Only a playoff contender would want Flaherty. A playoff contender that wants Flaherty would not give up solid pitching because an unpredictable OF was packaged with it. If they're interested in Flaherty, they don't have pitching to give.
Probably a better idea to wait until one of these contenders blows it in post season and starts shipping guys off.
Right.
Carlson is a league average outfielder. Most teams have those in their system already. TON has some upside, but I think your description of "unpredictable" is accurate.
I didn’t think they’d trade an outfielder. I don’t see the benefit of waiting. Their value won’t rise. Urgency from other teams will decline. Now seemed like the time. But they don’t have the stomach for hard trades.
I see one of them being moved in the offseason for a pitcher when more teams will be involved.
I have no faith in that happening.
Why is that?
They did acquire pitching that has a chance to make an impact on the roster in 2024 and beyond.
They also have the opportunity to trade any of the players they acquired to get a starter.
I don't see an issue with their approach as long as they sign a starter of similar levels to Montgomery or Giolito, trade for another starter, and let younger pitchers compete for the 5th slot.
They got a top 60 prospect back and some decent pieces for 5 expiring contracts. That's a good haul imo
They got pretty much what I projected. Actually, even slightly better because I didn't think a top 100 prospect would come back. Unless they added a position player to one of these trades, they wasn't getting a 100% penciled in starter for next season. The Mets didn't even get that for Verlander and Scherzer.
Yeah, this is how I view the deadline. They weren't getting a MLB starter unless they were willing to part with more than 1 year left on their contract unless they traded any of the position players or starters beyond DeJong.
This team actually needs more OF help in the off-season to not force Edman and Donovan to play out of position as well as to limit Walker and Burleson's time out there in addition to depth. Trading DC or TON is counter intuitive to that.
Will the 2024 staff Ace be better than Jordan Montgomery
Not sure I have a problem with that depending on what other starter is acquired.
If rotation is some combination of:
Montgomery
Mikolas
Pitcher acquired via trade
Matz
Hudson/Liberatore/Kloffenstein/Robberse/Graceffo/McGreevy/Hjerpe/Rom/Woodford
I don't see that necessarily as a bad thing. All of those guys aside from Hudson and Woodford would have options left, right, aside from maybe Liberatore?
I'm impressed that they practically doubled the amount of SP prospects in the system for players that were gone anyway, especially a guy I practically thought they should DFA early on. When they deal with injury and underperformance from the pitching staff out of spring training like they will no matter how good or bad it looks on paper there are arms that are close and legit prospects are starters 6-9 on the depth chart for once.
I don't see an outfield logjam, because I don't think Walker is an outfielder and if he is, O'Neill or Carlson will need to caddy for him. What I do see is a 2B/3B logjam and it's interesting that they added to that. It is clear that is the depth they are going to try and deal from for a starter, so even if indirectly I think they're setting themselves up to improve in 2024.
Nobody had a SP prospect that is MLB ready to trade for 2 mos of league average Jack Flaherty. That's called a pitching surplus and if you have a pitching surplus you don't trade it for a rental pitcher.
Mo sure has his work cut out for him this offseason, but I think they did well, or at least did what they had to do at the deadline.
Last edited by haltz on August 1 23, 5:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
