LONDON — As the Mets mull their trade-deadline situation, which owner Steve Cohen really doesn’t want to talk about yet, he cautioned that deciding whether to trade away key players for a second summer in a row is “not black and white.” He used that characterization in the context of an uncertain market and what other clubs might be willing to give up for, say, Pete Alonso or Luis Severino or Harrison Bader. But it applies in other ways as well.
Trading Alonso, a homegrown fan favorite slugger and face of the franchise who will be a free agent after the season, isn’t the same as trading any other player. Choosing to pay down outgoing contracts for the sake of a better return, as the Mets did last year, isn’t as simple when Cohen has been open about wanting to reel in payroll. And deciding whether to be a seller at all is trickier in this era of expanded playoffs, when mediocrity often is good enough.
“You don’t know what you’re going to get back,” Cohen said Sunday at London Stadium. “You don’t know. What if the return that you got is kind of marginal? So the decisions are not black and white.
We’re not there yet. We’ll evaluate it when we get there.” That last point was the one Cohen emphasized most during a 15-minute news conference prior to the Mets’ second of two games against the Phillies in the London Series.
He acknowledged the obvious, that the Mets have fallen woefully short of expectations. But he presented himself as optimistic that .
