A Decade of Terrible Drafting

The more I read about this year's crop of pitchers available in free agency or through trade, the more it frustrates me to think about how we haven't gotten anything along the lines of starting pitching from our farm system in over a decade (or more).

The Mets over the years have tended to draft pitching more heavily than many other teams from what I remember, and what do we have to show for it? Mike Pelfrey and his 5+ ERA and super low strikeout rates?

Don't get me wrong, it's not that Pelfrey is garbage, I am rooting for the guy, but as far as starters go that we have drafted, he is the best we have to show for the last 10-12 years of drafting pitchers? Since our apperance in the 2000 World Series, let's take a look at some of the names that have come out of our system and slotted into the rotation:

• Dicky Gonzalez (2001) - 20 games in his MLB career
• Grant Roberts (2001) - never even made a start
• Tyler Walker (2002) - 1 start in his entire career
• Jae Seo (2003) - Out of MLB by 2007, had a decent year or two.
• Aaron Heilman (2003) - Never really given much of a chance to start by Mets
• Jeremy Griffiths (2003) - Appeared in 10 games in his MLB career
• Jason Roach (2003) - Started 2 games and was out of baseball that year
• Tyler Yates (2004) - 7 awful starts for the Mets, then massive injury.
• Alay Soler (2006) - 8 sub-par starts for the Mets, then out of baseball entirely.
• Brian Bannister (2006) - First decent pitcher on the list, we traded him away immediately.
• Mike Pelfrey (2006) - After 3 seasons, still trying to be better than league average
• Phil Humber (2006) - Trying to make a team this year, has been awful
• Carlos Muniz (2007) - Where is he now?
• John Neise (2008) - Still some hope, but not a major prospect

I mean, the list goes on in the bullpen as well, where we have been equally as bad. With the exception of Heath Bell (who we also traded away immediately), we haven't even produced a reliable reliever outside of our LOOGY, Pedro Feliciano. The rest is a long list of guys like Orber Moreno, Pat Strange and Eddie Kunz.

I challenge you to find any franchise that has been as bad as the Mets over the last 10+ years in producing a pitcher from their draft.

If you remove David Wright and Jose Reyes from the equation, our position players suffer from the same fate. At this point, 3 productive (OPS+ or ERA+ over 110) players in a decade has to be more attributed to the blind squirrel finding a nut theory than anything else. I mean, Pedro Feliciano was drafted by the Dodgers, not the Mets, and he was picked in the 31st round.

If nothing else, our scouting and drafting experts need to be eradicated from the system - especially on the pitching side. Stop spending millions on aging players like Luis Castillo and Bengie Molina, and use some of that big market money to lure in some real talent evaluators and draft experts. That's what a smart organization would do.

The reason we are in such bad shape each year when it comes to finding pitchers is because we never add any effective ones to the rotation from our own farm system.