Reese Kaplan -- Let's Make the Right Kind of Trade This Time

In the immortal words of Monty Hall, let's make a deal!

Well, let's at least think about the way in which deals can and should be made.  Those two approaches are often the polar opposite ends of the transactional spectrum.  Deals can always be made if you swallow a lot of money in payroll obligation, give up your most highly rated players who are not key factors in your post season run, or sacrifice the prospects people have been drooling to see.  

A good example of this kind of deal was last year's two-month rental of Javy Baez who cost the team Pete Crow-Armstrong, one of their most highly regarded hitting prospects.  Javy Baez was a real thumbs up for the club despite his thumbs down shenanigans.  In just 167 ABs he hit .299 with 9 HRs and 22 RBIs for his new employer.  You really can't complain about that at all.  

Of course, to obtain Baez (and Trevor Williams) you gave up Crow-Armstrong who was your 2020 first round draft choice.  He didn't play that season due to the COVID cancellation of the minor league schedule but he came back to start the 2021 season by hitting .417 in 24 ABs before a right shoulder injury pretty much shut him down for most of the rest of the year.  

He moved over to the Chicago Cubs farm system where he moved between A and A+, hitting a combined .321 with 11 HRs and 38 RBIs and went on to represent the Cubs in the 2022 Futures Game.  His future looks bright but there's a long climb from A ball to the majors for this 20 year old lefty hitting center fielder.  

What makes the whole give-away-the-farm approach even worse is that the Mets opted not to retain the services of Mr. Baez.  That means they gave up the future 10-20 years of Crow-Armstrong's development and career in the majors for two short months of ill-fated offense.  

This kind of deal made headlines because the Mets brought in an All Star level player for a "great unknown" who'd only had 24 minor league at-bats.  Think about how Nelson Cruz and other former Mets minor leaguers played elsewhere.  That same eventuality exists as a real possibility once again.

Then there are the trades you should make.  In this scenario you send off second tier and tertiary players with perhaps someone flawed in your top 30 to another club in which they hope a bundle of whatever can add up to the value of whomever they're sacrificing.  

This type of deal often doesn't work as the minor league players are poker chips at best and you never know how they will respond as the level of competition increases as they move up the chain towards The Show.

No one knew, for example, what Noah Syndergaard and Travis d'Arnaud would become when the Mets decided to parlay Cy Young Award winning pitcher R.A. Dickey into kind of the opposite of the Baez trade.  In this case they knew Dickey would be in for a monstrous pay increase so they were looking for the sun, the moon and the stars.  

For the Blue Jays it meant giving up their most highly rated pitching prospect and their top catching prospect in this deal.  While we won't prolong the many injuries of their careers, no one can deny that Syndergaard in his short major league career has already far eclipsed what was leftover from R.A. Dickey.  

d'Arnaud was one of those Cliff Floyd types who seemed to do well on the rare times he wasn't disabled and he's put together some nice post-Mets seasons for himself.  In this case the Mets got the better of the deal by taking a shot on guys who they felt would develop into solid level major leaguers.

So right now as Billy Eppler and company look over the prospective players who might be available from the mostly non-contending teams out there, they have to decide if they want to repeat the Crow-Armstrong approach or if they want to try to be on the receiving end of top AA and AAA players to help fortify them in the future.  

There is a third approach, of course. You gather up the names of whomever isn't at the top of your future roster projections and bundle them all together in a quantity over quality offer for some other club's solid but not necessarily All Star level returns.  This type of deal is what I envision happening for the Mets in 2022.  

They don't have a player on an expiring contract they really can afford to ship out of town.  They were rightfully crucified for abandoning prospects in the past.  Consequently the safest route would be to offer up many mid-level folks who may or may not progress to star caliber in the majors in exchange for mid-level major leaguers who can help right now.  

It may not make the headlines of the other types of deals but it won't cripple the club's growth potential in the next few seasons either.