Mets: Why Trevor Bauer is the most essential free agent to sign

The Mets will need to overpay for pitching in a trade

Because starting pitching is so hard to find, the only other alternative a team may have is to make a trade. You can always develop some arms through years of training and scouting. We’re not so patient anymore. Do those things, but buy the arms, too.

Starting pitching may be even more costly when trying to acquire it via trade. It’s rare we see a quality starting pitcher traded without at least a few pessimists wondering if the team gave up too much to land him. To get a player of Bauer’s abilities via trade, it’s going to cost the farm. The Mets don’t have a deep enough minor league system to oversell for anyone not named Mike Trout.

It doesn’t seem to matter what the financial situation is with Major League Baseball or the teams when it comes to how much it costs to acquire a starting pitcher. They are such a premium asset. Only those on expiring contracts ever seem to go to their new team at a fair price. Otherwise, you can really only hope for a salary dump.

I still believe the Mets do need to explore some trades for starting pitching help this offseason. Even if they do sign Bauer, it’s helpful to know the cost of what else is out there. It can be difficult to stash quality starting pitching on your roster which makes it a challenge to have exactly what you need plus a good backup and maybe more.

In free agency, all it costs is money. This shouldn’t be a problem for the Mets.

I’ll ask again, can someone get Trevor Bauer a pen already?

Starting pitching doesn’t solve everything but it makes it easier

It’s not as if a team can load up on starting pitching and guarantee a trip to the World Series. Sometimes in sports, we get caught up in believing things like this.

Good starting pitching can, however, make it a whole lot easier. A dominant rotation takes ease off the bats, defense, and bullpen. Those weaknesses aren’t as obvious when you have five guys in your rotation capable of shutting down even the most dangerous opponent.

Bauer won’t single-handedly bring a parade to Flushing. He’s the best one available, though. Passing on him is putting more faith in your bats to score an extra run or two. It’s asking your bullpen to do the impossible and pick up a starting pitcher who couldn’t make it through the fourth inning.

Bauer can give the Mets a chance to win every fifth day. That’s more than we can say about many of the other arms we saw take the hill in 2020. It’s the one requirement I think we all ask from starting pitchers: a chance at victory.

Everything in baseball seems to return to the starting pitching. How the starter performs determines the number of runs you need to win. It saves the bullpen from running onto the field, often overworked and ready to underperform.

Throughout Mets history, many of their greatest teams had such memorable seasons because of their starting rotation. The current Mets need to go outside of their organization to make this the case as well.

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So, for the final time, I’m going to request a pen. It’s for Trevor Bauer to put his name on a contract with the Mets. Good pitching is hard to find, it would cost even more in a trade to get, and it makes everything so much easier.