Mets use trade deadline moves to start building their roster for 2027 and beyond
Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns speaks to the media before an MLB game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Citi Field on July 24. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
CLEVELAND — The Mets lost their Queens’ gambit this year, but president of baseball operations David Stearns continued his thorny game of chess ahead of Monday’s 6 p.m. trade deadline — acquiring over a dozen prospects he believes can help the franchise contend in 2027 in one way or another.
The deals began a little after 1 a.m., when Huascar Brazoban was dealt to the White Sox, and they kept coming.
After Freddy Peralta was traded Sunday, Brazoban, Clay Holmes, Luke Weaver, Tyrone Taylor and Brooks Raley joined the ranks of A.J. Minter and David Peterson, who had been traded before Deadline Day. Triple-A catcher and former Yankee Ben Rortvedt was also dealt away. In return, the Mets received 13 players, headlined by Cubs No. 2 prospect Jefferson Rojas, an infielder acquired in exchange for Holmes and Taylor, and the Pirates' Sammy Stafura, whom the team received in exchange for Weaver (while also eating part of Weaver’s salary).
Of the players traded Monday, Weaver and Brazoban were the only ones fully under team control for a cloudy 2027 — a season that carries the risk of a sustained lockout. Weaver had one year left on his contract, while Brazoban won’t be a free agent until 2030, but turns 37 in October, devaluing those extra years. Holmes had a player option to opt out and become a free agent that he most certainly would have exercised.
It may seem underwhelming — especially since the Mets only received one top-100 prospect in Rojas, and dealt away two top-100 players in Brandon Sproat and Jett Williams for Peralta alone this offseason — but Stearns said on Monday he was gathering not just players, but pieces. A handful of the players acquired Sunday and Monday could potentially be major-league ready by next year, the most notable being Rojas, second baseman Emilien Pitre (received from the Rays in the Peralta deal), and righty Gary Gill Hill (also from the Peralta trade).
“I think it allows us to just strengthen the overall quality of talent in our organization and whether these players directly impact our major-league team in the future, which I think many of them will, or also having players that allow you to acquire other players who impact your major-league team,” Stearns said in a Zoom news conference Monday. “The players that we have acquired, the prospects that we have acquired, the young talent that we have acquired in totality gives us a chance to do that.”
The moves should heavily bolster the Mets farm system, which took a hit this season after making significant strides in past years. Baseball America ranked them seventh ahead of this season and had them down to 24th by midseason — a product of graduating players like Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing, yes, but also due to underperformance by a top organizational prospect Jonah Tong, and general lack of offensive production by a player close to being major-league ready.
This trade deadline should change that: The Mets slotted nine new players into the organization’s top 30 prospects since the Peterson trade in June, per MLB Pipeline. They are: Rojas, Stafura, Aidan Smith, Pitre Cole Mathis, Gill Hill, Gabe Davis, John Spikerman , and Bruin Agbayani.
Rojas, signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2022, is a “really exciting, well-rounded player,” Stearns said. “He has experience at all three positions on the dirt…[He’s] young for his level. He’s really done exactly what you would want to see a player do who was a very well thought out amateur on the international market and has really just performed and progressed throughout his development. All of our reports [say] he’s an extremely hard worker and is going to fit in very well in our organization.”
At 21, he's “an advanced contact hitter,” according to Baseball America, who can hit both righties and lefties, with a plus arm at shortstop and the “tools to be an above-average hitting infielder with the ability to play multiple positions.” He’s slashing .270/.339/.461 in Double-A with 15 homers in 91 games, along with 17 stolen bases.
Stafura, a homegrown Mets fan out of Cortlandt Manor, New York, is also a shortstop, and stands out for his “glove, defensive versatility and speed set,” according to Baseball America. In Single-A and High-A this year, he hit .276 with 20 homers and 20 stolen bases over 60 games.
“The first thing that jumps off the page with you on Stafura is the defense,” Stearns said. “He’s got tremendous defensive ability, he’s a very good baserunner. He can impact the game in a variety of ways, help you win ballgames in a variety of different ways and clearly has power as well. When you begin to talk about a power-hitting infielder who we believe can play shortstop at a high level, that’s a player with a pretty high ceiling.”
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
