The New York Mets have not exactly made a habit of pulling off the kind of deadline reunion fans love to daydream about. The concept is simple enough: trade a player in July, watch him spend a couple of months elsewhere, then bring him back in the offseason.
It sounds tidy, even a little cinematic. In practice, the Mets’ last version of that story goes back to a Brodie Van Wagenen move.
The most recent example was Jeurys Familia. He was the last Mets player dealt at the deadline and then signed back as a free agent after the season.
That 2018 deadline came during a messy stretch for the Mets, when the front office situation was already shifting. Sandy Alderson had stepped away, and the club moved through a period where decisions were being shaped more by a faction than a traditional setup.
The deadline itself was light on impact. Familia was among the players moved, along with Asdrubal Cabrera, Jose Bautista, and a few others who found new teams.
Familia’s trip to the (Oakland) Athletics was less about a baseball reset than it was about the Mets clearing money. That fit the broader tone of those 2017-2018 summers, when the team was stuck on the wrong side of the playoff race and dealing players for modest returns. The pattern was familiar: move someone out, get back a fringe major leaguer, and hope for the best.
When Familia returned, the Mets were bringing back a familiar late-inning arm, but not in the role many expected. He didn’t come back to close. Instead, he worked as a setup man ahead of the newly acquired Edwin Diaz.
Over three seasons, the Mets paid Familia $30 million, and he posted a 4.62 ERA. That number is dragged down by a rough first year, while the second and third seasons were better, including an ERA under 4.00 in each of those two years.
Even so, he drew plenty of the blame for the club’s struggles in 2019 while pitching in front of Diaz. The 2020 Mets had little room to mount any kind of comeback, and they never looked like they were going to.
In 2021, Familia finished with a 3.94 ERA, a mark that beat his expected statistics. He picked up just one save in those three seasons, but the overall feeling never changed much: he was still the kind of reliever who made everyone hold their breath.
That history matters now because the 2026 Mets could be staring at a similar possibility with one of their pending free agents, Clay Holmes, among the more obvious candidates.
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