. I will post my mock selections on HotFoot next weekend.

The first six weeks of the 2008 baseball season have angered Met diehards to no end because of frustrating losses, no pitching depth, and an appeared lack of passion or focus from our everyday players, the bottom line is that the future of this franchise rests in the hands of Omar Minaya on June 5th.

For the first time since 2005, the Mets have a first-round pick, and this year we have two (2) first round picks and three (3) selections in the first 33. The 22nd overall pick is ours for finishing last season with the 9th-best record, and the 18th and 33rd overall selections are compensation from the Atlanta Braves for the free-agent signing of Tom Glavine.

The landscape of the league has been changing the last few seasons and the impact of the draft now basically determines your organization’s success. The days of signing big-name free agents are going to dwindle down the drain for two main reasons.

1. “Small-market” teams are locking up their young superstars so they will not only never reach free agency until they are over the age of 30, but more importantly never hit arbitration.

2. Teams who elect not to sign a star player to a long-term deal are trading them for packages of prospects who come from the draft before they lose this player via free agency. (Ex: Johan)

The trend of locking up younger players was started in Cleveland in the early 90’s when then-general manager John Hart locked up Carlos Baerga, Albert Belle, and Jim Thome among others. More recently, the new Indians have done the same with Grady Sizemore, Victor Martinez, Fausto Carmona, et al., and to Minaya’s credit, he also did with Jose
Reyes and David Wright, and hopefully soon John Maine.

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