The Mets’ trade deadline haul looks a lot better now than it did in the moment, and one round into the MLB playoffs, the picture is getting clearer fast.
A lot of the players moved this summer are already gone from October. Some never made it in.
Some barely stepped on the field before their teams were eliminated. And for New York, that has turned what looked like a busy deadline into one that’s tilting hard in the Mets’ favor.
Luke Weaver and A.J. Minter never even got a postseason chance because the Pittsburgh Pirates and Minnesota Twins fell short in their Wild Card races.
The Pirates at least keep Weaver for another year. The Twins got Minter as a rental in a deal that sent power-hitting prospect Billy Amick and Bruin Agbayani to Minnesota, with Agbayani having barely played professionally but still ranking well enough in the Mets system to be more than just the son of a fan-favorite.
The same kind of story played out elsewhere. Clay Holmes, Tyrone Taylor, and David Peterson were all moved to the Chicago Cubs, but with Chicago knocked out earlier this week, Holmes didn’t pitch, Taylor had one at-bat, and Peterson logged 1.2 innings in relief.
Brooks Raley also never got into the postseason at all for the Philadelphia Phillies after being left off their roster. His 7.94 ERA in the regular season makes that easier to understand, and the move has already swung back toward the Mets, with Luke Gabrysh in Double-A and already dealing with some rough early results, including a 6.88 ERA in four starts.
Still, Philadelphia is left with nothing.
Freddy Peralta is one of the few deadline names still standing. He helped the Tampa Bay Rays earn a bye, and they’ll open the ALDS against the New York Yankees on Saturday with Drew Rasmussen named as the starter.
Peralta should be in that series, too. He was the AL Pitcher of the Month for September, and that kind of run is exactly what a short series can ride.
Huascar Brazoban is also still alive with the Chicago White Sox after they got the Houston Astros in the Wild Card round and handled them quickly. But his first postseason outing wasn’t clean.
He got one out of the three batters he faced, allowed a hit, and hit a batter. It was only his second playoff appearance overall, with the other coming for the Miami Marlins in 2023.
That’s the bigger Mets story here: not just that their deadline moves are holding up, but that so many of the teams they went to are already out or barely got a chance to matter. In a playoff field where only one club gets to finish on top, New York’s deadline looks more lopsided by the day.
In Other News...
One Of The Strangest Mets Pitching Feats Still Stands Alone
Rob Gardners afternoon on Oct. 2, 1965, still sits in a class of its own in Mets history. In a 0-0 tie against the Phillies, the left-hander kept going deep into extra innings and wound up throwing 15 innings, a workload that became one of the strangest official pitching lines in the franchises early years.
The game itself was replayed the next day and did not count in the standings, but Gardners individual numbers from that day still do. More than six decades later, his 15-inning outing remains the Mets record, untouched by every starter and reliever who has followed. [Read more 🡒]
Mets History Has One No-Hit Pattern Fans Will Want To Argue Over
The Mets have lived through their share of pitching misery over the years, but one strange wrinkle stands out in the clubs no-hit history: four of the eight no-hitters thrown against them came during doubleheader games. It is the sort of odd footnote that baseball history produces once in a while, and for a franchise that has seen everything from heartbreak to rare moments of perfection, it adds another layer to a long-running ledger of tough afternoons and memorable pitching performances.
Jim Bunnings perfect game in 1964 and Max Scherzers no-hitter in 2015 sit near the top of that list for very different reasons, and the outcomes around those games were not always the same from one side of a twin bill to the next. Some of those Mets doubleheader no-hit games ended in losses, others in wins, which is part of what makes the pattern worth arguing about. It is not just a trivia quirk, either - it is a reminder that with this team, even the most brutal history often comes with a twist. [Read more 🡒]
Mets Offseason Plans Could Depend On This Prospect Wave
David Stearns left the door open for the Mets to lean on their own farm system this winter, signaling at his end-of-season press conference that internal prospects could help fill some of the clubs offseason needs. It is the kind of approach that can matter even more when a front office is trying to balance roster building with broader uncertainty, and the Mets have several names in the pipeline who have given the organization reasons to pay attention.
Voit, Pitre, Rojas and Amick have all turned in encouraging minor league stretches, giving the Mets a possible wave of help if any of them are ready to make the jump next season. New York is also keeping an eye on roster flexibility as it weighs the possibility of a lockout and the economic questions surrounding the next round of CBA talks, which could make internal options more valuable than ever. [Read more 🡒]