Mets: Three subtle trades to improve the team for the 2020 season

A Royal Trade

The third and final trade I think the Mets should look to consider if they want to improve their chances at play off contention in 2020, is packaging a trade that would send Dominic Smith and one of either Double-A pitching prospect Dedniel Nunez or 3B prospect Will Toffey along with Edwin Diaz to the Royals for SP Jakob Junis and RP/SP Ian Kennedy.

Junis is a bit of an innings eater type of pitcher that, on the right team, can get 10 to 14 wins and serve as a high-end number four or low-end number three type of pitcher in a rotation. He features a slider that he can throw for strikes or induce weak ground ball contact with.

With Zack Wheeler demanding the kind of money he will most likely get in the free agent market, Junis can be a nice substitute fill-in that won’t cost the Mets much money and will be under team control until 2023.

Kennedy would be the type of long reliever or seventh or eighth inning set up man that would be an upgrade over Gsellman in my opinion. Being able to package Kennedy with Seth Lugo late in ball games will be a nice combination for the Mets to rely on in 2020. Kennedy also has experience and versatility, being able to either close or start 10 to 12 games a season. He was able to notch 30 saves for the Kansas City Royals in 2019.

Even though Kennedy is scheduled to make $16.5 million next season, he will be an unrestricted free agent the following year, so the Mets wouldn’t be locked up with the 35-year-old veteran for too long.

We can all agree that none of these moves are as “splashy” as the team trading for a Starling Marte or a Mookie Betts type of player. I do believe, however, that making a combination of small moves like these as well as signing two to three decent free agents to further bolster the team’s weaknesses from 2019 will go a long way to making this team achieve over 90 wins in 2020.

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Hopefully, with some better guidance by newly appointed manager Carlos Beltran and some timely trade deadline moves in the regular season, we will be rooting for our ball club to be winning crucial games in playoff series come next October.