The New York Mets have enjoyed plenty of success to start the season, and one could even suggest that the team shouldn’t do anything out of the ordinary to change their roster at the deadline.
However, David Stearns has always been aggressive when the team needs to make upgrades, and that’s the expectation around Major League Baseball heading into the bulk of the season.
Sitting at 18-8 overall and five games ahead of the second-place Philadelphia Phillies in the National League East, the Phillies could use an outfielder with Jose Siri going down with an injury.
He’s expected to miss eight to 10 weeks, and while that’d give him a return sometime in June, the Mets have to be careful and make sure that everything comes back clean before putting him on the field.
If they want to be safe with the right-handed hitting outfielder, a reunion with somebody like Tommy Pham of the Pittsburgh Pirates could make sense. David Schoenfield of ESPN recently named him a trade candidate, and with him struggling to start the year with the Pirates, it makes all the sense in the world for them to move on from him.
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“Pham has been here before: He was traded at the 2022 deadline to the Red Sox, at the 2023 deadline to the Diamondbacks and at the 2024 deadline to the Cardinals (and later joined the Royals on waivers). However, he’s struggling at age 37 and might not have much left in the tank,” Schoenfield wrote.
Despite his .175 batting average to start the year, Pham has put together excellent at-bats throughout his Major League career and is clearly respected by owners, as this is his 12th season at the big league level.
He played for the New York Mets during the 2023 campaign, posting a 125 OPS+. He has a career OPS of 110, and if that could continue in a Mets uniform, he could be a decent addition.
