A month ago I wrote about the Mets and how their offense, or more appropriately their lack of offense, was a threat to their playoff hopes. Since then things have only gotten worse for New York. They’re just now getting Travis d’Arnaud back. David Wright is still out and there’s no timetable for his return. And to make matters worse they’ve now lost Daniel Murphy to a quad strain. Putting everything in sharp focus was yesterday’s game where back-end starter Chris Heston no-hit them. It should shock no one that they’re looking anywhere for help, even if it’s the aged Aramis Ramirez.
Earlier today Jon Morosi tweeted that the Mets and Brewers have had preliminary trade talks. He noted the Mets were looking at Brewers position players. Later Marc Craig confirmed the two sides had spoken and that third baseman Aramis Ramirez was the focus of those talks.
The 36 year old third baseman is in the final season of his career as he announced he would retire after 2015. He makes $14 million. To date this season he has slashed .213/.257/.390 (.280 wOBA, 72 wRC+) with seven home runs. That’s not an appealing slash line but Ramirez does have a tendency to start out slow before heating up in the summer months.
The chance that he will heat up is likely part of why the Mets are interested, but the driving force is probably the cost to acquire. As Ramirez is only under contract for this season and not producing well the Mets would not have to part with any notable prospects to get him. There’s a very good chance they wouldn’t have to part with any prospects all.
The Mets are pretty desperate to move pitchers Dillon Gee and Jon Niese to make room for Steven Matz (and shed their salary). Neither pitcher has much trade value right now. Gee is making $5.3M this year and enters his final year of arbitration in 2016. Jon Niese makes $7.05M this year, $9.05M next year, and has two team options for $10M apiece with $0.5M buyouts.
Niese is the better pitcher but he also makes more money. A one for one swap might make sense if the Mets are more interested in opening a rotation spot for Matz while saving some money at the same time. Ramirez is owed about $8M for the rest of this season and Niese $4M. So the Mets would end up taking on only half of Ramirez’s salary, while the Brewers get a starting pitcher under team control past this year and some salary relief.
If the Mets are more interested in maximizing their potential trade return, they may want to push for a Dillon Gee for Ramirez trade. They would likely have to eat more salary though. In turn, the Brewers would save more money this year and have the option to non-tender Gee next year and save more money that way.
I imagine the Brewers would be more interested in getting Niese, but they don’t have leverage here. They definitely aren’t competing and they certainly don’t want to pay all of the $14 M owed to Ramirez if they can avoid it. It’s possible this could motivate the Brewers to include more in a deal.
It’s been mentioned the Mets could use a good 4th outfielder. Gerardo Parra would fit that description rather nicely (h/t D.J. Short 1,2). Parra makes $6.3 M (approximately $3.6M pro-rated) this season and has slashed a respectable .273/.308/.429 (.317 wOBA, 96 wRC+). By comparison, as a unit the Mets outfield has slashed .239/.305/.358 (.294 wOBA, 89 wRC+).
Since Parra does have some positive trade value, that might tip the scales back in the favor of the Brewers. In other words, they would have some leverage here. It might be that Niese and a marginal prospect would have to go their way. But it’s anyone’s guess who might be included in this type of a deal. I won’t waste anyone’s time with an uniformed opinion in that regard.
These talks have been described as preliminary so it’s very possible that nothing will come of it. But the two teams do seem to match-up. It just depends where their priorities lie and how their independent evaluations of the players involved match-up. We’ll just have to wait and see if more information starts to trickle out.
Contract information courtesy of Cot’s Contracts
Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs
