The All-Star break is a time for rest and reflection on the first half. Pete Alonso’s lackluster first half was put under the microscope yesterday due to his All-Star status. Today, his teammate and counterpart Jeff McNeil is on the clock, as his season makes Alonso’s look like Barry Bonds circa 2001.
McNeil has been a topic on the radio show ad nauseam. You know the story by now: upon call-up, he looked like Pete Rose before transforming into Daniel Murphy in the second half of 2019. He struggled with a new analytics front office and then returned to his Pete Rose form. The 2022 batting title feels like it happened a decade ago, as the version donning a Mets uniform this year resembles Rey Ordonez or Doug Flynn at the plate.
Reports indicate the Mets still believe there is something left in McNeil’s bat, but the average fan and pundit sees a player who looks lost and, quite frankly, unhappy on the field. This scenario is the perfect tonic to help fill the airwaves when there aren’t games to analyze. Leave it to a radio Hall-of-Famer to give us content when baseball is on break.
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You may not know, but Mike Francesa, aka “The Sports Pope,” has a podcast. Last week, as he was prone to doing during his thirty years on the afternoon drive, Francesa played GM and proposed a deal that he believed would help both New York baseball teams.
Francesa proposed trading McNeil and the remaining $30+ million to the Yankees for a minor-league pitcher. On the surface, this isn’t a horrible idea as it relieves the Mets of salary to reinvest in other parts of the club and gives the Yankees an offensive piece to their lineup, which, right now, seems to be only Aaron Judge and Juan Soto.
McNeil can stay in New York but also start fresh and perhaps benefit from the short porch of Yankee Stadium. He wouldn’t be burdened with the history of living up to his batting title, and he can bat ninth in the Bronx and play good defense. Most importantly, it would rid Yankees fans of viewing DJ LeMahieu’s nightly 0-4 and weak contact.
From the Mets perspective, it sounds like a Yankees fan attempting to steal a potentially good piece for nothing; as history indicates, Brian Cashman usually gives up 25 cents on the dollar when sending prospects in any deal.
What does a deal like this achieve besides helping McNeil start over and saving Steve Cohen money? I say it’s somewhat skewed towards the Yankees. It could only work if one of the pitchers could help the Mets with their current bullpen situation or a lower-level prospect with an upside.
Would the Yankees give up a Clayton Beeter to help the Mets bullpen? What about Jorbit Vivas? Going further down, there are interesting arms like Cade Smith or Jack Neely. Perhaps Cohen might need to throw some money back to the Yankees to justify the prospect, but this deal can’t happen unless you get back something with a reasonable shot of contributing.
Do the Mets want to go one further, do a problem-for-problem trade, and send McNeil to the Bronx for LeMahieu? DJL is the right-handed version of McNeil, but it has slightly less versatility. The contracts and money are virtually identical.
In the end, history indicates a strong chance the Mets would be gifting the Yankees a player who could potentially return to form and win a batting title. I don’t think Mets fans want to see McNeil spraying the ball around the Stadium during the playoffs or Subway Series. Historically, pinstripes have been a tonic for any struggling player. Scrapheap pickups like Aaron Small, Glenallen Hill, Jose Vizcaino, and others become the best version of themselves when donning that historic uniform. Although it’s lost its mojo over the last few years, the threat still exists.
Without David Stearns “taxing” the Yankees in the deal by getting a monetary advantage or player overpay, it would be wise to keep McNeil in Queens and hope that he joins the offensive party in the back half of the season. Perhaps the livelier bat he showed during the Colorado series is a positive sign of things to come.
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