BOSTON -- A day before the latest bit of Mets insanity leaked out -- we'll get to that in a moment -- a longtime executive talked about the extraordinary opportunity the team possessed in 2018 to completely reset and position themselves as a National League powerhouse for many seasons to come.
If you recall, it was mostly a long, terrible summer last year. The New York Mets were out of contention by midseason, and the team announced that Sandy Alderson was taking a step back as he went through cancer treatment, although folks within the organization understood that this was just a backdoor method of firing the longtime general manager.
In the midst of all this, Jacob deGrom became the best pitcher in baseball, having one of the best seasons for any starter ever, and there was discussion within the Mets' organization about cashing in deGrom and other valuable trade chips and remaking the team. The value of deGrom, who had just turned 30, would never be higher than in the middle of the 2018 pennant race, and he would have fetched a boatload of prospects. His value was so high that his agent at the time, Brodie Van Wagenen, would use the inherent leverage to issue a "pay him or trade him" demand.
Because the Mets never even went through the serious exercise of listening to trade offers, it's hard to know exactly what return they would have gotten. But as the executive mused, imagine if there had been an aggressive sell-off: deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and others would have netted the best of the Padres', Dodgers', Braves' or Astros' prospects in an aggressive sell-off. The Mets might have had the likes of Chris Paddack or Gavin Lux and three or four others added to the team's best minor leaguers, Jarred Kelenic and Justin Dunn.