The ninth team draft preview on my blog focuses on the New York Mets and their scouting director Rudy Terrasas.

Here's an excerpt from the writeup, which features small writeups on 20 players involved with Terrasas' work:

Looking at draft budgeting, it’s easy to see why Terrasas’ job was on the line. He hasn’t been given enough resources. The total draft spending during Terrasas’ tenure puts the Mets tied for 27th in spending for those four years, a tie with the Astros, who have shown more interest in draft spending since the duo of Ed Wade and Bobby Heck took over. That is simply unacceptable for a team in the 21st century, as building from within is tremendously less expensive than the other alternatives. The Mets have already felt the pain from such lack of spending, and it doesn’t look like they’ll come out of it soon unless there is some sort of change in the front office’s philosophy, which generally doesn’t happen unless the front office itself changes. This year the Mets own the highest pick Terrasas has ever had. They own picks 7, 89, 122, and every 30 picks after that, assuming Rod Barajas signs a Major League contract with another team before the draft. Their second-round pick was forfeited for signing Jason Bay. This represents another fatal trend, as the Mets have continuously given up picks for free agents. The seventh pick last year was Mike Minor, and he received a bonus of $2.42 million, which is likely where slot will be for that pick this year, which is the same amount for slot from 2008. Knowing this bonus, I expect the Mets to spend somewhere around $4 million in bonuses this year, perhaps less. This would once again place the Mets right at the bottom of the spending pool, unless they change their ways from the past, which isn’t likely, at least not in the extreme of spending more than $6 million, which would put them in the middle of the pack. They will undoubtedly be in the bottom half to bottom third of spending for yet another year.

Direct link here.

As always, read about the 2010 MLB Draft Notebook and pre-order it here.

What do you think? What will the Mets do?

Also, I'll be chatting here starting at 2 eastern.