Having made clear their intention to let matters play out for as long as possible before settling on a strategy for the remainder of the season -- thereby giving the team every chance to get themselves back in the playoff race -- the FO appears to have settled on an intermediary strategy: one that applies until it doesn't. It's the strategy the FO will adopt when the shelf life on this one expires that really matters.
There are three possible outcomes over the next few weeks that would trigger settling on a final strategy for the remainder of the season.
1. The team makes it clear by its play that no additional time is required to determine that they have no reasonable chance of making the playoffs. Maybe some chance, but not one a fan could bet on or feel somewhat confident of materializing.
2. Over the period of time, the team could make it clear that they have in fact a reasonable chance of advancing to the playoffs.
3. The team's play on the field does not settle the matter. Whether more games and a larger sample size would settle the matter is no longer relevant. The team can't wait and must decide what to do. Time has forced their hand. It's time to settle on a 'remainder of the year strategy.'
When that time comes, what options do they have and what would executing on those options look like.
Three possible strategies
When the time finally comes to decide on a strategy for the remainder of the season, the FO will be faced with choosing among three basic options.
1. Standing pat.
2. Shifting resources to the future.
3. Moving their chips to the center of the table.
Part of what I find interesting about these options is that they don't necessarily line up with what the FO learns over the next couple of weeks about the team's prospects for making the playoffs this year. Whatever happens between now and then, only one strategy makes sense to me.
Option 1. Standing Pat -- the Minimalist Strategy
Standing pat does not mean doing nothing. By my lights, standing pat is consistent with the Mets trading players they have determined are not part of their future: for example, Vientos, Baty, Peterson and Senga for example.
In the best case, adopting this strategy may bring back prospects while providing the FO with more information about what it has in the majors without rushing minor leaguers into major league roles they are not ready for. It also provides the FO with information about its minor leaguers, and more importantly about what the organization is doing well and poorly in its developmental programs. A fire sale would throw the team into short term chaos, lead to players being promoted to the majors prematurely, and cascade throughout the minors in ways that would reduce the FO's ability to gather useful information about player performance at all levels.
The goal is to stabilize, inform and set the team up for serious work in the offseason.
Some might say that what I am calling a strategy of standing pat is really just a strategy of selling. I disagree. If you have decided to sell what you can, you trade Peterson, Manaea, Peralta and maybe Holmes as well as Senga. A full scale sale is designed not to stabilize and inform. It is designed to shift resources to the future by obtaining prospects, clearing salary and dead weight to the extent possible. It is the strategy one follows if one has decided to start afresh.
Option 2. Shifting resources to the future
In principle the strategy of shifting resources to the future implies that all assets under team control should be available for trade. In fact, however, this is not feasible, as surely some of the assets who could bring back prospects capable of brightening the future would be involved in large deals, involving many players, and require resolving a variety of issues that arise from the structure of current contracts. The deadline is not conducive to completing these kinds of trades.
Adopting this strategy would surely mean adding Manaea and Peralta to the list of available players. So too Alvarez and Mauricio. Maybe Taylor as well as Semien, and a bunch of players who have spent time this year in the minors as well as on the major league squad, including Bruhan, Melendez and Senger among others.
The primary goal of trading is to accumulate talent. Peralta should bring talent back, not what was sent to get him, but not much less. How much Manaea brings will depend on what gets thrown in with him in the trade and how much of his salary Cohen is willing to take on. We are not talking about receiving a boatload of talent in these trades, and that is one reason why we might want to wait until the offseason to evaluate our options. Right now, Mauricio and Taylor are worth more to the Mets than they could fetch on their own in trades.
Alvarez is different. He is likely to be overvalued by many teams, just as he has been by the Mets. I'd make him available just to get a sense of how other teams value him. If his trade value is not what the FO would hope it to be, I would withdraw him and the day after the season ends, I would send him to a movement performance coach, not a baseball hitting instructor who would at best be a 'consumer' of what movement experts know and develop. After that, you have to see if he has incorporated a movement pattern that will unleash his potential. I would decide what to do with him thereafter but before ST.
I would be inclined to move Semien, but few teams are desperate for a second baseman at the trade deadline. His contract may make him untradeable, whether at the deadline or during the offseason, but I would investigate the possibility in part because both Bae and Voit offer replacement value, the former in the short run, the latter in the longer term. One would have to pay a considerable part of Semien's salary, but trading Semien may yield a higher level talented pitcher or outfielder a few years away -- if you eat salary and throw in a prospect as a sweetener. Again a trade that is more likely to occur in the offseason, if at all.
I know many observers would like to see us trade Bichette. The contract however gives him all the leverage. The team most likely to pursue him should he opt out would be the Phillies who previously offered him 7 years for 200 million. They can offer him fewer years for a bit less now since the Mets will have paid him 47 million by the end of this year. If he continues to stay hot, the only trade that could be made would be with the Phillies, but they have no need to make a trade as they are the likely winning bidder in the sweepstakes for his services should he opt out.
There is a point to imagining trading everyone possible even when we know doing so is not feasible; and that has point has to do with securing an honest measure of how good or bad your team really is: not how good or bad you think it is.
When it comes to assessing the quality of your team, the best measure is what others are willing to give up to secure the player's services. Take a look at this list of players the Mets would have every reason to look into trading. What exactly are they capable of bringing back? I know salary figures in this. Lots of teams would want Senga for free. I get it. But imagine that players like him, Semien and Manaea were under reasonable contracts, and then ask, what would they fetch in return.
And Baty and Vientos: players who were nearly untouchable in trade discussions last summer? What would they fetch now? Little more than a bag of fried, not even baked, donuts.
The truth is that, as it stands, the Mets roster is far from competitive. Every team will have a few players that are worth more to them than to nearly anyone else. But the Mets are rostering a lot of players who have almost no market value. So exactly how many prospects for the future will a fire sale produce?
Not many and even fewer genuine prospects.
Option 3: The Maximalist option
I assume most Met fans hope that the team performs well enough to give the FO genuine reason to believe that the team can make the playoffs and perform well once there. Mets fans then imagine the team making significant additions at that time.
Doing so would be a mistake. The entire strategy Stearns has put in place has been predicated on the belief that the team he put together in the offseason was good enough, on its own to make a significant run to and in the playoffs. That is, the remainder of last year's team and the additions of Semien, Polanco, Peralta, Bichette and Robert, as well as Williams and Weaver.
Robert has been a no-show, but he has been replaced by Ewing and the performance has been significantly better in CF. That was a case of addition by subtraction of an addition.
We are likely to lose Bichette to the Phillies if he opts out and Peralta as well. We will be considerably the worse for those losses, and if the goal is to go all in this year, we will likely have to trade prospects who will need to help make up for those losses next year. At best, we would gain marginally this year and lose significantly going forward.
Frankly, if Lindor and Polanco come back sufficiently strongly to make the team competitive, then arguably, the only additions that would make sense would be another reliever and a bat off the bench.
Conclusion
Which option should the Mets adopt?
My preference is option 1. The fans fantasy of the team performing well enough to have the FO make significant futher investments in this year's team's prospects is a mirage. Don't look at the team's playoff's chances. That's a mirage. Look at the team's actual quality.
And the experiment of asking what you would get back in a fire sale in terms of prospects should alert any fan to the fact that many who play for this team now are very mediocre at best.
This is not a team that we should be adding to no matter how they perform over the next couple of weeks.
The case I am making is further enhanced when you factor in the losses this already weak team is likely to suffer through free agency of Bichette and Peralta. Any trades that could conceivably make this team materially more competitive now will impose costs on the future that will have immediate deleterious consequences as early as next year.
I guess that means that no matter how well or poorly the Mets perform between now and FO decision day, I believe that the best strategy to follow thereafter is basically to stand pat, and at most do what every team at the trade deadline hopes to do: add some help to the bullpen and a bat off the bench!
There is no reason to adopt option 3 under any circumstances. The only reason for adopting option 2 would be if the team is decimated by injuries and so standing pat won't provide much value in terms of information and stability.
But a fire sale that extends from the trade deadline to the offseason is just another way of starting all over again. And one reason to be wary of doing that is that the team currently has long term commitments to players whose talents would be wasted and young players at key positions whose talents can only develop further in a winning a committed environment.
So I'm for option 1, and I can't wait for the season to end. I hope the FO has the discipline to hold fast for now and the competence and will to make the right trades and FA signings in the offseason, while correcting whatever has apparently gone amiss in the minor league development program.
Hate to disappoint, but no other decision makes more sense to me. That's my default.
What's yours?
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