The Cincinnati Reds may not have officially cashed in on the 2022 deadline deal with the Mets yet, but the early returns are already tilting hard in their favor - and Jose Acuna is making sure that trade keeps looking worse for New York.
Back then, the Mets sent Tyler Naquin and Phillip Diehl to Cincinnati in exchange for two prospects who were easy to overlook at the time. Naquin’s run in New York never really took off; he hit .203/.246/.390, while Diehl never appeared in an MLB game for the club. That alone left the bar pretty low for the Reds’ side of the deal.
Hector Rodriguez has already helped push the trade toward Reds territory. He reached Triple-A and put together a solid 2025 season before taking another step forward in 2026. But Acuna is the piece that could turn this from a likely win into a full-blown steal.
The 23-year-old right-hander is back in Double-A, repeating the level after a strong 2025 in Chattanooga, and he’s been even better this season. In 78 2/3 innings, he has posted a 3.43 ERA, up from 3.64 last year, while his strikeout rate has jumped from 22.9% to 26.8%.
He’s also cut his walk rate from 12.6% to 9.6%, and opposing hitters have had a much tougher time against him, with his batting average against dropping from .222 to .184. He’s done all that in 14 starts, compared with 18 last season, while logging seven more innings than he did in 2025.
Acuna was never the more buzzed-about name in the trade. Rodriguez was clearly ahead of him in the prospect conversation, and Acuna still doesn’t crack the Reds’ top 30 prospects on either MLB Pipeline or Baseball America. Even so, he has kept producing since joining the organization.
That matters because the Mets are in a rough spot. They fell apart down the stretch last season and let Cincinnati pass them for a playoff spot, then stumbled badly to open this year. The result was the firing of Carlos Mendoza, and the rotation has been one of the biggest problems all along.
Veterans Sean Manaea and Kodai Senga have both disappointed, and some of the team’s better-regarded pitching prospects have not taken the expected step forward. Jonah Tong has a 6.30 ERA in Triple-A, while Nolan McLean - who MLB executives reportedly liked more than Sal Stewart as an NL Rookie of the Year pick in an offseason poll - has hit a wall lately.
McLean did start hot enough that his overall numbers still look respectable, including a 4.03 ERA. But since May 1, he’s been at a 5.00 ERA, and he needs adjustments.
That doesn’t mean the Mets won’t eventually get useful young starters out of McLean and Tong. It just means they could still use more help there, and Acuna is looking more and more like the kind of arm they could have used.
In the end, the 2022 Mets moved two pieces they saw as fringe upgrades - a platoon bat and a left-handed bullpen arm - and gave up two lottery tickets to get them. Now those lottery tickets are starting to pay out, with Rodriguez rising and Acuna surging. Cincinnati is awfully close to turning that trade into a jackpot.
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