NY Mets trade away promising prospect stolen from the LA Dodgers back in December

The New York Mets lost a lot of players in December’s Rule 5 Draft. Both at the MLB level and minor leagues, they were gutted as far as quantity goes. The minor league portion of the Rule 5 Draft doesn’t have the same stipulation as the MLB level where a player must remain on a club’s 26-man roster for the full season. Even with this in mind, the team picked up only a single player.

Michael Hobbs, a promising pitching prospect formerly of the Los Angeles Dodgers, was the lone gunslinger added to the Mets depth chart in either part of the Rule 5 Draft. Recently written about on Rising Apple based largely on his awesome reverse splits at the minor league level, he’ll continue his pro-baseball journey with the Seattle Mariners.

Making sense of this very quiet Mets trade

A 25-year-old righty who has dominated against lefties and posted a very respectable 3.18 ERA in 141.1 minor league innings isn’t someone you give up so easily. Or is he? The fact that the Dodgers chose not to protect him was curious enough. For the Mets to move on quickly doesn’t match the results.

Hobbs was 2-1 with a 2.97 ERA in Double-A last season. A bit wild in his professional career with walks at 5.2 per 9 and strikeouts at 9.6 per 9, there seemed to be little harm in keeping him around and developing him further. There was no apparent roster crunch that would have made it an obvious trade to make.

The thing about David Stearns is he seems to love these players for cash trades. It’s not about lining his pockets with Benjamins. Based on the way he behaved with the Boston Red Sox last year, it could have something to do with relationship building. Hobbs might have fallen out of the Mets’ plans altogether. Even if we disagree with trading him at all, we can appreciate the attention to detail.

The Mets and Red Sox made a slew of offseason trades last year and continued it in the regular season. Keeping a mental note of every single one would be like trying to memorize someone’s phone number in 2025. We, as humans, just don’t have the mental capacity any longer.

The Mets did everything from sending their own Rule 5 Draft pick Justin Slaten up to Boston to acquiring Eddy Alvarez late in the year from the Red Sox for cash. Pablo Reyes, another utility player we saw spend some time in the majors with the Mets late in the year, was yet another guy the Mets added via Boston in exchange for cash. Several players went the other way, including Zack Short after he was DFA’d.

It’s presumptive to put all of your eggs into one basket as to why the trade took place. Hobbs was a longshot to appear in a game for the Mets this year. It still wouldn’t have hurt to keep him around. We’ll know if there was any true benefit to this deal later on when the Mariners kindly choose the Mets as the team they’ll send a DFA’d player to rather than any of the other 29 choices. If Stearns really is managing decisions with an eye for this kind of stuff, it’s another factor to constantly pay attention to.