It’s been five years since the Mets were unabashed buyers at the trade deadline, the years since comprising a lot of half-measures and minor sales and moves for the next year.
But sitting in first place for the majority of the season so far and with a series of significant injuries influencing their future pitching plans, the Mets are obvious buyers at this trade deadline.
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“I don’t go into it with an all-in approach — that we’re pushing all our chips in the middle because I think that can be very shortsighted — but we also think we have a chance to win, so we want to make improvements wherever we can,” acting general manager Zack Scott said Tuesday at Citi Field. “We have to make sure that we have a good sense of the guys that are here, the guys that are injured and when they’re going to come back and the likelihood that they’re going to be able to contribute to a championship club.”
The deadline is five weeks away. Let’s examine five key questions from the Mets’ perspective:
1. Is starting pitching actually the biggest need?
Scott has said as much, even before Joey Lucchesi went down for the season this week and Marcus Stroman left Tuesday’s game with hip soreness. That’s even though the Mets rank second in the sport in ERA and second-to-last in runs per game — which would typically point you toward offensive upgrades for the season’s second half.
But New York has been in an unusual spot for evaluation. The offense struggled unexpectedly in the first month, the team fired its hitting coaches, and then most of its starters went down with injuries. The Mets are only now starting to get those players back, and it’s reasonable to expect the offense to perform better with hitters like Jeff McNeil, Michael Conforto and Brandon Nimmo in it.
For instance, through Wednesday, the Mets have received a combined .679 OPS from second base, right field and center field this season. The trio of McNeil, Conforto and Nimmo has combined for an .860 OPS from 2018 to 2020. While McNeil and Conforto struggled earlier this season, the much larger sample suggests better performance the rest of this season. (And the same is true for some other Mets regulars, like Francisco Lindor and Dominic Smith.)
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The injury story in the rotation paints a different picture. Lucchesi won’t be back until at least late 2022. Carlos Carrasco and Noah Syndergaard were initially slated to be back by now, and instead neither is throwing off a mound. Each will require a significant ramp-up period before being ready to start major-league games, and they’ve missed so much time that it’s hard for New York to bank on either of them to pitch to their career track records.
In Jacob deGrom, Taijuan Walker and Stroman, the Mets have three pitchers at the top of their rotation performing at their peaks. Although he has pitched better in his last couple outings, David Peterson has been inconsistent behind them. And behind Peterson, there’s really no one the Mets can feel good about starting until Carrasco or Syndergaard is ready.
Scott said Tuesday that in the near term the team is looking for someone to “stabilize” the rotation. Stability can come in different forms: There’s the kind provided by a waiver claim or internal call-up playing above expectations — the way Billy McKinney did when the Mets were searching for outfield help last month.
But there’s a more concrete, sustainable stability the team is seeking for the rest of the season. New York isn’t necessarily going to trade top prospects for an arm to stick right with deGrom, Stroman and Walker at the top of its rotation. The aim is probably more for someone who can pitch into the sixth every fifth day and maybe start Game 4 of a postseason series if the Mets get there.
In other words, that’s less Max Scherzer than Jon Gray, less José Berríos than Michael Pineda. (Or, if you’re thinking from team president Sandy Alderson’s perspective, Ron Darling for the 1991 Athletics.)
2. OK, but what if the offense doesn’t recover?
That’s a more complex issue! Offense is always harder to find at the deadline because the guy who makes sense for your lineup also has to be a positional fit defensively. You can trade for another team’s No. 2 starter and make him your No. 4; you can’t trade for another team’s first baseman and make him your center fielder.
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The Mets have gotten McNeil and now Conforto back in their lineup; if Nimmo and J.D. Davis follow suit and New York still struggles to score four runs per game, that’s a quandary. Theoretically, the Mets don’t have an obvious spot in the lineup clamoring for an offensive upgrade. This is a franchise that has consistently chosen offense over defense; when healthy, there isn’t a regular position player that’s easy to upgrade offensively.
What the Mets could do in a spot like that is acquire a more complementary piece and play the matchup game and/or hot hand in the season’s second half. Cody Ross and Steve Pearce were not heralded acquisitions, but Ross won the Giants a pennant and Pearce won the Red Sox a World Series. From Mets history, this wouldn’t be a Yoenis Céspedes move in 2015, but it could be a Kelly Johnson/Juan Uribe move from 2015.
3. Are the Mets thinking about 2022, as well?
Not every deadline deal is about August through October. Not every deadline deal even helps in August through October. The last two summers under Brodie Van Wagenen, the Mets acquired Marcus Stroman and Miguel Castro as much with an eye on the following season as on the current one. Alderson made a similar trade for AJ Ramos in 2017.
When Scott worked in Boston’s front office, the Red Sox occasionally used late July to address an upcoming weakness. For instance, while the Sox employed impending free agent Victor Martínez behind the plate in 2010, they traded for Jarrod Saltalamacchia. While Saltalamacchia barely played the rest of that season, he took over as the club’s starting catcher once Martínez signed in Detroit that winter, holding the job for three seasons.
The Mets have three big-time impending free agents in Stroman, Syndergaard and Conforto. And the Lucchesi injury knocks him out not just for the rest of 2021 but for a lot of 2022, too. So New York could be more open-minded today about acquiring a starter who’s more than a rental than it was even last week. The Mets could deal for a starter who helps down the stretch this season and then settles in alongside deGrom, Carrasco, Walker and Peterson in the rotation for next year. That’s what they did with Stroman back in 2019, viewing him as their replacement for Zack Wheeler.
Of course, the team also has the willingness and financial wherewithal to retain those big-time free agents, and it may not want to tie up a rotation spot for 2022 if it plans to strongly pursue Stroman and/or Syndergaard this winter.
Perhaps a more interesting spot for it to look ahead is in the outfield. Not only is Conforto a free agent, but also the consensus expectation is that the National League will have a designated hitter next season, which would allow the Mets to move Dominic Smith to first base or DH most nights. Even if New York re-signs Conforto, it could then use another outfielder, preferably a right-handed who can play center.
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The best of those options, Ketel Marte, would cost a boatload. The second-best, Starling Marte, is a free agent at season’s end. A more controllable corner outfielder with some versatility, like switch-hitter Robbie Grossman in Detroit or Miami’s Brian Anderson, could make sense as a piece that helps this year (as the type of complementary player mentioned above) and takes on a more prominent everyday role next year.
4. Might the Mets trade major-league talent at the deadline?
You don’t have to be a seller to deal off of your major-league roster, as Scott’s tenure in Boston proves. Scott’s first season with the Red Sox included the monumental trade of Nomar Garciaparra, which helped win them their first World Series in 86 years. Four years later, Boston dealt Manny Ramirez during a pennant race, and six years after that it sought major-league returns in its sell-off trades of Jon Lester and John Lackey.
But while Scott has been a part of front offices that made moves like that in the past — and advocated for the Garciaparra trade, as an intern — that concept doesn’t look like a fit for these Mets. There’s certainly no player quite like Garciaparra or Ramirez on the roster to deal. And that Lester-for-Céspedes deal that the Red Sox made in 2014 didn’t work out for Oakland, whose offense collapsed without its chief slugger. Often, when a team is moving a key major-league piece at the deadline, it’s because of off-the-field or clubhouse concerns, and the Mets don’t appear to have those at the moment.
5. What are the small pieces that could play big roles in the postseason?
The Mets like how their team looks on paper for a postseason series; most teams that employ the best pitcher in the sport do. But July 30 offers a chance to make the small moves that resonate in October. Again dipping into Scott’s time in Boston, he was the intern who suggested the Sox could snag Dave Roberts from the Dodgers in 2004 — a deal nearly as impactful as the Garciaparra trade the same night. Oliver Pérez wasn’t filling a need in the moment for the 2006 Mets, but he almost improbably pitched them to the World Series that fall.
For these Mets, the bullpen stands out as an area that could afford some buttressing. New York’s bullpen has been outstanding to this point this season; it’s also been, until this week, very healthy. Seth Lugo was the only key piece of the relief corps that missed time earlier this year, but now Jeurys Familia and Robert Gsellman have hit the IL, the latter for a while. The injuries in the rotation will only place more strain on the most trustworthy arms in the bullpen.
And no depth chart jumbles itself as quickly as a bullpen’s. Today’s longman could be October’s set-up man (hello, Pat Mahomes) and vice versa. Adding another reliever, especially one with postseason experience or who throws with his left arm, could prove pivotal later in the year.
(Photo of Marcus Stroman: Mary DeCicco / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Tim Britton is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the New York Mets. He has covered Major League Baseball since 2009 and the Mets since 2018. Prior to joining The Athletic, he spent seven seasons on the Red Sox beat for the Providence Journal. He has also contributed to Baseball Prospectus, NBC Sports Boston, MLB.com and Yahoo Sports. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBritton
