The New York Mets couldn’t finish off a sweep of the Colorado Rockies on Thursday, with Craig Kimbrel giving up the deciding grand slam in the eighth inning. The seeds of that defeat were planted Wednesday night, when, despite an eight-run lead in the middle of the sixth, the Mets had to use their three high-leverage relievers to finish the game. Hence Kimbrel in the eighth of a tie game Thursday and a missed opportunity.
Back-to-back series wins to start the trip are nice, of course, in the beggars-can’t-be-choosers sense, given where the Mets were after their homestand. But Thursday’s loss is a reminder of all the ground the Mets need to make up because of their start. Sometimes, even taking two of three doesn’t feel like enough.
In Wednesday’s mailbag, we focused on David Stearns’ job — what he did and didn’t do in the winter, what his status would be. Today, let’s take a more around-the-organization perspective on the trade deadline, internal evaluations and the minor-league system.
I blame the dead bird on Opening Day for this miserable season. Which tradeable players on this roster still hold value and what type of players could they bring back? — Camilo Z.
Let’s start with this: It’s way too early to discuss which direction the Mets are going to take at the trade deadline, and if we were to plot it out, I’d still guess the Mets are likelier to be buyers at the deadline than sellers.
So, take it with a large grain of salt, but if the Mets were to sell, they’d have a couple of intriguing players to deal.
That starts with Freddy Peralta, who would have a good chance of being the best starter available at the deadline — and as good a starter as has been available at the deadline in the last three years. The Mets traded two top-100 prospects for Peralta in the winter, and they’d be slated to land a draft pick (after the fourth round) were he to sign elsewhere this offseason. I would think Peralta would be able to bring back a single top-100 prospect and maybe one other prospect in a July trade.
Clay Holmes is pitching like an All-Star, one who would definitely opt out of the final year of his initial three-year deal with the Mets to hit free agency again this winter. Holmes doesn’t have the track record Peralta does, and he’d project more to an acquiring team as a potential playoff starter than a surefire one. Further, opt-outs and player options can muddle a player’s trade value: Teams don’t like the worst-case scenario of trading for a guy likely to opt out only to get stuck paying for a long injury absence. So Holmes’ value might be less than you’d expect.
Brooks Raley is set to be a free agent at the end of the season, and Raley has been excellent again since returning from Tommy John surgery last summer. A.J. Minter, if he returns to full health between now and Aug. 3, would also fetch something of note on the trade market. David Peterson would need to surge back to his All-Star form from the first half of last year to have significant market value, as well.
Beyond those impending free agents, there’s not a whole lot of movable pieces here. Bo Bichette’s complex contract makes trading him tougher. Luis Robert Jr. needs to get healthy and perform to be of interest to other teams. Guys such as Marcus Semien, Sean Manaea and Kodai Senga would have to be straight salary dumps at this point.
Does it make sense to take a run at trading for Mike Trout? — Dom Z.
Would I enjoy watching Mike Trout play baseball every day? Yes. Can I envision a scenario, however narrow, in which it would make a single iota of sense for the Mets to try to trade for Trout? Maybe. Can I imagine David Stearns actually doing that? No.
Trout is owed about $142 million over the next four seasons. He’s played in fewer than half of the Los Angeles Angels’ games over the last five years. The Mets unloaded a more reliably productive player in Brandon Nimmo who was making significantly less because of concerns about his long-term fit. They are not about to bring in Trout to replace that lost offense.
Assuming some positive regression is likely, how much meaningful offensive improvement is it practical to expect from this roster as currently constructed? If the team gets fully healthy and several everyday players normalize to their historical production, what is the highest realistic ceiling? It feels like the optimistic case depends on a lot of hitters improving regardless of front office moves, so I’m curious where the line is between reasonable upside and wishful thinking. — Anonymous
Projection systems still find it reasonable to view this as one of the 10 best offenses in baseball. FanGraphs has it eighth, between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Kansas City Royals. The Bat X projection system views Francisco Lindor and Bichette as roughly three-win players the rest of the way (even accounting for Lindor’s injury) and believes eight of the nine eventual regulars will be league-average or better hitters.
So an optimist who thought the Mets offense should be good entering the season probably shouldn’t move too much off that position because of a bad month or so to start the season. The issue with your question, a pessimist might point out, is the assumption about returning to full health. Lindor is already out for a while, and by the time he eventually returns, another key player could be out. And the Mets’ depth is anchored by Brett Baty, whom the projection systems have been relatively down on since before the season.
How has the lack of development/production of Mauricio, Vientos, Baty, Alvarez set the club back, and to what degree should the front office have done a better job of “scouting their own” in considering trading away these now-less-than-shiny former prospects? How much more “runway” can this group have? — Ian N.
Looking at two players succeeding at MLB level that were in Mets system — Carlos Cortes and Jeremiah Jackson — was it poor evaluation? Poor coaching? I realize their sample sizes are small, but with the Mets’ roster constantly adding/dropping players who have bounced thru several teams in the last few years, are the Mets worse than most teams in player eval and development? —Anonymous
This is an area where the Mets have been hurt by their constant turnover in the front office. I mean, seriously: Since 2018, the Mets have employed seven heads of baseball operations. By reaching a third season, David Stearns is their longest-tenured lead decision-maker since Sandy Alderson stepped aside in 2018. This is a wild amount of change.
What happens when there’s turnover like this in the front office? Typically, there is subsequent turnover throughout the organization, and thus internal evaluations are not as easy. The people evaluating Cortes and Jackson are not the ones who acquired them via the draft or trade in the first place, and so they’re unlikely to be as enamored of them to begin with.
And with incumbent prospects such as Mauricio, Vientos, Baty and Alvarez, different front offices are going to view those guys differently and act accordingly — and those shifts in perspective can be jarring for younger players. With Mauricio, Vientos and Baty, I get the sense the Mets would be happy if just one of them broke out and became a good everyday player. And to those guys’ credit, that did happen in 2024 and 2025. It just wasn’t the same guy in each year, and that’s why everyone is still here with unclear trade value.
Do you think we will see A.J. Ewing this season? — Tom N.
I wouldn’t be surprised if A.J. Ewing made his way to Queens before the end of the season. He’s been impressive since the very start of spring training, and — I don’t know if you’ve noticed — the Mets have had to deal with several injuries in the outfield. If Luis Robert Jr. goes down or Carson Benge falls into a deep funk, if MJ Melendez and Jared Young and Mike Tauchman can’t be helpful stopgaps, then Ewing could be next in line. And once he arrives with the Mets, I imagine quite the negotiation between him and Minter over No. 33, right?
What is Mendoza’s problem with MJ Melendez? He doesn’t play him when he’s been hitting. Then, he plays him but pulls him as soon as he gets going. Wednesday night, he gets a triple, a single, and a walk, OPS over 1.000, and he replaces him with Taylor who gets thrown out stealing second immediately. Is Melendez such a terrible outfielder that Mendoza doesn’t want him in the lineup? — Nick B.
In short, yeah, the Mets don’t like Melendez playing too much of the outfield. Statcast has Melendez at 17 outs below average in the outfield since 2022; Baseball Info Solutions has him costing his team 23 runs with his outfield defense in that time.
And they don’t like him facing left-handed pitchers, against whom he owned a .541 OPS from 2023 to 2025.
Who decides on the line-up each night? Mendy? Front Office? How much actual control does Mendy have over the team in game? —Bradley M.
I did a Q&A with Mendoza last summer about how he puts the lineup together. There’s obviously input from the front office and the coaching staff, but in the end, it’s the manager making the decision about how to put that group together. It’s similar to in-game decisions. Mendoza might talk over scenarios with the front office and be persuaded one way or the other, but he’s still the one enacting anything during the game.