MLB Rumors: Pete Alonso trade buzz, Braves-Cardinals trade, Royals rock and hard place

MLB Rumors: Could Mets actually trade Pete Alonso to hit big red reset button?

Tommy Pham, Brooks Raley, and several other New York Mets are surely going to be dealt at the trade deadline, perhaps no matter if the club starts to turn around a disappointing 2023 season or not. But there are some bigger questions looming about the futures of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander.

What about Pete Alonso, though?

Alonso has been one of the best power-hitters in baseball since winning NL Rookie of the Year in 2019, continuing that trend this season while hitting 24 home runs with 55 RBI on the season with an .826 OPS. He also has just one year of arbitration left of club control in New York before he’s set to become a free agent in 2025 at 30 years old.

Make no mistake, the Mets shouldn’t be actively searching for a Pete Alonso trade. But while exploring the trade deadline options for Steve Cohen, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (subscription required) noted that Alonso could net the biggest return and that it’d be hard to imagine the club competing — or being a serious contender to sign Shohei Ohtani — in the coming years without him.

Rosenthal did call the chances of trading Alonso “exceedingly slim”. At the same time, though, if the Mets continue to fall out of contention and teams are calling and offering MLB-ready talent to shake up the roster in New York, you have to imagine that Cohen might at least give it adequate consideration.

In the end, as Rosenthal noted, an extension is far, far more likely than a trade when it comes to Alonso. Nothing has turned out as expected for the Mets this season, though. So perhaps a trade might be a wild possibility to monitor leading up to the Aug. 1 deadline.