The New York Mets and Colorado Rockies are very similar in a few ways. Both teams have not necessarily been in the best graces with their fanbases as both teams owners and front offices have had their fair shares of public relations disasters in years.
The old owners of the Mets, the Wilpon family, were a walking trainwreck. The Wilpons were part owners of the Mets since the early 80s but they became majority owners in 2002.
Since then, they lost a ton of money in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme so, for the better part of a decade, they acted like a small market team. They came under controversy for their new stadium, Citi Field, for the lack of Mets history behind it, Wilpon frequently ripped players in the public sphere (the biggest instances happened in 2011), they went through a ton of managers, a lot of bad free agent signings (Jason Bay, Yoenis Céspedes, Oliver Pérez, Luis Castillo, Kaz Matsui, etc.), and a lot of bad trades too (Robinson Cano, Scott Kazmir, etc.).
You can read about the worst of the Wilpons from our colleagues over at Rising Apple from this article from last year.
With a new owner in Steve Cohen, the Mets started to spend money again but they are constantly riddled with issues. Since he became the principal owner a little more than one calendar year ago, Cohen has gone through five GM’s, Jacob deGrom was injured, there was the whole “thumbs down” debacle, Marcus Stroman had plenty of run-ins with people on Twitter, and many other drama-filled musings.
The Rockies have not had as much drama around them but they still have had owner issues with Dick Monfort, GM issues (Jeff Bridich), drama around players (Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story, etc). because of front office mishaps, and chief among them, few transactions to improve upon a lackluster team.
The Mets, though, have made moves this offseason to improve their team. The Rockies will have to make some moves after the lockout, which is why we have been doing this trade target series.
From a Rockies buying perspective, here are five players off the New York Mets 40-man roster that they should consider as a trade target.