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Well, the folks who somehow held onto this fantasy that the Mets were going to make an 11th hour deal to bring uber pitcher Tarik Skubal to Queens got a nasty gut punch on Thursday when it was revealed that he shattered the arbitration record by obtaining a $32 million salary for the 2026 season. So now obtaining Skubal would require not only a huge passel of players in trade as well as a major payroll commitment while not receiving any guarantee of anything other than a one-year teammate who obviously will seek to smash the existing payroll records for a young free agent in 2027. Sometimes it’s best simply to let a dream die.
It’s interesting to see players like Miguel Andujar, Luis Arraez, Eugenio Suarez and Austin Hays all signed free agent contracts to play for new employers while the Mets with their glaring holes in left field and at DH have done nothing. What David Stearns is doing while awaiting last minute bargains has thus far resulted in a severely dwindling marketplace of available players while others who make last minute deals like Framber Valdez push the annual pay rate higher than was anticipated. Patience is a good thing sometimes. Other times it appears to be passivity while more active teams improve their rosters.
The big Pittsburgh rumor that surfaced this week had one of Brett Baty or Mark Vientos moving onto the Steel City in exchange for some heretofore unknown pitcher options. While the idea of breaking up the ill fitting and positionless player mix on the Mets makes sense, the ongoing frustration of the fans and media with the lack of movement in roster improvement resulted in a maelstrom of enthusiastic and hopeful coverage of something from nothing finally happening. It is really irritating that the fans have succumbed to the anything is better than nothing approach given how the roster holes are still not addressed with Spring Training starting on Wednesday.
Roster battles to watch include the great left field experiment. As it stands right now in addition to the never-before corner infielder evaluation you have to wonder who is going to patrol next to newcomer Luis Robert, Jr. People have heard Brett Baty’s name surface more than once given his former homes at 3B and 2B now taken by newcomers. He’s not played any outfield at all in the past but force feeding players into new positions is being considered not so much out of need caused by emergency injuries but through lack of planning. If not Baty, then plan B would appear to be light hitting Tyrone Taylor or AAA veteran of just 90 ABs, Carson Benge.
Then there’s the ongoing question about the 6+ man starting rotation. Right now you have Freddy Peralta, Kodai Senga, Sean Manaea, Clay Holmes, David Peterson and Nolan McLean. In addition you have youngsters like Jonah Tong and Christian Scott waiting in the wings. It would seem that the club is likely better than they have been in the recent past yet at the same time many advocate the Mets trade for another difference-maker starting pitcher. The selected five or six handling this duty is yet not crystal clear.
In the bullpen injuries and ineffectiveness make the last few choices somewhat unclear. Right now you would have to pencil in a hopefully healthy A.J. Minter, Brooks Raley, Devin Williams, Tobias Myers and Luke Weaver for sure. Then it gets a bit murkier. One name on a minor league deal is future Cooperstown plaque owner Craig Kimbrel in camp on a minor league deal. Assuming he is healthy that’s six pitchers already. After that you have 39 year old veteran Luis Garcia, former Marlin Huascar Brazoban and a variety of AAAA types including Austin Warren, Justin Hagenman, Joey Gerber and Alex Carillo. You also have never-before-promoted older rookie Dylan Ross. It’s possible another formidable arm could supplant one or more of this final collection of seven possibilities but that is work still undone as trucks have already left from New York to Florida.
Then there are the bench possibilities. No one is sure what will become of Baty and Vientos, but it also leaves Ronny Mauricio in roster limbo. Newcomer Vidal Brujan is another infielder. Then there is Jared Young and rookie Nick Morabito. It would seem some veteran presence here might be needed as insurance should any of the starters have long term injuries. Again, nothing is floating around in the rumor mill about who might fit in this regard other than the minor league deal given to Austin Barnes who could easily push Hayden Senger and/or Luis Torrens off the roster.
Overall it would seem there’s still a lot of roster work to be done.
1 comment:
I continue to think that the Mets have ample starting pitching at this point. Unless the entry bug hits right at spring training again, I think the pitchers that are in house to start games will get us through the season nicely
Adding another bullpen arm to suck up 50 or 60 innings would be worthwhile, giving how the bullpen disintegrated last year. But bullpens don’t disintegrate every year.
If they were to trade away both Brett and Vientos, that would be losing a lot of home runs, despite each of the two players having their flaws. We already lost Pete Alonso HRs.
A team’s Total home runs, if too low, would seem the correlate with subpar win totals. So hopefully David keeps that in mind if he makes any other trades.
One thing we know for sure: if you look at it at five year segments, normally almost everybody that was on the team in year one is no longer on the team heading into year six. For that alone, I would not be surprised to see the duo get traded. There is always player churn in trying to squeeze a few more wins out of the team. They even let Seaver leave the team twice.
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