Mets-Nationals hypothetical 3-player trade actually makes sense

The primary objective for the New York Mets this offseason couldn’t be more clear.

A Mets rotation that outperformed its projections in the first half of the season fell off the deep end after the All-Star break and was the primary culprit for the team collapsing from 21 games over .500 to out of the playoffs at 83-79. The onus is on president of baseball operations David Stearns this winter to find more concrete rotation solutions moving forward.

Bleacher Report comes up with a lot of wild hypothetical trades, and on Tuesday, they released an article with some of their craziest ideas yet. But buried in the middle was a swap that could make perfect sense for both the Mets and their division rivals, the Washington Nationals.

Kerry Miller of Bleacher Report proposed that the Mets could acquire All-Star lefty Mackenzie Gore from Washington for top pitching prospect Jonah Tong and first base/outfield prospect Ryan Clifford, two of New York’s most prized farmhands in a surprisingly deep system.

“New York’s motivation is this hypothetical swap couldn’t be clearer: Gore had a better season than any pitcher on the Mets’ staff — even with that horrific four-game stretch during the doldrums of the summer in which he allowed 23 earned runs in 15 2/3 innings pitched,” Miller wrote.

“On the Nationals side of things, can they legitimately envision Gore pitching in a postseason game for them in either 2026 or 2027 before he hits free agency? Maybe they can, but most of us can’t. And a similar state of the franchise three years ago is what led to that colossal Juan Soto trade.”

Gore, of course, was one of the major pieces the Nationals acquired when they traded Soto, now a $765 million face of the franchise with the Mets, back in the summer of 2022. He’s still only 26, but he’s two years away from hitting the open market.

The Nationals, who will have a new president of baseball operations this year in Paul Toboni, plus a new manager who has yet to be hired, aren’t going to compete for championships within two years. The question is whether Toboni views Gore as a building block of a rotation even at a much higher price tag, or if he’s worth more to the club as a trade chip.

Tong and Clifford could supplement a Washington core that has some promise, and also some major holes. And maybe pitching for a contender is just what Gore needs to find the consistency he’s never quite maintained for a full season despite all his talent.

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