MLB

METS, YANKS SEARCH FOR NEXT BIG STAR

OVER the past few seasons, the impact of the First-Year Player Draft on organizations has been easy to see. Tampa Bay has proved it this year, as the Rays lead the AL East behind homegrown talents such as Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton, James Shields and Evan Longoria.

This year’s draft will take place Thursday and Friday at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. The Mets have two first-round picks (Nos. 18 and 22), along with a supplemental first round choice, and the Yankees pick 28th.

After trading four of their top seven overall prospects, according to Baseball America, for Johan Santana in the offseason, the Mets first round picks immediately can boost their farm system.

“It sounds cliché to say teams use the ‘best player available’ philosophy, but when you have a system like the Mets where you could use help anywhere, you don’t need to target something specific early on,” said Jonathan Mayo, who covers the draft for mlb.com.

The biggest question surrounding the Mets is whether or not they will disregard MLB’s slotting recommendations for signing bonuses. The Mets have stuck by them in the past, but the Yankees and other large-market clubs haven’t.

“I think the smart move for the Mets is to learn from the other large market clubs, and to use their resources to their advantage in the draft,” Baseball America’s John Manuel said. “They use them in every other facet, but not the draft.”

The Yankees, meanwhile, have one of baseball’s deeper farm systems, and have been celebrated for their recent selections of pitchers Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy.

For Yankees scouting director Damon Oppenheimer, who will be running his fourth draft for the organization this week, it is the culmination of a lot of long days and countless hours of work for him and his scouting staff.

“It’s an absolute rush for all of us,” Oppenheimer said. “Everybody’s tired. . . . I’ve got a group of scouts that are sitting in the room with me that have spent 120 nights on the road and are tired.

“But this is the product of what you’re trying to do, and it’s really exciting for us.”

Oppenheimer has been given a lot of credit for his performance as scouting director, particularly for landing Kennedy and Chamberlain with the Yankees top two picks in 2006. Nevertheless, his focus this week is only on trying to repeat his past success with this year’s draft.

“The Joba thing is really nice, and I’m really happy for him and our scouting staff and organization, but the job isn’t done,” he said. “It’s nice to know what (Chamberlain) has done, but I’ve got to do more to help that club in the future by producing more of those guys . . . that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

tbontemps@nypost.com