FUTURE IN CARDS THE

Mets’ talent on farm a good start, but a deal wouldn’t hurt

The MLB draft experts think there’s a pretty good chance Sandy Alderson could select third baseman Jonathan India, the SEC Player of the Year, with the sixth pick on Monday, and some believe he’s such an advanced hitter that he could be in the big leagues by 2020.

The hundred-and-some-million dollar question, depending on the ever-maddening state of the payroll, is where the Mets will be at that point.

Will they be an old team riding out the contracts of Yoenis Cespedes and Jay Bruce, still clinging to the belief that Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, and Steven Matz can pitch them to the playoffs?

Or will they be smarter than that, and have made trades by then to acquire the nucleus of young, position-player talent they need to even think about winning a championship?

I went down this road a couple of weeks ago, and I’m not saying the Mets should give up on the 2018 season right now, or even in the next month, by trading off their best assets.

But I am saying that if they’re still in fourth place in the NL East by mid-tolate July, knowing the young Braves and Phillies are only going to get better in the coming years, they’d be nuts to sit on their hands and hope for the best.

And here’s the thing: I checked in with scouts and minor-league talent evaluators on Wednesday to gauge their thoughts on how quickly the Mets could pull off a rebuild, and here’s what emerged as a consensus:

While I’ve written repeatedly about the lack of top prospects at the upper levels of the farm system, for which Alderson has to be held accountable, there may be enough talent at the lower levels, that if supplemented by a couple of trades for blue-chip prospects, could put the Mets about where the Braves and Phillies are now by 2020.

And that’s without necessarily trading deGrom, who is fast becoming the new Tom Seaver for this generation of Mets fans, albeit at an age where The Franchise was about to win his third Cy Young Award.

Yep, deGrom turns 30 in three weeks. But if the Mets could be back on the rise within a couple of years in part by trading Noah Syndergaard, who at age 26 would bring back at least two blue-chippers, deGrom has the loose-limbed delivery to make it likely he’ll pitch at a high level well into his 30s.

Meanwhile, if Alderson were to follow Brian Cashman’s formula and make deals for the likes Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier and Justus Sheffield, the consensus is the Mets have enough “interesting pieces” in their system to do as the Yankees did — to some degree, anyway.

“They don’t have the same talent base the Yankees did when Cash did his selloff,” one scout said, “but if the Mets traded for a couple of solid prospects to add to what they’ve got, I think they could get back to contention with a much younger team in a couple of years.”

Scouts and evaluators point to some of the Mets’ more recent drafts as reason to believe in a fairly quick turnaround.

Jim Callis of MLBpipeline.com cites the young pitching as being encouraging, pointing specifically to Justin Dunn and David Peterson, the first-round picks of the last two years, as well as Anthony Kay, the No. 31 pick in 2016 who is back after missing a year due to Tommy John surgery, and Thomas Szapucki, a fifth-round picking who was rising in the system quickly before needing TJ surgery as well last year.

“They need more time but I like all of those guys,” Callis said.

Callis believes first baseman Peter Alonso’s power at Double-A, where he has hit 14 home runs, will translate to the big-league level, and he remains high on Dom Smith — though not as a potential outfielder — so perhaps he could be a trade piece at some point as well.

“I don’t think they’ve drafted that poorly, except for a year here or there,” Callis said. “They have guys who should help.”

Andres Gimenez is ranked as the Mets’ No. 1 prospect, a 19-year-old slick-fielding shortstop who had an .801 OPS in high Class-A St. Lucie, as of Wednesday. And one scout covering the Mets’ system loves Gimenez to the point of comparing him, at least in terms of baseball instincts, to the newest Yankee phenom.

“I’m not saying he’s Gleyber Torres,” the scout said, “but he does have the same smooth actions, and a lot of the instincts that make him look like he can play at any level. He could easily move over to second base, like Torres has, if they want to keep (Amed) Rosario at short, and the bat is starting to come.”

So the Mets have some hope for the future, anyway, and they have a chance to add to that with their highest first-round draft choice since they swung and missed by taking pitcher Philip Humber out of Rice with the No. 3 pick back in 2004.

This time evaluators believe the Mets are likely to take a college hitter, either India out of Florida or another third baseman, Alec Bohm out of Wichita St. India is considered the better all-around hitter and defender, while Bohm is more of a slugger T with big power. he slugger would be fitting, because if ever the Mets needed to hit a home run with a first-round pick, it’s this one. They desperately need a cornerstone player to build around, and barring a dramatic change in fortunes over the next several weeks — probably the sooner the better.