The “Hot Stove” season is off and running and all teams looking to upgrade their rosters have begun to put out feelers gauging interest. Several media reports will emerge daily from here on in, reflecting genuine or flimsy interest teams may or may not have on certain players. While speculation will no doubt be the meat in these reports, the devil is in the details as they say. The media gets their information from many different sources, whether it is agents, general managers, or just a team employee looking to kick the tires a little bit. Let’s just say if a team has interest in a player and calls that team about him, I’d bet the team who answered the phone put out the report. It’s all about parlaying a return or sparking interest. Small exchanges between teams become long conversations, and before long a trade is made.
Let’s not deal in conjecture though, but instead on what we already know. Since current GM Sandy Alderson joined this organization back in 2010, the Mets have made a few significant trades involving some prominent Mets players. The returns for most of these trades were young, talented prospects coveted by the partnering organization. Now the Mets are starting to see the fruits of these deals, and they have their GM’s shrewd negotiating tactics to thank for it.
When the Mets were getting calls on Carlos Beltran back in 2011, they were being courted by a handful of teams, namely Philadelphia, Texas, and his eventual destination San Francisco. The Rangers were offering multiple players, but none of which peaked the interest of Alderson. The Phillies were interested but would not part with top prospects Jon Singleton or Domonic Brown. The Giants while very interested seemed bent on a package with Jonathan Sanchez and perhaps top OF prospect, Gary Brown. Their elite prospect, Zack Wheeler, was the player Alderson was holding out for. Ken Rosenthal tweeted at the time, most likely on the Giants’ word, that the Mets “would not” get Wheeler and “we’ll see” on Brown. Well, Alderson waited the Giants out, and the Mets got Wheeler. Brown is still in the minor leagues and doesn’t seem destined for major league stardom anytime soon.
The same cat and mouse game played out in late 2012 during the R.A. Dickey trade talks. The Mets had no pressing need to trade Dickey, but listened to offers from the Blue Jays and a few other teams as they negotiated a possible extension for the knuckleballer. As Alderson denied offers including Anthony Gose and J.P. Arencibia from the Jays, the Mets assessed Dickey’s value seemingly knowing they “had the cards.” Eventually, Alderson landed Toronto’s two top prospects in Travis d’Arnaud and Noah Syndergaard in a seven player deal.
These deals were all about power and leverage. The Giants back in 2011 needed a bat to make another run at title, and the July 31st trade deadline was looming and pressing. Alderson used that leverage to his advantage, much like he did flipping Marlon Byrd and John Buck into Vic Black and Dilson Herrera at the deadline in 2013. These tactics were beneficial in Alderson’s vision for sustained success, a plan many Mets fans thought they would begin to play out this past season. Wheeler, d’Arnaud, and Black all look like legit parts of future success while Syndergaard and Herrera have shined in the minors while developing. So what next on the trade front?
What Alderson and his underlings have in store this offseason is a mystery. As recently as yesterday, an ESPN column by Buster Olney stated the Mets “will be aggressive with at least one free agent signing and one trade this offseason.” Again, the source and motive of this information can only be speculated, but you can bet Alderson will not be tipping his hand all too soon. The Mets have many young pitching assets that other teams may covet and that will surely play a part in any significant upgrade Alderson looks to acquire via trade. We’ve heard rumblings about the Mets’ queries regarding the Cubs middle infield surplus, the Rockies’ star power, and yesterday White Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez‘s name emerged. All good fodder for the fans, but if history has taught us anything, we won’t know what Sandy is dealing with until he lays it on the table. Hopefully, he waited out another pot the fans will benefit from.
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Fair enough to say he was the seller in those games.
This time around, he’s a buyer. Whole different schtick when you show up on somebody else’s doorstep, hat in hand.
Best play in town right now is playing two Chicago teams against one another, and you just know he’s playing that up. Does anyone know if they have the same battle for the back of the sports pages like the Yanks/Mets do?
Ramirez is making 10 million for 2015. I think anyone can see that this is a smoke screen by Alderson or one of his cronies. So I don’t think either Chicago GM will bite on this one. At the end of the day SA makes a trade for a corner outfielder or SS. Whichever way he decides the other position gets platooned. Any trade will have to swap salaries of some kind in order to keep the Mets payroll in line with reality.
The reason I like Anderson is because the savy he has in trades,many GM;s make huge mistakes which take franchises back years we are lucky he is making the trades because he has proven to do the right thing.
You mean huge mistakes like signing Granderson to a 4 year contract?
Alderson is good at the waiting game But when it comes time to sign an impact FA he gets an F
From a Met startng pitching perspective the three untouchables should be DeGrom, Wheeler and Harvey…all others should/could be in play …
if you bring back value, wheeler is definitely in play.
And for a guy like Soler, yeah, deGrom is too. Well … maybe not quite. But close.
Stubbornness does have its downsides.
It cost us Matt Joyce this offseason because Sandy refused to trade Ike.
Bartolo Colon and his $11 million is still on the damn team because of his stubbornness.
Chris Young, Franky Frank, DJ Carrasco were on the roster months too long because of it.
Some would say it caused us to not an immediate return for Jose Reyes (but we got Kevin Plawecki as the comp pick so we did get something)
I agree with Jerry Grote. It’s easy being a seller.
Buying, is much harder and Alderson has shown jack shit in this department
If Jack Shit can hit and play either LF or shortstop, we’ll take him. lol.
But I agree with you. Alderson signings have not been good so far. His trades have been for the most part.
Agreed. Hes showed he can trade down pretty well. However his lateral trades arent much to brag about (I mean really, we got soaked for Torres), and who knows if he can trade up. Right now there is little evidence he is ready to really go hard to win. I also have some real doubts about the Mets talent scouting as presently configured.
Those signings were low risk, one year deals. You can add Rauch and Lyon to that list too, but I can’t kill him for those. Looks worse in hindsight.
I still like the Grandy signing, i think he’ll bounce back with a better yr.
Chris Young, Franky frank, DJ Carrasco?
Chris Young got 7.25 mil. That might be low risk if your payroll is 200+ mil, but for a club with a payroll of 80-90 mil, that’s not low risk.
Franky Frank got 2 years/12 mil. Neither a 1 year deal nor low risk.
DJ got 2 year/2.4 mil. Not a 1 year deal, and by reliever standards, medium risk.
The problem with these guys weren’t the signings , they were all ok or at worst a slight overpay at the time of the signing, it was his reluctance to despose of these guys in-season.