Mets news you may have missed: Spring training, contracts, and center fielders

It’s important to consider that no matter what happens during the weeks leading up to Opening Day, it has been an incredible offseason for the Mets. In fact, according to The Athletic, the orange and blue are the most bet-on team to win the World Series!

Therefore, despite missing out on a few free agents, it has to be said that the organization’s new regime has done several things right in their first offseason.

Former Mets Watch

With players all around the league still on the move, let’s take a look at where some former Mets have landed.

Apart from the team’s outlier 2015 season, recent Mets history has been a bleak one, filled with letdowns, mediocrity, and journeyman players. But with those painful memories still comes a certain degree of interest about where some of these players have ended up.

This week, fans were received such an update, as SP Matt Harvey, OF Jay Bruce, and LHP Justin Wilson all signed to new teams.

In this week’s posting of Former Mets Watch, ‘The Dark Knight’ goes to Baltimore while Bruce and Wilson switch to the dark side of the city.

In yet another team change for the Mets former ace, Harvey signed a minor league to join the Baltimore Orioles farm system. The power-hitting, Bruce also inked a new minor league deal with the New York Yankees.

Back in 2016, the Mets traded for Bruce at the Trade Deadline, hoping to get the same mid-season spark they received from their acquisition of Yoenis Cespedes the season prior. But unlike then, his acquisition did not catapult them on an incredible playoff run, nor did it carry them to their first pennant in 15 years (at the time).

Then, after a brief stint with the Cleveland Indians, he returned to New York in 2018 before being traded in the offseason as part of the infamous Edwin Diaz/Robinson Cano trade to Seattle. He soon found himself playing in Philadelphia during the 2019 and 2020 seasons.

Coincidently, it appears Mets fans will see him playing alongside their former left-handed reliever Wilson, who also agreed to a new deal that will see him wearing pinstripes rather than black tops this season (fingers crossed on the latter).

Updating contract extensions

Meanwhile, the Mets announced that they expect to discuss contract extensions with Michael Conforto and Francisco Lindor soon.

If the front office was serious about ‘not being done’ yet before the season starts, then these are the two deals that take priority over any other transaction.