The Mets have reportedly talked with the Cubs and Mariners to add their third basemen. Both wouldn’t cost a ton besides their contract, so let’s take a look at Bryant first.

Earlier this offseason I wrote an article about the Mets adding Bryant. This was right after the Darvish trade, where the return seems light to me. Bryant will be owed around $19M for his last year of his contract. He will be a rental for a fairly high price, coming of a bad year. That indicates, low cost in prospects.

Bryant hit just .206/.293/.351 in 34 games in 2020, however in 2019 he had a solid .282/.382/.521 slash line with 31 homers and 77 RBI’s. Over his career Bryant has a very good .889 OPS. The three time all star and one time MVP has collected 24.3 BWAR over his 6 year career.

Bryant defense at third is fairly solid as he owned a plus 2 OAA in 2019. His worst defense year was 2018, were he had a minus 3 OAA. Over the last two seasons he has a 2 OAA at third base, which is slightly above league average.

This is how a trade for Bryant could look according to Baseballtradevalues. It shows it wouldn’t cost a ton, which makes a trade like this more likely. In this scenario the Cubs would get a lower return back (like the Darvish trade) or the Mets add a low prospect with Newton. Anyways, the Mets need to keep their top prospects so that makes Bryant a possibility.

The other name the Mets have talked about is Mariners third baseman (Brother of Corey) Kyle Seager. Seager will earn $18.5M for this year with a $15M club option in 2022. The 33 year old hasn’t been great, but is still a fairly solid player.

In 2020 Seager hit .241/.355/.433 with 9 Homers and 40 RBIs, accounting for a 122 OPS+. His hard hit rates are around league average, but his expected slugging is in the 73th percentile, while his xwOBA is in the 80th percentile. That’s very promising when considering him leaving a pitchers friendly park. His OAA on the other hand was below average.

In 2019 his OAA was above average, so maybe his 2020 defense was a bit of a fluke. As you can see below Seager is a league average to above league average player in many aspects on the game.

Seager owns negative value, so the Mets might be able to add a prospect or give a cheaper contract for the Mariners in Jeurys Familia.

This is a trade the Mets would do in a heartbeat IMO. Get another solid player for close to nothing plus getting another spot in the pen for Barnes or Drew Smith. Thanks Mike Conte for the proposal.

Both of these names are interesting to me and also seems like JD could be on the way out? Or do the Mets see him as a great bench bat? Either way the Mets are clearly looking at third base improvements.

Photo from Yahoo News