2 Trades I Want to See the Mets Make Before Today’s Deadline
2 Trades that Complete the Mets
We’ve reached the MLB trade deadline! The Mets have been pretty quiet this year in their pursuits. I’ve been hard pressed to find any links to specific players, instead settling for that they are targeting pitchers (obviously). We’re in the 11th hour and much of the premier market has diminished. Skubal has seemingly been pulled from the market, Crochet doesn’t make much sense for the Mets and Flaherty might be very expensive after what Yusei Kikuchi netted the Blue Jays last night.
To be honest, I do not think the Mets have to go big with their trades, but I want to see them go after guys with a clear path of upside. Trevor Rogers continues to be a popular name this morning. While I haven’t deep dived into him, outside a good rookie year in the middle of the sticky stuff era, there isn’t anything to write home about. Simply put, I’m not a fan. Especially from a division rival to acquire a young starter with control. Does not look like that would match up well for the Mets. If you want to quickly read more, check out this Eno Sarris tweet from today here.
Realistically, Senga and Scott are sidelined, Severino is our guy, and Manaea has had a lot of flashes of being a capable SP3. Personally I think the Mets need a stop gap to take on innings that also has some upside. We just need to get to the playoffs when our rotation becomes healthy again. Senga can lead us, Severino will be SP2, Manaea SP3. Quintana will be SP4 if we need and Scott, Butto, Peterson can be very effective long relief options for us. As long as Alvarez is catching them, I can rock with Manaea and Quintana with confidence.
Here we go, 2 trades, 3 players, how does this help turn the Mets around.
Note: I will lean with aggressive returns in these trades in an attempt to not underestimate the market state, high leverage relievers have been getting great packages like Carlos Estevez and Jason Adam. I’m a little unsure what type of return lower leverage, non-closer relief pitchers would get. Listed prospect rankings will be from MLB Pipeline
Trade 1:
Mets Receive: Tanner Banks LHRP (4.5 years of team control, 1 MiLB option)
White Sox Receive: Ronald Hernandez C (Mets #19 prospect), Kade Morris (Mets #25 prospect)
Tanner Banks is the second best lefty on the market next to Tanner Scott. I’ve been on Tanner Banks for almost two months now and he’s still available. This is a must get for me. I’m going to start with inherited runners. Inherited runners are any runners on base when a pitcher enters the game. I.e. if Jose Quintana is taken out in the 6th inning with runners on first and second base, the relief pitcher inherits two runners.
There are 3 relief pitchers (Fernando Cruz, TJ McFarland, Angel Zerna) in MLB that have inherited at least 30 runners with a better inherited score percentage (IS%) (the percentage of runners a pitcher inherits that score because of them) than Banks. Banks’ IS% stands at 27% allowing only 9 of his 33 inherited runners to score. League average for this metric is 33%. This stat is important because inherited runners are not charged to the new relief pitcher’s ERA. It’s important to know who you can bring into the game when there are runners on base and who you cannot.
Additionally, Banks doesn’t just pitch to contact. He has a 27% K rate while filling up the zone to the tune of a 6.9% walk rate. These two above average figures combine for an elite 20.1% K-BB rate. All of Banks dashboard performance metrics on savant are at least average and many are quite above average.
There are no real glaring issues and he has done just about everything well this year. He mixes his pitches well, uses the slider as the table setter against righties. He throws it in the zone so much and pitches to weaker contact instead of going for strikeouts. This way he uses the slider is the reason for the less than ideal results and whiff rates. The way he uses it is the reason why and it’s a big part of his success. It also allows a poor fastball to play much better against righties. His curveball and slider are the two most thrown pitches against lefties followed by the fastball with the sinker in a distant fourth place. He truly mixes a four pitch mix to keep lefties off balance. Thinking ahead to the playoffs, the big sluggers on multiple teams are lefties (Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Matt Olson, etc).
The Mets plug a major bullpen hole with a complete pitcher and instantly becomes the reliable Brooks Raley replacement.
The return is a little steep, but then again, Banks has 4.5 years of control and a minor league option. Demand and a sellers market can make him expensive. Ronald Hernandez is the 3rd or 4th best young catcher in the Mets organization behind Alvarez, Parada (if you consider him a catcher) and Yovanny Rodriguez. He’s a young player that’s performed well this year and provides value from a surplus position. Kade Morris was the Mets 3rd round pick in 2023. He’s been a durable starting pitching option that has seen a lot of success this year between A ball and A+. Morris has pitched better than one might expect with his profile, but results are what matter and as a secondary player, if they continue to get production from him, this is a great return for a reliever on an uncompetitive team.
Note: Kade Morris was just announced as the return in the Mets trade for Paul Blackburn. To replace Morris, I would probably include someone like Wyatt Hudepohl who the Mets drafted last year as well and has pitched well in his pro debut.
Trade 2:
Mets Receive: Ryan Feltner RHP (4.5 years of team control), Victor Vodnik RHRP (5.5 years of team control)
Rockies Receive: 1 of (Marco Vargas 2B #8 prospect/Kevin Parada C #9 prospect), 1 of (Mike Vasil RHP #11 prospect/Dom Hamel RHP #13 prospect), Alex Ramirez OF #15 prospect
This might be a bit hard to follow, I hope it isn’t, but the point is to show that the return here can be fairly interchangeable. Three top 15 prospects per MLB Pipeline at different tiers. Some people will say this is a major overpay and some might say all these guys are at their lowest values so the Rockies wouldn’t accept it. Like I said before, I’m leaning overpay here. The reason for this haul is that I would expect the Rockies to be reluctant to trade these guys with their control, so they would need to be blown away by the return. Also, they have not been the most successful pitchers this year. Feltner is already 27 while Vodnik is just 24. I would consider a haul here to be a few good prospects, but nothing top tier. The performances are simply not worth anything that good.
Anyway, Feltner is a piece I would love for the Mets. He never had the high profile production Trevor Rogers had. Plus there shouldn’t be much bidding for him either. I believe Feltner is what the Rogers truthers actually think Rogers can be. Feltner is 27 already and can eat innings comfortably. He sports a SP league average 7.6% walk rate and has 115.1 innings in 21 starts (5.49 IP/GS). For context, Trevor Rogers, a pitcher the Orioles acquired today and people are calling an innings eater, has 105.1 innings pitched in 21 starts.
Feltner has ten more innings pitched in the same number of starts than Rogers, with a big difference in park factor. Rogers’ home park is the Marlins stadium of Load Depot Park with a 100 (league average) park factor while Lambert’s home park of Coors Field is the most hitter friendly park in MLB. Feltner has struggled at Coors field with a 6.14 ERA and a 4.38 FIP with a .363 wOBA. On the road, Feltner boasts a 4.16 ERA and 4.04 FIP with a .315 wOBA. The splits are clear and getting him out of Coors field will immediately make him a better pitcher.
Getting into the arsenal, I will be speaking about pitch shapes using Feltner’s away metrics. Coors field clearly alters his pitch shapes and it makes no sense to allow that to factor into analysis if he won’t be pitching there anymore. He mixes a deep arsenal very well. He consistently can throw six pitches and he commands the whole arsenal well. This induces a lot of weak contact and still holds a serviceable 13% K-BB rate.
The fastball is largely average with less horizontal break than the average. The horizontal break is the only thing that differentiates from average shape. He slightly cuts it and that will be important for later. The changeup is interesting. Not much movement overall, 5.0 inches of IVB and 5.9 inches of horizontal break. The results are great on the pitch and he kills spin extremely well on the way to a 42.3% whiff rate. He lets it get a little high in the zone, middle away to left handed hitters instead of sitting low and away to lefties. I would think this is where the damage on the pitch comes from. Keeping the pitch low and not allowing it to hang as much will elevate it and make it as great as it can be.
The sinker is really interesting. Overall, he zones it at about an average rate (just below average) and he throws it in the heart of the zone slightly more than the average. His shadow location percentage of 41.3% is well below the average of 46% while his chase location percentage of 23.8% is also well below the average of 18.4%. Because of this, Feltner struggles with walks on his sinker. Simultaneously his 16.1% whiff rate (18.9% on the road) is above the average of 13.8% for sinkers. All these numbers were provided by Alex Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboard with league benchmarks at the bottom of the page.
Feltner throws a slider, a sweeper and a curveball. The slider is hard, averaging just over 88 mph with some ride and sweep (5.1 IVB, 4.8 HB). He zones the slider significantly above the average for sliders and above the average for cutters. His big sweeper grades out as his best pitch with a 47.4% whiff rate in a limited sample (just 44 pitches). Feltner’s slider struggles to get whiffs, again, because he zones it so much. His whiff rates and zone rates are far more on par with that of a cutter.
Since Feltner already has a sweeper, and the axis of the slider is backspin slider, I think Feltner should transition it into a cutter. If he starts throwing it with the intent of a cutter, ride and velocity can tick up. Cutters grade better when they have above average velocity and/or above average sweep. Average velocity and movement for a cutter from a RHP is 90 mph, 8.3 inches IVB and 2.6 inches HB. A cutter could end up being a different weapon with an altered movement profile that is thrown harder to help elevate the entire arsenal for more whiffs. With this, I would elevate the sweeper usage to be a more prominent pitch in the arsenal.
The curveball is his best overall pitch in terms of Run Value/100 pitches on savant, and results based on the road. Overall, the curveball has a .223 xBA and .288 xwOBA with a 30.2% whiff rate. On the road, the curveball has a .141 xBA and .157 xwOBA and a 33.3% whiff rate with a 3.8 Run Value/100 pitches. It gets elite results on the road and it is a platoon neutral pitch. He only throws it 9.3% of the time and I would look to raise that significantly. If an in-game adjustment is not made for the sinker (meaning not a change to pitch shape) and he continues to struggle limiting walks with the pitch and generating weak contact, it should be used much more sparsely than the 13.7% it’s currently at.
Feltner would come into the Mets organization with real upside and a floor of eating innings to help rest the bullpen for the rest of the regular season.
I’ve been big on Vodnik for a while now. He’s just 24 years old and has stuff for days and his whole arsenal grades out so well. The thing that jumps out to me is the fastball usage. 63.9% fastball usage with the slider at 20.2% and the changeup at 15.9%. His changeup is his best pitch. It just falls off the table and he induces no ride on the pitch with just 0.4 inches of induced vertical break while getting over 13 inches of horizontal break. Funny enough, the changeup is the worst graded pitch in his arsenal but the results blow his other pitches out of the water.
The kicker here, and what would be worked on is the hard contact. All his pitches get hit extremely hard. The damage is mitigated by a 90th percentile 53% ground ball rate. Vodnik is a reverse platoon player at the moment, performing better against lefties than righties. He is mainly a two pitch guy against either side. He’s fastball slider to righties and fastball changeup to lefties. Against lefties, the fastball sits middle, to up and in while the changeup sits down and away. I think the location and command of his fastball and changeup in different quadrants or halves of the strike zone is a big factor of his success. The fastball and slider both sit middle, middle away against righties. Right handed hitters can sit middle away against Vodnik because he has no real weapon to attack inside on righties.
I would be very intrigued to see if the Mets would look to add a pitch to Vodnik’s arsenal. Based on his profile, I think it could go either way between cutter and sinker. Adding a cutter, depending on its shape could be a more platoon neutral pitch option. If he can get a high ride cutter from his low slot, I think that would be the best option, he can move his fastball inside to righties more while still covering up and away with the cutter. Against lefties, the same cutter can get to that high and inside location that eats up lefties. Otherwise it is an option to get in on the hands before or after going changeup outside. Either way, this would also allow him to locate the fastball more to the upper middle, or upper away portion of the plate to left handed hitters and differentiate where hitters have to look for his pitches. The sinker I see more as just an option against righties. This isn’t a bad thing at all because Vodnik is really good against left handed hitters as it is. Adding another pitch to attack lefties is not a concern at the moment. The sinker allows him to attack inside or low and inside and bring a hitter’s eyes back to the center of the plate. As soon as right handed hitters have to cover the entire plate and see the entire plate instead of shifting their sights to the outer half, I would expect the whiffs on the fastball and slider to both tick up. It’s a profile that already looks good with the pitches looking even better outside of Coors field so even if he doesn’t get better and stays the same, he is a valuable addition.
As we established before, this is likely a rich return for these two players. I’d rather project a bigger return, and if this trade actually happened with a lighter return, I’m happy we didn’t spend as much as opposed to being surprised he had to spend so much. Organizational hitting is down this year, but I still think the pure bat to ball skills with Vargas are really strong and he projects to be a big league one day at the minimum. Parada has bounced back nicely this year and is starting to turn things around in AA. Either of these bats are expendable for the Mets and could be traded if necessary.
The Rockies likely look for arms in the return so one of the Mets second tier arms of Vasil or Hamel works. I’m going to focus more on Vasil here because I really think he’s a much better fit, but for the sake of the trade, they can pick which of the two they like best. Generally, the Rockies like bigger arms or funky lefties, and they get a big righty in Vasil. He throws a fastball and sinker, the sinker induces weak contact while also having over an 18% whiff rate. Hamel has a better changeup results wise, while Vasil’s may have a slightly better shape, killing more ride and throwing it slower. Both pitchers throw big sweepers again with very similar shapes. Vasils is a bit more of a downer sweeper with -4.8 inches IVB to Hamel’s -2.3 inches IVB. It’s really almost like splitting hairs with these two.
Alex Ramirez is a high risk, high reward outfielder that is tooled up with room to add strength. It’s quite similar to the tooled up outfielder profiles the Rockies have gone after in the past and is a nice third piece lottery ticket to take back.
These are two trades I really like, as I am finishing this up, the Mets are finalizing a deal for Paul Blackburn from the Oakland Athletics. I love Blackburn and am ecstatic to have him through next year. For more info on him, I did write about him heavily in my Mets Trade Deadline report last year linked here. It was a year ago so it’s outdated but my thoughts remain the same. These trades complete depth while adding upside for this Mets team for years to come. Make sure to tune in on X (OCBaseball814) where I will be tweeting about any moves the Mets make!