Trade talk for a starting pitcher ends with the addition of Chris Bassitt

End the speculation. The New York Mets have made a trade for a starting pitcher. It will be Chris Bassitt to join Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and the boys in 2022 for their five-man rotation. On a cold, windy Saturday night, the Mets bolstered their rotation with one of the finest trade candidates out there.

Bassitt was long-regarded as a favorite of Mets fans. Despite being 33-years-old, he has only logged 555.2 big league innings. He’s what one might call a young 33 in starting pitcher years.

Instant reaction from Mets fans looks mostly positive. Of course, the one downside to the deal might be what they had to pay to get him.

The price the Mets paid to get Chris Bassitt

No trade is complete without looking at both sides of the deal. The Mets gave up two quality prospects in order to land him.

Adam Oller, the team’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year, is headed to Oakland in the deal. This might not be anything to worry about. Oller wasn’t necessarily a prospect as much as he was a nice minor league arm coming off of a promising season.

The bigger fish sent in this trade was the addition of the organization’s second-best pitching prospect, J.T. Ginn. The organization, under several different general managers, has been willing to subtract young arms from the system. The Mets are gearing up for the right now instead of the future so I suppose we can’t be too upset about it.

Bassitt is now the third member of last year’s Oakland club to join the Mets organization. The other two, Mark Canha and Starling Marte, joined the team via free agency. Perhaps a deal with Andrew Chafin or Jake Diekman can make it four.

From December until the end of the MLB lockout, Mets fans were eager to see what the team might do. The Mets didn’t rush out to make a trade right away. When they did, they seemed to finalize an already promising rotation.

On the trade front, one question does remain: do they subtract one of the position players we’ve been shopping all offseason long?