Cincinnati Reds want to be more like the New York Mets

The Cincinnati Reds have been developing pitching in the hopes of becoming a pitching first team.

As the Cincinnati Reds rebuild their team, they are looking to the New York Mets for the blueprint.  The Mets have one of the best collections of young starting pitchers in MLB, even if they started the season as the worst rotation.  That what the Reds want.

The Mets have the homegrown talents of Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, Noah Syndegaard, Robert Gsellman and Steven Matz.  In 2016 the fantastic five made 100 starts.  All five haven’t been healthy at once and in the rotation at the same time, yet.

This season, they have made a combined total of 83 starts, but they added another stud.  This year Zach Wheeler has made seventeen starts after missing the last two seasons with injuries.  The balance of that is that Syndegard has missed most of this season himself.

The Toronto Blue Jays drafted Syndegard in the first round of the 2010 draft.  The San Francisco Giants drafted Zach Wheeler in the first round a season earlier.  The Mets used their own top ten pick in 2010 to acquire Harvey.

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New York drafted Matz in the second round of the 2009 draft out of high school.  The Mets didn’t select deGrom until the ninth round of the 2010 draft.   The lowest pedigreed player of the lot, though, is Robert Gsellman who was drafted in the thirteenth round in 2011.

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Can the Cincinnati Reds match up the pieces they have accumulated to those of the New York Mets?

Everyone knows that Homer Bailey, who isn’t right, and Robert Stephenson are first round picks.  Brandon Finnegan is also a first round pick.  The same goes for Michael Lorenzen, who the Reds kept in the bullpen this season.

Those are the Reds top four drafted pitchers.  Of course none of them took the ball every turn in the rotation this season.

Lorenzen is the only one that stayed healthy all season long.

The Toronto Blue Jays drafted Anthony DeSclafani in the sixth round in 2011.  The Reds selected Tyler Mahle in the seventh round in the 2013 draft.  Of course, the Pittsburgh Pirates acquired Bronson Arroyo in the third round of the 1995 draft.

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The Reds are different because their pitchers are both older and younger.  The Mets leveraged high profile players to acquire young pitchers before they made it to the big leagues.  The only example the Reds have of this is Finnegan.  Now the Reds need to leverage lower picked pitchers into MLB starters.