If the Major League Baseball season resumes in June, with the regular season starting in July, it will shift the season entirely. The New York Mets, along with the rest of baseball, will have to assess their needs quicker than ever before.
You kidding? Yoenis Cespedes IS Queens Boulevard.https://t.co/9wS5GT2mrY
— MLB (@MLB) September 15, 2015
Thinking of the trade deadline is very distant considering that a spring training game has not been played yet. But the Mets should be planning for every possible situation. They already head into the season without Zack Wheeler, due to free agency, and Noah Syndergaard, to Tommy John Surgery.
Pitching is Key
Whether it is the rotation or the bullpen the Mets will have key questions to answer. In the rotation, it will lean on if Steven Matz can hold down the three spot in the rotation. If not the will need to find a quality mid-rotation start they can lean on to pitch the middle games of a postseason series. Out of the entire rotation, Matz is the biggest variable.
The bullpen features the questions that have been discussed all year. How healthy is Dellin Betances and how does Edwin Diaz/Jeurys Familia rebound from their 2019 struggles. At this point Betances should be fully healthy but who knows about the final two. Diaz has looked fine while pitching during the delay and Familia’s weight loss are steps in the right direction.
For the first time in who knows how long, we got a glimpse of elite Edwin Diaz last night when he struck out two of the best hitters in baseball to keep the game scoreless in the tenth. #Mets
That slider he threw on 1-1 to Albies came in at 93.5 mph — the hardest of his career. pic.twitter.com/jtMtbQ3Vp4
— Jacob Resnick (@Jacob_Resnick) August 24, 2019
If the trade deadline remains on July 31, teams get less than a month to evaluate their roster. The best move would be to move the deadline to August 30 to give teams an extra month to make a trade. An extreme alternative would be to extend the trade deadline through the last day of the season which will create chaos on par with NBA free agency.
The date is likely set with each plan the MLB has laid out and it is only a matter of time before those dates get released along with the season schedule.