The registers are open. The sale will soon begin.
With less than a month before the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, Mets co-interim general manager John Ricco characterized the current trade market as “fairly normal,” while estimating roughly half the league consider their teams buyers.
The Mets are looking to next season, and their recently formed three-man GM team — Ricco, J.P. Ricciardi and Omar Minaya — speak twice a day on conference calls, discussing how best to build for the future.
It will start with a trade. It could end with several more.
“A lot of calls coming in, a lot of calls going out, still a little bit of a dance,” Ricco said. “They’re all trying to gauge what’s out there and what’s available and what the price might be, and we’re trying to do the same thing. We’re trying to see who might be real fits for our players.”
Though Ricco recently said the Mets are open to discussing Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard, the longtime Mets executive also stressed his desire to contend for the postseason next year and his reluctance to start from scratch without the team’s top pitchers.
Still, deGrom and Syndergaard haven’t been labeled untouchable.
“We’re not out there actively looking to move Jacob or Noah by any stretch,” Ricco said. “I think honestly it would take a team to come in and present an overwhelming deal for us to move on from one of those guys. They’re just that kind of player and they mean so much to the organization. But J.P., Omar and I are having constant dialogue with other teams about all different trade possibilities, and internally we’re having a lot of discussions about different options moving forward. We’re still somewhat in the early stages of that, but it’s kind of the process we’re in right now.”
Ricco added that he believes one of the aces could be dealt and not necessarily force the Mets into a years-long rebuilding.
“If the return is the right one and you’re getting young players that are major league ready, I think you can,” Ricco said. “I think some organizations have shown that — that you can do a pretty quick turnaround. Like I said, it would have to be somewhat of an overwhelming return for us to even consider something like that.”
Zack Wheeler or Steven Matz are other matters, as are other potential trade chips Asdrubal Cabrera and Jeurys Familia.
Matz, 27, is 4-5 with a 3.46 ERA this season, while Wheeler has a 4.36 ERA and has recently built his value as high as it has been since he missed two full seasons following Tommy John surgery.
Because of the dearth of high-end starting pitching available at the deadline — and numerous contending teams seeking to upgrade their rotations — the Mets could take advantage of their midseason desperation and build for the future with the members of the rotation they believed would carry them into it.
“If we can use the leverage point of the trade deadline to make a better deal than we’d be otherwise able to make and scarcity of supply, we’ll certainly look into that,” Ricco said. “Generally starting pitching is hard to come by, so we know we have a pretty valuable commodity in that regard.”
Though the identity of next season’s general manager remains unclear — and could come from outside the current triumvirate — Ricco said a franchise-changing trade could still occur.
“From my perspective, we’re just looking to make the best decisions for the organization,” Ricco said. “To the extent that we’re gonna make any organization-changing decisions, we’ll check with ownership, and we’ll present them, and if the group feels it’s the right thing moving forward, we’ll proceed accordingly.”