Reese Kaplan -- If the Mets Actually Want to Improve the Team...

During the roller coaster ride of the 2025 season many people remain tunnel visioned on making it to and dominating in October.  There’s nothing at all wrong with that (unless you’re the Mets organization who has not obtained a single solid major leaguer during the strong days nor the horrific ones, but that’s another rant for another day).  No, the game of baseball is not just about a single season’s roster but also about how it will perform in the future.

Towards that end there has been a great deal of ink (if anyone still uses ink in a cyber world) about the prospect of losing Pete Alonso to free agency after both his outstanding All Star season and his opt-out available at year’s end.  Obviously that’s a major hole to fill both financially and with at-bats should Alonso land elsewhere.

Getting quite a bit less attention is another key player with a contractual opt-out decision come year’s end.  The Mets’ All Star closer Edwin Diaz is in the midst of a lucrative contract signed a few years back and though his on-again/off-again career history is frustrating, when he is at his best he is absolutely dominant.  There are times he’s posting nearly two strikeouts per inning pitched.  You just don’t see that kind of overwhelming game control anywhere.

So while fortifying the roster with more hitting would indeed be most welcome, come back from the clouds to the 2025 season and revisit the primary problem that has not been addressed all year.  First the club lost A.J. Minter, then Danny Young, then Dedniel Nunez, then Max Kranick and others.  I won’t even go into the starting pitching mess nor the lack of a real DH, a real CF player, a real C and clarity to the infield mess.

So it’s possible for an active and creative front office (if one exists) to kill two birds with one stone.  Since apparently the July trading deadline is the only time during the 2025 season when something amounting to roster improvement could happen, maybe it’s time to look deep into the relief pitchers around the league who could not only create an unquestioned 1-2 punch for the late innings, but would also reinforce the bullpen should Diaz actually cater offers from other ball clubs.

One name that popped up recently was Emmanuel Clase of the Cleveland Guardians.  The multi All Star is surprisingly a possibility with the team far away from the division crown.  It may indeed represent a chance to overwhelm the team with an offer of top prospects and/or position players to grab hold of the 27 year old best reliever in the game ever since his debut.

Wait, isn’t Diaz better?  Well, in three consecutive seasons Clase has led the AL with more than 40 saves per year.  By comparison, Diaz provided the Mariners with an otherworldly 51 saves back in 2018.  His high water mark since then is just 32.  Clase and Diaz both own a 12.2 WAR rating for their careers but Diaz has had 135 additional games in his to get there. 

We’ve already listed the highly dependable David Bednar as another closer-turned-setup man scenario.  We could repeat this exercise with any number of top arms around the league or we could expand the scope to include folks who already are veterans of the 8th inning role.  The fact is that players of this caliber not only would help in 2025 but also would reinforce the roster should the closer position open up in 2026.

The alternative approach which we’ll call the Javy Baez route is to overpay with a top prospect to get a two month rental from another team.  The perfect candidate here would be southpaw Aroldis Chapman who is pitching superbly and a veteran of the pressure of playing in New York.  Of course, if it took Jett Williams or Jonah Tong to get him, that would be the pitching equivalent of two months of competence for the next Pete Crow-Armstrong.  Other rentals are out there.

Finally, there’s currently not playing setup specialist David Robertson.  Yes, he is 40 years old and no one is exactly sure how long it would take for a his midyear pre-season conditioning to take hold, but at age 39 for the Rangers he pitched to a 3.00 over 68 games.  It would seem that he could handle August, September and hopefully October. 

Now any of  these possibilities or corresponding similar moves would require effort, initiative and payroll dollars.  We know the Mets won’t blanch at the third criteria here.  However, in a season filled with terrible slumps and multiple serious injuries there has not been a single major league player with a solid track record brought in to assist with winning ball games.  I hate to say it, but that approach falls squarely on the head of POBO David Stearns.  Is he ready finally to make improvements?