Mets make small roster adds, and a Blake Snell conversation
Mets make small roster adds, and a Blake Snell conversation
The Mets are reportedly inquiring on the two-time Cy Young Award winner, plus every other frontline starter
What’s Up with the Mets? 🍎
The Mets made their one-year, $13m deal with RHP Luis Severino official on Friday (release)
The Mets claimed two catchers off waivers:
OF/C Cooper Hummel from the Mariners
C Tyler Heineman from the Blue Jays
The Mets agreed to sign RHP Kyle Crick to a minor league deal with an invite to big league camp (Athletic)
Rumor Mill 💭
Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s price tag keeps rising - he could get a deal in excess of $250m (ESPN)
The Mets have shifted their focus away from Shohei Ohtani (story)
The Mets are inquiring almost every frontline starting pitcher, including Yamamoto, Jordan Montgomery, Eduardo Rodríguez and Blake Snell (New York Post)
Winter Meetings 🎺
The Winter Meetings are set to begin on Monday in at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza is scheduled to speak with the media at 3:20 PM ET on Monday, December 4, and David Stearns will be available in an informal capacity on Tuesday, December 5 beginning at 3:30 PM ET.
The MLB Draft Lottery will be held on Tuesday, December 5 at 4:30 PM ET and will be aired live on MLB Network.
The Mets currently have a 4.3% chance of winning the first pick in the draft. If they fail to land a top 6 pick (protected from competitive balance tax (CBT) penalties), they will automatically be bumped to the 17th pick from the 7th slot as part of the penalty for exceeding the highest CBT threshold for a second straight year.
The Rule 5 draft will be held on Wednesday, December 6 at 1 PM ET. The Mets currently have 33 players on their 40-man roster, meaning there is some wiggle room for them to take a chance on a player. If the Mets do choose a player from the major league portion of the draft, they must pay the player’s former club $100,000 and carry that player on the active roster the entire season. If they don’t, they must then be waived. If the player clears waivers, they offer that player back to their former club for $50,000. The player can only be ourighted off the 40-man roster and sent to the minors if their former team declines to take the player back.
For more on this year’s Winter Meetings, check out MLB’s primer here.
Lets talk about Blake Snell… ✍️
All of the talk this winter about the Mets and their pitching staff has generally surrounded Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and for good reason. He’s young, he’s been dominant in his league, he isn’t tied to a qualifying offer/draft pick, he fits what the Mets are trying to do both in the short and long-term, and so on and so forth.
But lately, as competition in free agency has ramped up for Yamamoto, it would seem there have been more dots connecting the Mets to other starting pitchers for the front of the rotation.
As such, according to Jon Heyman of the New York Post, the Mets are taking a look at not only Yamamoto, but Jordan Montgomery as well as two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell.
There hasn’t been a lot of noise about Snell and the Mets, which is understandable.
First off, he is tied to draft pick compensation thanks to the Padres extending him a $20.3m qualifying offer, that which was declined by Snell.
He’s also about to turn 31, and we all know what typically happens to pitchers on the back side of 30 over the course of a long-term contract. He may still have a couple of strong years ahead of him, but these deals tend to get uglier for a club as they go along.
That is not at all meant to take away from Snell and his accomplishments. He was lights out for the Padres in 2023 despite an unusually high walk rate, and was one of the best starting pitchers in baseball in 2023. He was less hittable than Gerrit Cole, who won the American League Cy Young Award for the Yankees this past season as well. Snell’s knockout punch which made him a devastating pitcher in 2023 was his curveball which saw a sharp improvement from his 2022 season. He also de-emphasized his slider in favor of that curve which unquestionably made him into what he was in 2023.
Still, the specter of a contract similar to what the Yankees gave Carlos Rodón plus the draft compensation will probably give the Mets some pause with Snell. That’s not to say someone like Montgomery is a better pitcher than Snell - he isn’t and as far as rotation placement, shouldn’t be placed ahead of Snell on any kind of depth chart.
But if the Mets can land Yamamoto, then that plus someone like Montgomery (who isn’t tied to draft pick compensation, btw) might make them better in both the short and long-term than Montgomery and Snell or Snell and a lesser starting pitcher than Montgomery and preserve that extra pick in the 2024 amateur draft at the same time.
We’ve talked a lot about the Mets desire to preserve their prospect currency, which makes it less likely they will swing a big trade to fill their gaps. They have far more financial currency than prospect currency and they continue to have almost no appetite to deal from that farm system. In fact, all they seem to want to do right now is add to the prospect base. Steve Cohen and David Stearns have made that abundantly clear.
So, keeping on that track for a moment, it would seem counter-intuitive to that strategy for the Mets to sacrifice a pick in the draft for a soon-to-be 31-year-old starting pitcher, even with the credentials he has.
It doesn’t mean I’m right or the Mets are right either. There are some people who disagree with the prospect preservation strategy, and at times I think there should be an exception to their policy as well. But all we can do is use history as a guide, listen to the words used by the Mets executive wing, look at the state of the Mets and draw a conclusion as to which track they’ll prefer.
That track, to me, is the Yamamoto/Montgomery track and if those options disappear, then Snell would be their next target.
Hot Stove 🔥
The Dodgers are expressing interest in RHP Lucas Giolito (LA Times)
The Brewers have engaged in trade talks for RHP Corbin Burnes (ESPN)
The Yankees and Padres are far apart in their trade discussions for OF Juan Soto (Athletic)
The Padres, Marlins and White Sox are showing interest in trading for Martin Maldonado (Athletic)
RHP Shane Bieber is open to signing a contract extension with his new team if he’s traded (New York Post)
OF Randy Arozarena is drawing trade interest, although the Rays aren’t actively shopping him (ESPN)
The Guardians are listening to offers for closer Emmanuel Clase (ESPN)