KANSAS CITY — The Mets don’t want to rebuild and they don’t want to spend years at the bottom of the standings in order to acquire prospects. But they also don’t see a path to contention this or year or next, so in order to get those coveted prospects, the Mets had to sell.
The club traded four players ahead of the deadline Tuesday and in total parted with six in the last week and seven in the last two months. That would put them firmly in the “seller” category, but in a sense, they actually bought prospects. They paid down the salaries of players in order to obtain better prospects in return. GM Billy Eppler is confident the Mets can turn things around in a span of two to three years. It’s a much shorter timeline than a full-blown rebuild.
“To get to the sustainability that we always talk about, we were going to have to do that organically,” Eppler said on a Zoom call. “There are lots of ways to do that and I think some of the more traditional ways have been when teams have — for lack of a better word — tanked and put themselves at the top of the amateur draft order every single year. That can take five, six, seven years to do that.
“We don’t want to endure that and we don’t think you have to endure long stretches like that in order to build something sustainable. That’s another part of our goal.”
The Mets have traded seven veterans since late June and six since Thursday: Infielder Eduardo Escobar, outfielders Tommy Pham and Mark Canha, closer David Robertson, right-handed reliever Dominic Leone and right-handed aces Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer. In return, they received prospects they assigned to all levels of the system, from 17-year-old Dominican Summer League player Jeremy Rodriguez to Triple-A right-hander Justin Jarvis. The headliner of the group is the brother of Atlanta Braves star outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr., infielder Luisangel Acuña, who was assigned to Double-A Binghamton and instantly became the club’s second-rated prospect.
Prospects like Acuña, the son of former Mets farmhand Ronald Acuña Sr., could reach the Major Leagues in another few years, but others won’t become impact big leaguers for years. Eppler didn’t necessarily dispute the notion that the club isn’t reloading to attempt another playoff run in 2024, as Scherzer hasn’t said publicly.
“We won’t have the same odds in 2024,” the second-year GM said. “But we’ll put together a competitive team.”
Eppler noted the players he didn’t trade who are signed for next season, like relievers Brooks Raley and Adam Ottavino, as well as Pete Alonso. It’s a complicated situation with Alonso, who heard his name floated in trade rumors for the first time this season Tuesday morning when Scherzer’s comments were made public. Eppler declined to comment on whether or not he engaged in trade talks about Alonso.
The homegrown first baseman is signed through next season and due a raise in arbitration next year. There have been no talks about a contract extension as of late.
So yes, Alonso is around next season, as are Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil, Francisco Lindor, Starling Marte, Kodai Senga, Jose Quintana and the relievers. But the players that will join them as free-agent signings won’t be of the same caliber as Verlander and Scherzer. The Mets will use free agency to supplement the roster with role players.
Eppler doesn’t think the Mets’ timeline will dissuade players from coming to Queens as free agents.
“That’s for the players to evaluate,” Eppler said. “When we sit down with players, we articulate how we’re going to kind of look at the short-term and if it’s somebody who is going to go on a multi-year deal, we can talk about the longer-term. But at the end of the day, the player is going to process a lot of decisions and that’s the calculus they use to come to those decisions. But I don’t think that puts us in any different scenario.”
The Mets answered a lot of questions with the trade deadline Tuesday. The answers were tough to reconcile after the sky-high expectations the club started the year with, but a decision was made to move on and the Mets will now turn their attention toward player development for the foreseeable future.
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