Jim Bowden’s latest warning for Mets fans is simple: if the Chicago White Sox really want Luis Torrens, they may be ready to come in with a strong enough offer to make David Stearns listen.
Bowden said the White Sox are engaged on Torrens, and that matters because Torrens is exactly the kind of player the Mets value highly. He’s a perfect backup, the kind of catcher who fits his role so well that New York would probably prefer to keep him in the ninth spot more often than not. Signed for two more seasons after an extension earlier this year, he’s not the sort of piece the Mets should move casually.
Still, the Mets shouldn’t shut the door entirely. If the right deal is there, Torrens is available.
The catch is that recent reporting from Bob Nightengale about the Mets not wanting to move a top 10 prospect makes the usual White Sox-style framework harder to build. If New York is truly holding its top 10 prospects off limits, then a Torrens trade only works if Chicago takes back a bad contract too.
That’s where the Mets’ own payroll mess comes into play. They have plenty of money tied up in players who don’t fit cleanly, and the article points to Marcus Semien and Kodai Senga as examples of the kind of contracts New York may want to move.
Semien, in particular, is framed as the cleaner fit for a deal like this. He still has $46 million remaining after this year, and if the Mets are looking to get out from under a contract, that one carries more urgency than a deal that expires after 2027.
Sean Manaea is mentioned as another possibility, but he doesn’t quite fit the same way. He has only one more year left and has been much better lately, which makes him more of a player the Mets could wait on and perhaps flip later rather than attach to Torrens right now.
The proposed framework is straightforward: the Mets send Torrens and take back Semien, while also landing the White Sox’s 11th-best prospect instead of one from the top 10. In the article’s example, that prospect is Wolkow, a 6-foot-7, 20-year-old left-handed hitter who plays the outfield.
He’s described as a Ryan Clifford type, with power and plenty of strikeouts, but also some real athleticism. A seventh-round pick in 2023, Wolkow hit a career-high 15 home runs in High-A this year and stole 33 bases last season.
For the Mets, that kind of deal would mean getting a real prospect back while also clearing salary. For the White Sox, it would mean landing their catcher and, as the article puts it, a locker room leader.
It’s also the kind of trade Chicago would likely reject, and not just because their owner isn’t a Steve Cohen fan. But the bigger point is clear: if the Mets are going to get creative in trade talks, they may need to think beyond the usual prospect-for-player formula. With penalties tied to going over certain salary thresholds starting in 2028, moving the Semien contract may end up being more valuable than dealing any deal that expires after 2027.
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The discussion gets even more eyebrow-raising because it frames the Mets as a team that could be looking to reshape its core while another club searches for stability at shortstop. Castillos piece also points to the kind of prospect package that would have to be in play if a deal ever gained traction, but the biggest obstacle is obvious: Lindor controls the process, and any real movement would hinge on whether he ever became open to it. [Read more 🡒]