Examining several Robinson Canó trade scenarios for the Mets and whether any of them make sense

As the hot-stove season percolates, the Mets sure do seem to be considering creative ways to improve their roster.

The Mets are in a difficult place competitively, with enough young talent to imagine imminent contention but too little to presume it. New York does not appear willing to make any bold financial investments this winter, and thus first-year general manager Brodie Van Wagenen is left attempting unique ways to add talent to a roster that needs more of it. It’s why we’ve already discussed the idea of trading Noah Syndergaard and why we’ll spend some words on the concept of dealing for a 36-year-old salary dump coming off a suspension as the club’s potential big offseason maneuver.

What instigates this conversation is the Mariners’ reckoning with their own, not altogether dissimilar residence on baseball’s competitive landscape. Seattle won 89 games last year but still finished eight out of the playoff hunt — the 17^th consecutive year without an October at Safeco Field. Like the Mets, the Mariners have some intriguing young talent worth building around. Unlike the Mets, they have multiple crippling financial commitments into the future, a team that’s won 100 games in consecutive seasons in their division and too few core pieces to envision ending their long postseason drought in 2019.

All things considered, Robinson Canó is probably the easiest of Seattle’s big contracts to move, given the dismal recent performances of Felix Hernandez and Kyle Seager. Canó is not easy to move, though, given he’s owed $120 million over the next five seasons, he’ll play next season at 36, missed half of last season for using performance-enhancing drugs and owns a complete no-trade clause. The Mets are an option here because we’re presuming Canó would waive that clause to return to New York and because, well, they want to be creative.

So how would a deal for Canó work? We’ve got to break this down into a few different steps, first determining fair value for Canó, then getting into fair value that makes sense for both sides.

1. How much is Robinson Canó worth?

The first thing to realize about Canó is that he’s still a very good player. Even with his season halved by his suspension in 2018, he racked up around three wins above replacement (according to both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference).

Canó’s year actually looks extremely similar to that of Jeff McNeil:

Now, believing Canó — or McNeil, for that matter — likely to post a six-win season in 2019 is more bullish than we’re willing to go. In fact, viewing Canó as a three-win player right now seems about right. That’s where he was in 2017 in a full season, and although he’s been startlingly durable during his career, he’ll play next year at 36.

A conservative estimate of Canó’s aging curve looks something like this:

A total of 10 wins above replacement would be worth around $80 million on the free-agent market — or $40 million less than Canó is owed through the end of his deal.

But that’s conservative because it’s based off aging patterns in the early 30s — what you’d expect if Canó were entering his age-31 season rather than his age-36. It’s tougher to reach conclusions about how a player ages in his late 30s because that dynamic has shifted in the post-steroid era, with fewer and fewer players capable of maintaining their production in the second half of their 30s.

So we looked at players with resumes similar to Canó’s in the last decade — guys who have had four qualifying seasons with an OPS+ above 100 between the ages of 31 and 35 — and examined how they’ve aged. Our curve gets steeper with this analysis.

We’ve got 17 players in the sample, after removing those who haven’t yet played beyond their age-36 season or who retired after their age-35 year. Those 18 players — names you’ll recognize like Derek Jeter, Adrian Beltré, Albert Pujols and Curtis Granderson — averaged about 3.5 wins above replacement (according to FanGraphs) from age 31 to 35. In their age-35 season, they averaged 3.1 wins above replacement.

(Canó averaged 4.1 from 31 to 35 and had 2.9 as a 35-year-old.)

Collectively, things did not go well for those players once they turned 36. If we eliminate the active players (people like Granderson, Ian Kinsler, Adrián González and José Bautista, who have all shown varying degrees of decline), we settle on 11 players.* On average, they lost about a third of their value with each passing season. In their late 30s, they were worth about 30 percent of their value in their early 30s.

*Beltré, Jeter, Pujols, Paul Konerko, Torii Hunter, Ichiro Suzuki, Bobby Abreu, Victor Martínez, Alfonso Soriano, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz and Lance Berkman, for the record.

Apply that aggressive curve to Canó, and it looks more like this:

That would make him worth about $50 million over the remaining five years.

Seattle would have reasons to argue that Canó will age better than this. Unlike some players in our sample, he maintains defensive value (though we’ll note the only player to surpass his early-30s production in his late 30s was Ortiz, a career-long DH). The Mariners could equate Canó with Beltré, who provided close to 50 percent of his earlier value before retiring at 39 this winter. That’s in line with our conservative estimate above.

To bridge this Jay Bruce-sized gap between proposed aging curves, let’s just split the difference. Canó is worth something in the range of $65 million over the next five seasons.

2. How can the Mets get the Mariners to cover what’s left on Canó’s deal?

There are three options here:

A) Have Seattle pay down the difference, which here would be about $11 million per season.

In Andy Martino’s story for SNY, he suggests the M’s are amenable to paying down $10 million per season. Change a zero to a one in that calculation, and we’ve got fair value for Canó.

B) Have Seattle take back onerous contracts, such as those of Jay Bruce and Jason Vargas.

The Mets could look to improve the flexibility of their roster by ridding themselves of the $28 million owed Bruce through 2020 and the $10 million owed Vargas through 2019 while also allowing Seattle to claim some assistance for its 2019 team. (The Mariners could sell Bruce as a short-term replacement for Nelson Cruz.) Seattle would still need to pay down some of Canó’s deal, though not nearly as much — about $2 million per season.

(P.S. Moving Yoenis Céspedes in the deal for Canó might be the best financial match, but we’re skeptical Céspedes would be willing to wave his no-trade clause for a move to the northwest.)

C) Have Seattle add win-now talent for win-later talent.

We mentioned earlier the similar spots in which the Mets and Mariners find themselves, with the major difference being Seattle’s decision to punt contention down the road. That could leave the two a better match than you’d otherwise think, with the M’s willing to move pieces that can win now in exchange for prospects that can help them later.

We’ll be honest: There aren’t a lot of guys on Seattle’s roster that the Mariners would want to move and the Mets would want to take back. Mitch Haniger would be a great get for New York; Seattle is rightly loath to move a 27-year-old borderline All-Star in the outfield. (If Haniger is on the table, the Mets should be all over trying to build one of the game’s best young outfields.) The Mariners would move Jean Segura or Dee Gordon, but the Mets won’t need another infielder if they’re already getting Canó.

So let’s focus on two pieces that might fit what we’re looking for.

Edwin Díaz garnered Cy Young votes for his 57-save season last year, and he’d be a headline move for the Mets — this would be the Díaz trade and not the Canó trade were he involved. Seattle has proclaimed Díaz, like Haniger, off limits this winter, but we imagine they can be prodded to change their mind more with the closer than the outfielder. Obviously, relievers’ results from year to year are far more volatile than anywhere else on the field. Díaz likely just had his best season, and few teams regret trading relievers for impact talent in return (just look at how Seattle’s trade of Carson Smith, San Diego’s deal of Craig Kimbrel and Milwaukee’s deal of Tyler Thornburg — all to the Red Sox — panned out). Trading Díaz to help get out from under Canó would be similar to the original Kimbrel deal, when Atlanta sent him and Melvin Upton, Jr. to the Padres for a package that included top-100 pitcher Matt Wisler. Our Corey Brock made the case for moving Diaz earlier in The Athletic.

Díaz’s appeal to the Mets would be obvious, as a lockdown closer under team control for four more seasons.

To get Díaz, we’d imagine the Mets would have to forego some financial assistance on Canó and add a prospect of some value. In that case, let’s say New York offers Bruce back, making the financial difference $92 million and puts top prospect Andres Gimenez on the table. Gimenez fits Seattle’s timetable as a near-majors prospect and a need on the infield. He’d also become more expendable in New York with the acquisition of Canó on the infield.

One other name of note is Mallex Smith, the 26-year-old outfielder the Mariners just traded for (a second time) in the Mike Zunino deal with Tampa Bay. Smith had a breakout 2018, delivering a .773 OPS and 40 stolen bases, and he’s graded out as an above-average center fielder in limited time there. He’d fit a Mets need at a low cost, and he’s one guy Seattle general manager Jerry DiPoto hasn’t said (at least to our knowledge) is unmoveable.

To get Smith, let’s have the Mets offer Bruce, Juan Lagares and more of a depth collection of minor-league talent — something headlined by a pitcher such as Thomas Szapucki and a farther-away infield talent like Shervyen Newton.

3. If we’ve established a facsimile of fair value, do any of these moves make legitimate sense?

The impetus for this entire conversation is Seattle’s desire to get Canó’s contract off its books. The impetus for the Mets’ interest, on the other hand, has to be more than just adding Canó to their roster. Going with Option A above — dealing little of value for Canó and cash — doesn’t do enough to propel the Mets to 2019 contention, and it doesn’t do anything to make them better in the years beyond that. It’s a dreaded half-measure. Option B — moving a bad contract in the deal — is in the same category.

However, if the Mets can leverage Seattle’s willingness to move Canó to get additional controllable talent on their roster, then the move starts to make more sense. It also starts to make less sense for the Mariners, which is why we need to find middle ground in Option C.

As much as adding Díaz to the back end of the bullpen would excite the fan base, I don’t love the idea of moving potential impact position-player talent for a 70-inning reliever — one who while under team control will cost plenty in arbitration given the number of saves he’s accumulated to this point. Maybe that’s because I covered Boston when it made all those moves for relievers. (The Kimbrel one worked largely because of the surplus of talent in Boston’s minor-league system and the club’s proximity to serious contention; neither dynamic exists for New York at the moment.) Seattle’s reticence to move Díaz is only likely to increase the acquisition cost.

That’s why, unsexy as it is, I like adding Smith the most. The Mets can sign a closer — even two — in free agency. There isn’t a center fielder with Smith’s skill set available on the market, with his ability to influence the game with his bat, glove and legs. Adding him likely wouldn’t require as big a sacrifice in terms of prospects, and it would fill what has been a major-league void for the Mets for several years in center. The two sides could squabble over whether Seattle needs to kick in more money — our scenario has the M’s taking on the $37.5 million owed Bruce and Lagares, leaving Canó at five years and $82.5 million — and exactly what level of prospects New York needs to give up.

The Mets would go from paying $23.5 million next season to Bruce and Lagares to paying $24.5 for Canó and Smith. Yes, it adds money in the future — but that’s when the Mets have more flexibility, with Céspedes and David Wright’s deals up after 2020.

Look, I’m on the record as to how I’d go about the Mets’ offseason. But I wasn’t even interviewed for the GM opening — can you believe that? — and New York has shown no indications it’s willing to wade into the deep end of free agency or rebuild with its sights on the future. The novelist David Mitchell once called originality “the confinements you choose at the beginning,” and the Mets’ choices at the start of this offseason dictate the necessity of such creativity within it. Using Seattle’s desperation to move Canó as leverage for other additions is one way of creative improvement.

(Top photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)