NY Mets trade pivot from Edward Cabrera is the best (and worst) of what they need

The sky is blue. Water is wet. The New York Mets need to do something about their pitching staff. There’s no rabbit for David Stearns to pull out of his hat. It appears to be a waiting game with the free agent market at a standstill and trade candidates becoming more limited.

With Edward Cabrera going to the Chicago Cubs, the Mets get a glimpse at what controllable pitchers will cost them. We already figure that players on the Tarik Skubal and Freddy Peralta level, while merely rentals, would cost them a lot. What about a player somewhere in between?

Kansas City Royals starter Kris Bubic is precisely this. A free agent after the 26 season but with only 80 career starts plus another 37 relief appearances, he has logged under 500 big league innings. The 28-year-old lefty is both the best and worst of what the Mets should be looking to acquire this offseason.

Kris Bubic has high potential, a low salary, and shouldn’t cost nearly as much as the others

It’s unfair to really judge Bubic because of how strange his career has gone. He was a middling starter for the Royals and pitched exclusively in relief during the 2024 season. Tommy John surgery derailed his 2023 season early on and he came back strong as a reliever in 2024. Upon rejoining the starting staff in 2025, Bubic reached new heights. At 8-7 with a 2.55 ERA, he put together a career-year in 20 starts.

An above-average groundball pitcher who falls into a more average territory when it comes to things such as strikeouts, exit velocity, and hard-hit percentage, buying into Bubic now would be hoping he’s like the 2025 version only healthy.

A rotator cuff strain in late July landed him on the IL for the rest of the year. It’s not fair to actually call him injury prone, but all of this missed time and a limited amount of success has Bubic looking as much a red flag as the checkered one the Mets rotation needs.

Kris Bubic isn’t a proven top-of-the-rotation starter, hasn’t been able to stay healthy, and leaves a lot of Mets rotation questions unanswered

We can accept Bubic as a potential third left-hander in the rotation if the Mets keep Sean Manaea and David Peterson. What we can’t accept is how shaky his career has gone. Just as he was putting together his best season, injury stuck. It wasn’t quite like Peterson’s fall but at 116.1 innings, Bubic got hurt and was never seen again in 2025.

The Mets have those guys. Bubic is basically Peterson with an up-and-down career. They’ll even reach free agency together. So why bother?

It’ll take a lot of rearranging to justify a Bubic trade. Even if the trade itself isn’t outrageously expensive, what’s to say he’ll hold up over a 162-game season? Furthermore, he doesn’t slot in as an ace-like arm. The Mets only make this work if they trade Peterson in a separate move and upgrade with another starter. All the while, the payroll savings of jumping from Peterson to Bubic (maybe about $4.5 million based on projected salaries) is then utilized on another player.