Just Mets

For all intents and purposes, the baseball world has been rocked. In the early morning hours on Tuesday, FOX’s Ken Rosenthal broke the news that the Rockies traded Troy Tulowitzki and LaTroy Hawkins to the Blue Jays for Jose Reyes and prospects Miguel Castro and Jeff Hoffman.

Wow.

After years of rumors, columns and fan questions, the Troy Tulowitzki-to-the-Mets dream is officially dead. This deal really took me, and everyone else for that matter, by complete
surprise. It was very recently that Rosenthal reported that the Mets asked the Rockies about Tulo, but came away unsure that they would be willing to part with him, only for him to be moved just days later.

It really is curious. The Blue Jays are on the cusp of contention and have baseball’s best run differential, but their one, huge deficiency all season has been their pitching. They lead the sport in runs scored–by a huge margin–so for them to go out and trade two of their biggest pitching prospects and take on over $50M in salary for more offense has got everyone scratching their heads, despite how big an impact player Tulo is.

The Rockies were able to get Colorado’s third and fifth best prospects in Castro and Hoffman, but they also very interestingly took on the contract of former Mets shortstop Jose Reyes, who is owed $55M through the 2018 season. Multiple reports have stated that the belief is that the Rockies will eventually flip Reyes to another team, though the New York Post’s Joel Sherman reported that prior to the trade, the Mets did not ask Toronto about Reyes.

As recently as last week, SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo said that the Rockies would’ve needed “the offer of the century” in order to trade Tulowitzki. Colorado’s asking price has always seemed to be unreachable for the Mets, even in the last year with Tulo coming off hip surgery. This past offseason, I heard from multiple people that in exchange for Tulowitzki, that the Rockies wanted Jacob deGrom or Zack Wheeler plus Noah Syndergaard, Travis d’Arnaud and another prospect.

For them to get what they got back, while it’s not nothing, shows to me that this move was largely made in order to rid themselves of his contract. The Rockies didn’t send any money along to Toronto in the trade, and if they are able to flip Reyes this summer, they’ll have saved a total of $105M.

It will be interesting to see if the Mets throw themselves into the ring for Reyes if the Rockies are looking to move him. The thing about this is that Sandy Alderson didn’t want to re-sign Reyes to a big contract in the first place back in 2011, and after the injuries have continued, the production has decreased and the salary has increased, I’m not sure how realistic that is, as fun as it is to think about.

One thing is for sure, though, is that after years and years of rumors, the Troy Tulowitzki saga is finally over. He is a Toronto Blue Jay, not a New York Met. And, apparently, Tulowitzki did not want to join the Mets, according to Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports, which could help explain why the Rockies more or less stonewalled them with an unreachable asking price.

Original post, 2:01 am, update 9:17 am