With May in our rear-view mirror and the draft firmly in our sights, we thought we’d check up on the state of the Mets’ farm system. To help us out, we enlisted the aid of Kevin Goldstein, one of the best prospect analysts out there. Kevin wrote for Baseball America until 2006, when he joined the Baseball Prospectus team of writers. He was kind enough to spend some time with us last Friday.

MetsGeek: How for real is Dan Murphy? What is the difference between him, Mike Carp, and Nick Evans?

Kevin Goldstein: That’s a great question. Well, I’ve talked to a couple scouts who’ve seen Binghamton, and they tend to like Evans best, and I think that has a lot to do with the birthdate. Murphy is a little older than the other two, and Murphy doesn’t really have a defined position yet in the sense that he’s not really a great third baseman. He can hit, although he maybe needs to tighten the approach a little bit. There’s questions about if there’s any more than average power, but he can put a bat on a ball pretty well. People tend to like Evans better as a prospect, and I think the Mets do as well; they proved that when they called him up.

MetsGeek: What are Valentino Pascucci’s pluses? Can he help the Mets at all?

Kevin Goldstein: No, not really. Obviously Val Pascucci is having a great year, but he is one of those classic Quadruple-A hitters. Off the top of my head, I’m guessing he’s 29 or 30 years old. He’s always been a guy who draws walks, hits home runs, and strikes out a lot. I think the problem is that if you took him up to the big leagues, he’d strike out even more. He does most of his damage against lefties, he really struggles against right-handers. He’s really kind of an org player, Quadruple-A hitter. Maybe an occasional insurance policy, but he has no important role at all in the Mets’ future.

MetsGeek: So we shouldn’t be rooting for the Mets to release Delgado and call him up?

Kevin Goldstein: (Laughs) No, you should not. I mean, you might, just because it’s hard not to dig a guy named Val Pascucci. And as big as he is, I have a personal bias in favor of big baseball players, and he certainly is enormous, but on a skill level, he’s up and down, played in Triple-A, played across the sea a few times, he’s the definition of what an org player is.

MetsGeek: Gotcha. Well, what are the Mets organization’s strengths and weaknesses right now?

Kevin Goldstein: Well, their weaknesses are pretty much everything. (Laughs) It’s not a very good organization–they didn’t have much to begin with, and they gave up a lot in the Santana trade. There has been a few things to root for this year, though. If they have one strength, it’s more of a hopeful strength. There’s young talent there in Savannah and St. Lucie. They might not be prospects yet, but if you look at them on the right day, and you twist your head funny, you can look at a guy like [Scott] Moviel and say, “That guy might turn into something.” You can look at Fransisco Pena and say, “He’s so young, he’s hitting a little better this year, that might turn into something.” The good news is that they get a ton of draft picks this year, so hopefully that will help as well.

MetsGeek: Do you think the Mets will go slot in this year’s draft, and if they do go over slot, who will they be looking at, if anyone?

Kevin Goldstein: There’s two aspects to that. The first one is that I don’t think there’s any kind of Rick Porcello situation this year, where there’s not a lot of guys dropping because of bonus demands. Maybe a couple picks or two, but nothing like Porcello. There are some Boras high school clients like Gerrit Cole and Alex Meyer but I don’t think teams are going to take Meyer at all because he’s not worth what he’s asking for. Cole is a guy who could drop, but I don’t think the Mets will take him. It’s not a great year to be a slot buster, at the same time, it’s even harder to be a slot buster in the Mets situation where you have so many picks, so it’s going to cost you even more than it normally might cost you. Even if you pay them normal slot money, you’re spending more on the draft than you have in previous years. I think they’re just focusing on the best player available. Not worried too much about the price, but I’m not sure they’d jump on anyone who drops.

MetsGeek: Do you think they’re going to draft pitchers with the first few picks, or are there any first-round hitters that they might be looking at?

Kevin Goldstein: Yeah, definitely. I don’t think a team in the latter half of the draft gets fixated on a position at all. You might see that with some of the really high picks; Baltimore, Florida, they’re focusing on college arms. When you’re picking 18 and 22, they are just going to take the best player available. There might be more of a focus on college talent than high school talent because the upper levels of the Mets system are not very good, so they might be looking for guys who can help out quickly. Don’t be surprised to see some of the more polished college hitters or college relievers who are moving up on draft boards.

MetsGeek: Are there any guys in the Mets’ system who don’t get a lot of press but might have an impact at some point down the road?

Kevin Goldstein: There are a couple guys. Fransisco Pena is such a great defender, and though he still isn’t doing much with the bat, at least he’s not hitting .180 anymore. And he’s still so young, and it doesn’t take much offensively to project as an everyday big league catcher. He’s a big, big dude, and you’d think he might come into some power down the line. He still might be able to stop chasing the pitches he’s chasing right now. He could be a really good prospect; he’s just not one right now. That’s the guy who really comes to mind. I’m still a fan of Scott Moviel, though I know he’s struggling. He still has good velocity. Another guy who I still kind of like is Ruben Tejada. Very young, a decent shortstop, he can play the other infield positions. He has some idea of what he’s doing at the plate. If there’s a sleeper, it might be Lucas Duda. He can definitely hit. He’s got the same problem that the trio at Binghamton has: positionally, he’s pretty limited.

MetsGeek: People on Met blogs like him a lot.

Kevin Goldstein: There’s a great name, first of all. That always helps. Lucas Duda just sounds cool. Here’s a guy who looked really good coming out of high school, and would have gone really high, but he was committed to going to college. As a college player, he was a significant disappointment, which dropped him. But now he’s putting up numbers in a tough park in a tough league. That’s a pretty impressive line that he’s putting up right now. Problem with all these guys is: where do you put him, other than first base? Evans might be okay in the outfield. Mike Carp’s a horrible outfielder, he’s first base only. And Murphy’s not really a good third baseman. So you have all these players who might be able to hit, but after that, they are kind of one-dimensional.

MetsGeek: Going back to Tejada, the Mets have a habit of aggressively promoting players. Does it make it hard to judge performances? Do you think that helps or hurts a prospect?

Kevin Goldstein: It depends on the kid. Talking to the Mets people, they always really liked Tejada’s makeup, and they really thought he had the wherewithal and maturity on the mental level to handle St. Lucie but they thought he’d probably struggle a bit. They didn’t have room for him in Savannah, they really wanted Bouchard playing shortstop there. But in the sense that he can handle it on a mental level, it can be a good thing. They did the same thing with Nick Evans. It’s really a case by case basis. Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s not.

MetsGeek: It seemed to work out okay with Carlos Gomez.

Kevin Goldstein: Right, and Gomez is such a weird case, since he always had the tools to get it done, so he could always fall back on the tools. Even when he wasn’t playing well, if you saw him for a whole week, you could be pretty sure that he’d do something spectacular. Tejada’s a different beast, though. He’s not a toolsy kind of kid. He’s more of a fundamentals-grinder-play-hard kind of guy.

MetsGeek: Yeah, I think Fernando Martinez might be in a similar situation. At what point does Fernando Martinez have to put up numbers?

Kevin Goldstein: That’s a million dollar question. Great question, people ask me that all the time. I talked to a scout who saw the B-Mets, and he’s convinced that Fernando Martinez is going to be a perennial All-Star. He’s a guy who will hit third in the Mets lineup pretty soon and be an impact player, but sometime the guys have to put numbers up. Guys have to do it, and not everyone does.

MetsGeek: Jose Tabata’s been doing terrible, and people are now writing him off a bit.

Kevin Goldstein: That one’s a really significant thing, where people are starting to question his skills, though you’re not seeing that with Fernando Martinez. If you look at Hanley Ramirez’ minor league numbers, he’s not going to blow you away either. Though that was for a whole different reason, maybe. But there are guys who it doesn’t show up for a while or even until they get to the big leagues. Offensively, Martinez has plenty of tools.

That concludes part one of the interview, but look for the rest of our chat tomorrow.