The New York Mets have begun trade discussions ahead of the August 3 deadline, and the list of players they will not move is short. Jon Heyman of MLB Network and Chelsea Janes of SNY report that outfielder Juan Soto and prospects Nolan McLean, Carson Benge, A.J. Ewing and Christian Scott are effectively the only names off the table.
The record explains the posture. New York is 41-57, sixteen games behind Atlanta in the National League East and eleven out of the last wild card. There is no version of the next six weeks that changes those numbers. A team in that position either trades from its major league roster or spends the rest of the summer explaining why it didn’t.
What makes this deadline different from the franchise’s previous teardowns is the shape of what remains after it. Soto is signed long term and is not going anywhere. The four protected prospects represent the first wave of a system the Mets spent recent years rebuilding rather than emptying. That is a meaningfully better position than 2023, when the club sold at the deadline with far less behind it, and it means the returns from this month are additions to a young core rather than the whole of one.
The Mets are also not selling from a lifeless week. They opened the second half Thursday night in Philadelphia with a 4-1 win in which Francisco Alvarez homered twice and Brett Baty also went deep. Alvarez and Baty are exactly the sort of young, controllable players a rebuilding club keeps, and a good July from either one raises the price on the veterans around them.
New York returns to Philadelphia on Saturday for the second game of the series. The deadline falls on August 3 at 6 p.m. ET, which leaves roughly two weeks of games to sort out how much of this roster is still here for the stretch run.
For fantasy managers, this is the moment to get ahead of playing time rather than react to it. Any Mets veteran on your roster is a candidate to change teams and lineup spots in the next two weeks — value them accordingly in trade talks now, while the market still prices them as regulars. On the other side, Alvarez and Baty become more valuable in a sell-off, not less: fewer veterans ahead of them means more at-bats in the season’s final two months.
