Just as many thought, Marcus Stroman is headed back home to New York. This move will really help out the Yankees rotation! Oh, wait, he is going to the Mets? Well, that is certainly strange on the surface, but let’s try to make some sense of it.
When this trade broke Sunday evening, I was surrounded by Met fans, all making the usual comments. “Same old Mets, this team has no idea what they are doing.” What if I were to tell you that maybe the Mets do know what they are doing? Before this trade, the Mets presumed actions were to trade off some position players, Jason Vargas, and possibly Thor and/or Zach Wheeler. The day after the Stroman trade, the Mets did in fact trade Jason Vargas to the Phillies for a catching prospect, a position that has been a thorn in the Mets side ever since Piazza. It was rumored that the Mets were looking to get major league ready starting pitching in any trade that included Syndergaard, well, they did not trade him as of yet, but they got the starting pitching they were looking for. Maybe in trade talks, that major league ready arm was something teams were not ready to budge on but would rather give the Mets a prospect they would need to continue to develop. Basically, I find it hard to believe that BVW would just randomly trade for Marcus Stroman. Another perspective to think about is the possibility of the Mets flipping Marcus Stroman to another team and getting prospects. Just think about it, the Mets have three pitchers that were supposedly on the market to be traded to contending teams in Stroman, Wheeler, and Syndergaard. The Mets now find themselves in a position of great strength in negotiations with other teams. They have what the contenders desire. Now, the potential problem with that is if the Mets price themselves out of making a deal. Perhaps the Mets get a little too greedy, knowing they have great options in a pitching trade market that appears to be dwindling given the fact the Giants and Indians are now seriously in the hunt for their league’s Wildcard spot.
While I do believe everything I just wrote could be true and hope that I shed some optimism on the situation for Met fans against this trade, I think this was a bad deal for the Mets. In the trade, the Mets sent Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods-Richardson to Toronto for Stroman and cash considerations. Both prospects the Mets sent are pitchers, drafted in the first round of the 2016 draft and the second round of the 2018 draft respectively; Kay had been regarded as their top lefty pitching prospect. A fan base that appears to be begging the Mets to rebuild this franchise with prospects is doing a remarkable job at trading top prospects away. Now, I think a reasonable person would say that a fourth-place baseball team would try to use their trade pieces to get another prospect like Anthony Kay in their system. Maybe the Mets are not run by reasonable people. We went through all this and we have not even tackled it from a pure baseball perspective. Stroman is a ground ball inducing machine with a ground ball rate of 56%. The Mets infield has 46 errors this season, their team is 13th in the NL in fielding percentage.
Will the optimistic view win out or will it the pessimistic view be triumphant as it always is with the New York Mets? At least the Met fans will love Stroman as a baseball player and a human being.
