The more the Mets change, the more they stay the same.
New York, sitting five games below .500 in a season that has been a major disappointment, sent a jolt into the trade deadline buzz by buying instead of selling, acquiring right-hander Marcus Stroman for minor leaguers Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods Richardson.
Healthy again this year, Stroman is in the midst of his best season to date, with his best ERA and what would be his second-best FIP, missing more bats and walking fewer guys than he did in an injury-addled 2018 season. He throws six pitches, though he works mostly with a plus sinker, a power breaking ball (a downer with slider velocity) and a cut fastball, with the first two pitches his best offerings. He has largely gone away from the four-seamer he threw in college and in the minors since adding the sinker in the middle of 2015, a pitch that had velocity but not spin or movement. Combined with his 5-foot-9 stature, the pitch was likely to make him homer-prone, especially with the happy fun ball the majors are using this season. Stroman topped 200 innings in 2016 and 2017 and is on track to do so again or come very close this year. He's an above-average starter, a No. 2 in a lot of rotations, adding some value through his fielding (he's a superb athlete who was drafted as a position player out of high school) and incredible work ethic.
Stroman is a free agent after 2020, so this acquisition makes just about no sense for the Mets, who continue to labor under the impression that they're close to contention. He will absolutely make them a better team next year and will probably be a great value relative to his salary -- he's still arbitration-eligible, but I doubt he'll make even third-starter money -- but the Mets just aren't good enough to justify trading two of their top 10 prospects for short-term help. This continues to be the most rudderless ship in baseball, and the Mets appear to have decided that the key lesson from the disastrous offseason they just had is to do the same things all over again.
Kay was the Mets' second pick, 31st overall, in 2016, but he was overworked badly while pitching that spring for the University of Connecticut, between a 36-batter outing in an 18-1 game that March and a long relief appearance on short rest after a regular start in UConn's conference tournament. A post-draft physical revealed a torn elbow ligament, and he needed Tommy John surgery, missing the rest of 2016 and all of 2017 before he returned last year.
The good news is that his velocity returned, and over the past year and a half, he has shown an improved curveball and regained the above-average changeup he had in college. I think he's a three-pitch starter, maybe league-average, though I know a lot of scouts think he's a reliever because his secondary stuff isn't consistent start to start. Kay dominated Double-A this spring but has struggled in Triple-A, in which the baseball is different, and that could be the explanation for his sudden drop in performance.
Woods Richardson was the Mets' second-round pick last year, a two-way player out of a Texas high school whom the Mets liked because he was still just 17 and because they believed he'd throw harder once he gave up being a position player. That has been true, as this year he has averaged 92-94 mph and been up to 97 taking regular turns in the rotation. He has a high-quality fastball that misses bats, and he pairs it with a curveball that will show plus. He's also a very good athlete, as you'd expect, but his arm is super late relative to his front leg, and there are teams that think he has to be a reliever as long as that's how his arm works. He's a strike-thrower, but his control is well ahead of his command right now. The most probable outcome is high-leverage relief arm, though given his age, he has a really wide range of potential futures.
Is a fourth starter and a potentially high-end reliever enough of a return for a season-and-a-third of Stroman at team-friendly salaries? There's a chance that this deal will look good for the Jays in the end, if both guys stay healthy and reach their potential (even if not their ultimate ceilings), but given the general risk and attrition rates around young pitchers, I think there's a bit more chance that the deal won't work out. That said, the Jays would probably have gotten much less for Stroman last offseason, as he was coming off his worst season and missed almost half of it due to injury.