8:50 am: The potential deal between the two sides may be a little more complicated than initially assumed. Bear Joel Sherman of the New York Post (Via Twitter), it should come as no surprise that the Padres would need to eat up a fair amount of money owed to Hosmer in order to make this deal work. Specifically, Padres will cover approximately $30 million or more of the Hosmer deal, bringing Hosmer down annually to $6-7 million annually, Per Sherman.
Mets will also get saviour Emilio Bagan in the deal. Pagan at times looked like the PM’s arm during his five seasons in the seniors with the Mariners, Rays, ER, and Padres. The 30-year-old is an option to close games if he stayed in San Diego, while in New York he would have joined a fairly deep group of right-hand setup arms that includes Adam OttavinoAnd the Drew SmithAnd the Miguel CastroAnd the Trevor MayAnd the Seth Logo.
7:55 am: The Mets have spent the holidays pushing hard towards forming a competitive team, but the fragility of an off-season win became clear yesterday with the ace news. Jacob Degrom It is closed For the next four weeks. The alarm has sounded, but the Mets are not without solutions.
In fact, they’ve been in conversation with Padres for the past two weeks about various trading scenarios, one of which could at least bring another arm to New York to help plug the leak. According to Athletic’s Dennis Lane, Ken Rosenthal, and others, A potential deal can be centered around Eric Hosmer And the Chris Badack Heading to the Mets, while Dominic Smith He will go to San Diego.
The Padres have been trying to dump Hosmer’s money for some time now, and the Free Mets may now have a big enough need in the spin to consider bringing him back. There’s some urgency for Padres here, as Hosmer’s partial no-trade clause turns into full 10 and 5 rights at the end of this season. Of course, if he does trade, Hosmer’s contract has a clause that says he can’t be traded twice without his consent, so he’ll basically have a no-trade clause by the end of the 2022 campaign no matter who’s playing.
With $59 million left over four years on his deal, Hosmer hasn’t had positive turnover — not yet fWAR totals of 0.0, 0.9, -0.3 and -0.1 over the past four seasons. Entering his 32-year season, one wouldn’t expect Hosmer to thrive overnight. Furthermore, the Mets never need him, not with him Alonso’s house in the list.
The acquisition of Hosmer means the Mets are pushed deeper into the luxury tax territory with payrolls approaching $300 million, Joel Sherman notes from the New York Post. The Mets might be willing to take it if they can boost their spin at the same time.
Enter Paddack. The 26-year-old has three years left in control of the team and a huge improvement. However, it is far from certain. His numbers dropped for a third consecutive season last year when he finished with a 5.07 ERA across 108 1/3 innings. A slightly torn UCL may be the reason for the decline, but that’s not necessarily a situation that has completely resolved itself. So, Paddack would be an option to slip into DeGrom’s spinning point, but it’s far from a panacea for Mets’ long-term concerns.
In the short term, he may not even have finished upgrading Taylor Miguel, the putative fifth initiator in the absence of degrum. Megill posted a 4.52 ERA/4.69 FIP over 18 starts covering 89 2/3 rounds in 2021 – his first taste of the big league. The Mets could definitely start the season with Megill in rotation and see how things go from there.
For Padres’ part, their motivation was mostly to let go of Hosmer’s contract. They have enough turning depth, in theory, to overcome Paddack’s loss, and at Smith, they’ll recover a similar bat that is cheaper, more versatile, and more theoretically oriented than Hosmer. He’s also under the team’s control for two more seasons after 2022, although those seasons are not guaranteed, if he continues to struggle at the plate.
For the early part of his career, Smith’s story was that he needed the hits, but his natural position was spoken of as a first rule, so his cap was nothing more than that of a junior player. Then the designated hitter came to the NL in 2020, Smith started taking volleys in left field, and the offensive promise came to fruition with the .316/.377/.616 streak on 199 board appearances during the shortened campaign.
He again saw fairly stable playing time in 2021, but the numbers crashed to 86 wRC+ by way of a .244/.304/.363 streak across 494 board appearances, more than double his previous career in that regard. Padres need a left player, and Smith could intervene directly at first base if that deal was going to go down. However, for San Diego, this deal is mostly about moving on from Hosmer. There are options available for the left field – including Met Michael Konforto — but Smith surely deserves to be put on the list if getting it means removing Hosmer from the payroll.
