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A few moments later, the man hung up his cell phone and set out for the locksmith's office, where he would indeed pick up the necessary equipment to get himself inside. This all went down Tuesday night in my neighborhood, but it's also been going on for the past few seasons in Tampa.

The Rays were locked out of the house of winning baseball after the 2005 season and lacked the money for a locksmith. Instead, their new management group, led by Stuart Sternberg, Andrew Friedman and Matthew Silverman, found the tools they needed and figured it out on their own. Now, the Rays sit in first place in the perennially competitive A.L. East and feature a slew of young players locked up to long-term deals.

I'm not sure the Rays will keep it up this season, but they'll certainly be competitive well beyond 2008. The Rays suddenly seem like the most fortunate baseball franchise in the country, just a couple of years after looking utterly helpless. They're building an empire, and they're doing it by drafting good players and developing them.

For the past several years, the Mets, among others, have been paying as much as necessary to get the best locksmith in town to their doorstep as soon as possible. But too often, they're hiring the wrong locksmith, or a locksmith that's going to spend most of his time on the disabled list.

OK, so it's not a perfect metaphor. Whatever. My point is merely that the Mets' model of building a team primarily through free agency and Major League acquisitions is dying before our eyes. From its ashes rises the Rays' system, one in which a team drafts and develops its own players then locks them up with contract extensions before they become arbitration-eligible. Tampa signed Evan Longoria to an extension after only six Major League games. By the time the highly touted third baseman hits the free market it could be 2017, by which point he'll be 32 years old and ready to begin his decline in productivity.

Longoria, like center fielder B.J. Upton, left fielder Carl Crawford and two members of the Rays' young rotation, joined the team in MLB's annual June draft. And several more blue-chip prospects are developing in the Rays' system now.

Let's ignore the fact the Mets have decimated their system via big trades. In recent years, they've also been drafting to the so-called slot, which -- if it continues -- is equally damning for their future. I discuss the slotting system in the video embedded below with MILB.com's Jonathan Mayo, but briefly: Major League Baseball suggests that, when a highly regarded but likely expensive free agent falls in the draft due to signability issues, no one take him. Of course, only the Yankees, Red Sox and Tigers break the rules, so they're the only ones that reap the benefits.

Being nice is nice, and I understand that the Mets probably don't want to tick off the commissioner's office with a new stadium opening up and hopes of an All-Star Game in the not-too-distant future. But as a Mets fan, I can say without hesitation that I'd much rather see a team that wins year-in and year-out than a team that hosts a single All-Star Game. It's time the team stops playing by the unwritten rules and starts playing to win.

I don't know exactly what that means in terms of this draft. I do know that there are Scott Boras clients who could fall to the Mets, despite top-tier talent. Florida first baseman Eric Hosmer may have the best power bat in the draft. Mock drafts have him going somewhere in the top 10 picks, but tightfisted teams could pass on him the way they did fireballer Rick Porcello last year before Detroit scooped him up. If a player of Hosmer's repute is available when the Mets select 18th overall, they must take him.

For all the talk of how the Johan Santana trade demonstrated the Mets' commitment to winning after the 2007 collapse, the best way for the team to show its dedication to winning is to actually start winning. Not for one year, for many years. And the best way to start winning is to stock up on good, young players. The Mets have three picks in the first 33 in 2008, which should be enough to give them a real nice start toward restocking their system with inexpensive and healthy talent. Players like the Rays have.

Incidentally, back in 2002, when the Mets were drafting the best player available to them without concern for his contract demands, they took a young pitcher out of Texas named Scott Kazmir. Now, after one of the most vicious fleecings in the history of baseball, Kazmir is the ace of the Rays' staff.

Mets fans love to complain about that, and understandably so. But what's done is done. And hard as it is to believe, other Kazmirs will come along. All it will take for the Mets to find another young ace is the willingness to draft above the slot and the wisdom to hang onto their homegrown talent.