Could a Battery of Zack Wheeler and J.T. Realmuto end up in Queens for 2021?

We’ve reached that time in the hot stove season where real news is a bit hard to come by, which leads to rampant speculation about personnel for next season or picking apart details from last season. Even in Queens, where we have. Anew owner and made a move for the pen, there is still a lot of work to be done in the next 60 days or so. The charm of new ownership will never go away – we all know Steve Cohen has plenty of cash to take the team in a variety of directions, but there is not much concrete yet to analyze in terms of the 2021 season. Still a few recent things could use some thought.

The meltdown in Philadelphia has me mesmerized. Sure, the team took a hit with attendance like all other teams, but even with a quite high payroll of $177M, players had prorated salaries and only about $100M payrolls in 2016-2018. The impression fans have been told is that the Phillies were in strong shape to start spending big time, as the acquisition of Bryce Harper intimated. Are there more financial issues than we all thought?

Two things about the status in Philadelphia could play into the Mets hands. First, and about which much has already been debated, is the free agency of J.T. Realmuto. It hardly seems a team with simmering financial issues would all the sudden turn around and dump the fortune it is going to take to bring back Realmuto. Although the Phillies finished a shade above the Nationals and Mets, there wasn’t a lot to be excited about such that making a huge catcher investment would take priority of fixing a rotten bull pen that was reminiscent of the 2019 Mets bull pen. While the Mets seem to be focusing on James McCann, it seems reasonable to expect that Sandy Alderson and Cohen have his number easy to find.

A second thing that is breaking now stems from a controversial report by Buster Olney indicating that the Phillies may be listening about trades for Zack Wheeler. Although the Phillies owner later said he wouldn’t trade Wheeler for Babe Ruth, it is fair to imagine that all this reads more like a story about the Wilpon-led Mets of yesteryear. Deep down we always knew the crazy stories, whatever they were, had more than a kernel of truth backing them. It is interesting to imagine what a trade for Wheeler might look like for a pitcher with 4 years and near $100M left on a deal. Even if this is all errant hogwash, the question remains, would the Mets eat all the contract and part with talent if that was on the table, whether it be Wheeler and the Phillies or some other starting pitcher? My guess nearly every Mets fan reading this would add the battery of Wheeler and Realmuto without even considering it further.

Unrelated to all this, and which caught my attention from the personnel perspective, was the recent mock draft results by Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo for MLB.com. In the mock draft, Callis got the Mets at position 10, and took prep center fielder James Wood (IMG Academy, Florida), who is presently committed to Mississippi State University. In a quick digging through scouting reports from a couple of places, if the 18-year-old, 6-foot 6-inch, 230-pound Wood made it to the Mets, they would be crazy to pass on him. I know the general rule is to draft the best you can regardless of position, but this would seem like a case to get a desperately needed super-projectable talent into the system at a position the team has lacked in, well, forever. Although Winter Meetings are cancelled, the time to start seeing big moves is now at our doorstep, and all the talk about major player moves, in association with a vaccine for Covid-19 makes me think an exciting first year for the Cohen-Alderson duo with actual baseball fans in the stands could be reality.