The Mets know better than most how brutal it can be to trade a top prospect for a short-term fix. That’s why what they pulled off with the Cubs this summer feels like real damage control - and maybe even the kind of move that looks smarter with time.
Five years ago, New York dealt 19-year-old Pete Crow-Armstrong, a former first-round pick, to Chicago for Javier Baez and Trevor Williams. It has aged terribly for the Mets.
Crow-Armstrong has become one of baseball’s best outfielders and, after a monster season, is the heavy favorite for the National League MVP Award. Baez did his part in Queens, but only for two months.
The Mets missed the playoffs, then watched him leave in free agency and sign with the Tigers that winter.
This year’s deadline swap with the Cubs went the other way. Chicago sent infielder Jefferson Rojas, one of its top prospects, to New York for Clay Holmes and Tyrone Taylor.
Both veterans arrived as rentals for the stretch run, and both are set up to hit free agency soon. Taylor is on an expiring contract, while Holmes is expected to decline his player option and look for a multi-year deal on the open market.
That matters because Rojas is suddenly sitting at the top of the Mets’ prospect list. The 21-year-old hit .280 with a .929 OPS in 29 games at Double-A Binghamton after the trade, then got a late-season bump to Triple-A Syracuse.
In six games there, he batted .308 with a 1.037 OPS and three home runs. If that bat shows up again when camp opens next year, he could be in line to factor into the Mets’ big-league plans early in 2027.
The Cubs, meanwhile, didn’t get much return on the field when it mattered most. They were swept out by the Padres in the first round of the playoffs, and neither deadline pickup made a real imprint in the Wild Card Series. Holmes didn’t pitch, and Taylor was 1-for-1 with a pinch-hit single.
Taylor had been useful for Chicago in the second half after a strong run with the Mets, but Holmes saw his numbers slip. He posted a 2.39 ERA in nine starts with New York before a fractured fibula on a comebacker in May. In Chicago, he finished the regular season with a 4.25 ERA in the same number of starts.
If the Cubs were still playing this month, the whole trade would look different. Chicago has lived that exact script before. In 2016, the Cubs brought in Aroldis Chapman before the deadline, gave up Gleyber Torres and more to the Yankees, and got the payoff that mattered: Chapman helped them win the World Series.
There’s still another twist here, too. Holmes is likely to be available this winter, and the Mets are looking for starting pitching upgrades. That leaves open the possibility that New York could circle back and sign him, the way the Yankees did with Chapman after his brief stop in Chicago.
Of course, Rojas still has to become a big leaguer. Nobody knew Crow-Armstrong would turn into an MVP-caliber player when that trade happened, and the same uncertainty hangs over this one.
Even so, the Mets have reasons to like what they got. People in the organization believe Rojas has a high floor because of how complete his game is, and his extra power this summer only raised the ceiling.
So while this doesn’t erase the sting of the Crow-Armstrong deal, or the wreckage of New York’s 74-win season, it does give David Stearns and the Mets a clear win: two rentals turned into a consensus top-100 prospect.
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