What outfield trade is the right one for the Mets to make?
A deep dive into three key names the team has been linked to so far.
With the 2025 Winter Meetings kicking off in sunny Orlando, there’s no shortage of rumors swirling around the MLB heliosphere.
Player X is connected to Team Y; A is the perfect fit for B. Every day there’s a new rumor to spin into a thought-experiment…and I sure do love to weave a narrative web. (Just don’t call me Charlotte.)
Simply put, the rumors around the Mets are all over the place. It’s hard to even keep track of it all: some of them don’t make a lot of sense for the club, and there are plenty of other ideas the front office is considering we don’t even know about.
Outside of the top two free agents in the outfield, this is (respectfully) a fairly uninspiring free agent class. Kyle Tucker and Cody Bellinger are excellent players, but they’re both pretty strictly corner fielders (Tucker exclusively a right fielder, which the Mets famously have taken care of for the foreseeable future), and they’re also both lefties. From a lineup balance perspective, those two are already imperfect center field candidates. The Mets are likely to fare better if they pursue an upgrade at the position via the trade market.
Below, I broke down three key trade candidates the Mets have been linked to most frequently and recently, via Passan or otherwise.
(NOTE: Considering recent reports about the likely unavailability of Byron Buxton and Fernando Tatis, Jr., I’ve skipped profiling them here. Should legitimate rumors reemerge, they’ll also receive a dedicated feature. I’ve also forgone covering Wilyer Abreu and Jarren Duran, as the myriad proposed trade scenarios for the Red Sox warrant a piece of their own.)
The good news? No matter how you slice it, all of these guys would be terrific defensive additions on short-term deals while Carson Benge, A.J. Ewing, and maybe even Ryan Clifford get themselves in position to make a big league impact.
The bad? None of these guys are locks to bring consistent plus-bats with their plus-gloves.
Let’s get started…