The benefits of the Mets playing nice at the trade deadline instead of hard to get

Barring unforseen circumstances, the New York Mets are likely sellers at the trade deadline coming up on August 1. And this is another opportunity for the Mets' brass to prove that they can and will act differently from the Wilpons' meddling ways.

The Mets have several expendable pieces at the deadline this year, and they can reset a large subsection of their franchise by offering players who don't play into the Mets' plans in 2024 and beyond.

The New York Mets have a few major holes in their farm system, particularly from their pitching ranks, that need to be filled.

Mets owner Steve Cohen talked to the press last week, in which he rightfully called out the Mets' inability to develop and keep quality pitching prospects in the minors. Cohen has been adamant in saying the farm system needed an overhaul upon his arrival as owner three years ago. And none of the Mets' top pitching prospects are in MLB Pipeline's Top 100 prospects and none of them are expected to be major league ready until at the earliest next year.

So when you think of guys that are expendable trade pieces on the roster, and there are a lot of them this year, they can get some real prospects back for them, especially since the Mets are eating the money in trades to get better players.

The Mets have already gotten get off to a good start on this front when they added two pitching prospects, both ranked in the top 20 of the Mets' farm system (Coleman Crow and Landon Marceaux) in exchange for infielder Eduardo Escobar in a trade with the Los Angeles Angels. Even though neither prospect was an elite or high quality prospect, it still lengthened the depth of the pitching pipeline for an organization that was desperate for it.

Eating the money was something completely foreign to Jeff Wilpon when he ran baseball operations here for years, especially since Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme was exposed in the late-2000s financial crisis in which the Wilpons had invested in.

Chances are the Mets will make more trades. Maybe they move Max Scherzer or Carlos Carrasco to teams that are decimated with injuries on the pitching front (like the Cincinnati Reds or the Los Angeles Dodgers). Or they may possibly send Tommy Pham or Mark Canha to a team that needs a bat.

Nonetheless, there have been cases over the past few years where teams held on to pending free agents only to see them let go for nothing in return. We saw that with the Boston Red Sox last year with J.D. Martinez and Xander Bogaerts and the Chicago Cubs in keeping Willson Contreras. Everyone knew all three free agents were not going back to their respective teams next year, and they were easy first guesses.