Reese Kaplan -- 3 Prospective Starting Pitcher Trades

One thing that has changed in the minds of Mets fans during the Steve Cohen era is their perception of how money can and should be spent to try to climb into the postseason.  The best laid plans of mice and men don’t always provide the results you had expected.  Take 2025 as a classic example.

What’s interesting to see in the various media outlets and in conversation with fellow fans is the attitude that since Cohen has money to spend and having watched the Steinbrenner family for many years buy pennants accompanied by the Dodgers now doing the same it has become the mindset for Mets aficionados to expect the club to slug it out with the big boys.  As a result, everyone is already salivating over the prospect of seeing folks like Cody Bellinger, Kyle Tucker, Dylan Cease, Pete Alonso, Edwin Diaz, Munetaka Murakami and various others wearing orange and blue. 

Of course, for many of us having grown up during the DeRoulet and Wilpon eras the Mets were more strategic and hopeful that identifying undervalued or second tier players could somehow make the Mets into legitimate contenders.  We saw some good names arrive and saw others who withered away after entering the Mets locker room.  Those years were indeed painful but there is some value in not simply buying the best of the best but rather in assembling a long term solution that doesn’t cripple your payroll for years to come.

Consequently, instead of getting into long term bidding wars for the top of the free agent starting pitcher class it may instead make more sense for the Mets to look to the trade market to find players who are already under long term deals or about to become free agents in the near future in order to reinforce what was the 18th best pitching staff in baseball last year.  Where I learned math that was in the bottom 50% of all teams.

Towards that end three trades keep coming up again and again.  The first is Luis Castillo of the Mariners who is in the midst of a big dollar contract but starting to slip a little bit against the unhittable stuff he displayed earlier in his career.  His 2025 numbers were certainly better than what any Met this side of Nolan McLean provided — he went 11-8 with a 3.54 ERA with his strikeout numbers down to less than one per inning pitched.  He’s a solid pitcher for sure but going into his age 33 season you’re securing his talents for $24 million per year for 2026 and 2027 with a $25 million option for 2028.  One rumor had him available for a combo of Mark Vientos and Ronny Mauricio which doesn’t seem like a lot of talent to sacrifice but it is bringing on $74 million in payroll for a pitcher starting to decline.

The next one is a bit more interesting and likely available for the right package.  Former Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara of the Marlins took awhile to work his way back into normal form after his Tommy John surgery, but in the second half of the year he started looking like the ace he’d always been.  For  the period of 2020 to 2022 prior to suregery he went 26-26 with a 2.74 ERA and a WHIP of just over 1.000 while striking out nearly 4 times as many as he walked.  He was gone for 2024 and working back through rehab in 2025.  He’s earning $17 million in 2026 and has an option at $21 million for 2027.  What it would take to obtain him is a great unknown, but at age 30 for the upcoming season he should be a good option.

Arguably the best bargain if available is current Milwaukee Brewers ace Freddy Peralta who David Stearns knows well from his years heading up the program in Wisconsin.  In 2025 Peralta had his best ever season going 17-6 with a 2.70 ERA while fanning 204 batters in just over 176 innings pitched.  For this effort he makes the very modest salary of just $8 million.  He will be a free agent in 2027, so picking him up this year if Milwaukee would make a trade carries a great deal of risk, but between the salary and his young age it would seem to be a very interesting transaction for the Mets to make.