A final trade for the Trevor Gott trade with the Mets moving on

Trevor Gott was one of five New York Mets players eligible for arbitration the team decided to not bring with them into 2024. Gott came over in the highly-debated early July deal with the Seattle Mariners in what was essentially a salary dump of Chris Flexen onto the Mets. The Mets agreed to pay the remaining portion of Flexen’s salary in order to receive Gott. They immediately DFA’d Flexen while only sacrificing Zach Muckenhirn, a player they had already DFA’d days earlier, in the trade.

The Mets ended up paying $3.62 million of Flexen’s salary in order to get Gott for a player they were going to release anyway. It definitely wasn’t a win, but was it that much of a loss?

Final grade for the Trevor Gott trade: C

Gott was one of the toughest Mets relievers to watch last season until suddenly he wasn’t so bad. The big problem was by the time he finally started to deliver, the season was already over. Gott pitched to a 1.74 ERA in the final month of the season following a 7.04 ERA in July and 4.91 ERA in August.

The lights out effort in the final weeks wasn’t enough for David Stearns to keep him on board. A combined total of going 0-5 with a 4.19 ERA in an identical 29 innings each for the Mets and Mariners wasn’t satisfactory enough even for a final spot in the bullpen next year. As long as the team doesn’t choose to replace him with a bunch of fringe major leaguers because they have minor league options, this is a promising way of looking at the decision to move on from Gott.

Still, the trade doesn’t warrant much more than some good credits for the effort. Gott made only $1.2 million last year with the Mets paying less than half of it. Did he give them a $4 million effort? Not at all, but it wasn’t as shamefully horrific as it felt early on during his tenure with the team.

With some time in between when we last saw him pitch and a look at all of the fallout, the final grade for this trade is a very average C. They lost nothing but money. They gained a reliever who under different circumstances may have helped the team actually achieve something.

Gott’s lack of minor league options added with a track record of being mediocre are what sentenced him off the Mets roster and into free agency. It was an easy call as an end result to a very so-so trade the Mets were right to make but didn’t really benefit from doing.