The worst of all possible options for the Mets this month and beyond would be repeating last year’s miscalculated assumption.
Convinced they had a good team that was broken mostly because of injuries, general manager Sandy Alderson and his lieutenants went the halfway route in the trade season, dealing from a pool of impending free agents — Lucas Duda, Addison Reed, Jay Bruce, Neil Walker and Curtis Granderson — without considering trades that included their top talent. The returns were slim.
Then the club took a similar halfway approach in free agency, avoiding the bigger fish on the market and going with relatively less expensive options such as Bruce, Todd Frazier, Anthony Swarzak and Jason Vargas.