Colorado Rockies: If you can’t beat Jacob deGrom, trade for him

The Deal

For what it’s worth, the Mets have stated publicly that they aren’t trading deGrom, though this is largely due to the fact that they don’t have to. deGrom is only making $7.5 million this year and he doesn’t hit free agency until 2021. If they don’t deal him at the deadline this year, they still have the offseason, next season, and part of another season after that to get something done.

If you’re the Mets though, why wait? deGrom is at risk for both injury and regression, so now would be a great time to extract maximum value. That said, if the Rockies were to try to trade for deGrom right now, they would be the ones paying maximum value, and there’s no guarantee that that is a thing that the team wants to do, or even can do. If the Mets make it known that deGrom is available, they are certain to be getting some pretty serious offers, especially from teams like the Yankees, Indians, Mariners, and Cubs, as well as Colorado’s division rivals Dodgers and Diamondbacks.

It’s hard to even imagine what type of bounty it might take to pry a player like deGrom away. Perhaps the closest comparable deal in recent memory is last year’s Jose Quintana trade, given that Quintana was an established starter under 30 with two years of team control remaining. In that deal, the Cubs gave the White Sox Eloy Jimenez (the number 12 prospect on ESPN’s top 100) and Dylan Cease (number 86), plus the unranked Matt Rose and Bryant Flete.

So that’s four total prospects, two of which are verified top 100 and MLB-ready, all for a guy with an ERA that, at the time, was nearly triple that of deGrom’s current mark. So what type of package could the Rockies put together that might be enough to convince the Mets to let a talent like deGrom go?