Mets history rewritten: 3 moves a Wilpon-led regime would have made this offseason

3) Instead of eating money in the James McCann trade, the Mets ship out a top prospect to offload the contract.

The Mets had to find a way to trade James McCann heading into this offseason. His bat was simply non-existent in his time as a Met and with Omar Narvaez coming into the fold and Francisco Alvarez on the cusp of being ready, McCann had no role.

The Steve Cohen-led Mets ate most of the McCann contract and dealt him to Baltimore in a trade that landed the Mets a player to be named later which turned out to be Luis De La Cruz. Whether De La Cruz turns into anything remains to be seen, but the Mets trading McCann and getting a player back is obviously much better than not.

We all know the Wilpons would have no interest in eating that McCann money. In order to offload it, the Mets would have to give up a high-end prospect. No, it wouldn't be Francisco Alvarez or Brett Baty, but it'd be a player that fans would not want to see go.

We've seen the Wilpon-owned Mets do this before, as when they acquired Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz from the Mariners, they made Seattle eat some of the Cano money while also taking on players on bad contracts like Jay Bruce and Anthony Swarzak. The Mets gave up top prospect Jarred Kelenic along with some other young pieces like Justin Dunn and Gerson Bautista. The price would not have been that high had the Mets not forced Seattle to take on so much money.

The Mets are fortunate to now have an owner willing to eat money on a bad contract so he doesn't ruin the farm system to offload it.