At the start of June, the Mets looked well on course to be sellers at the trade deadline.
That they instead ended up making six additions — five of them on the pitching staff — before Tuesday’s deadline served as a just reward for the way they’ve played over the eight weeks, with the good vibes rolling past 6 p.m. with a 2-0 victory over the Twins.
“It’s huge,” Sean Manaea said of the club dealing for his buddy Paul Blackburn, along with a pair of relievers, on deadline day. “[The front office] believe in this team. I think everybody in here does, too. To do moves like that is huge. It’s great for everything.”
In a market that didn’t produce much in the way of blockbusters — and in a year where the Mets never appeared likely to deal for a superstar — president of baseball operations David Stearns revamped the bullpen by adding Phil Maton, Ryne Stanek, Huascar Brazoban and Tyler Zuber, shored up the Mets’ starting pitching staff with Blackburn and got Jesse Winker for corner outfield depth.
That haul counted as something to get excited about for a club that left Citi Field on Tuesday a game behind Atlanta in the loss column for the wild-card lead, thanks to a resurgent 33-17 record since June 1.
The plan isn’t yet clear for Blackburn, who brings a 4.41 ERA to New York and just returned from an extended injury layoff — manager Carlos Mendoza said after the game he had yet to discuss things with Stearns — but Manaea had only good things to say about his former teammate with the Athletics.
“He’s very consistent with his action when he pitches,” Manaea said. “He’s pretty quiet but he brings a consistent behavior. Great person to have.”
Mendoza said more than once on Tuesday that he was trying to treat the day as normal.
But he knew as well as anyone that the new additions would send a message to the clubhouse: the Mets changed their own equation, and the front office acted accordingly.
“It helps. We’ve seen it,” Mendoza said. “I’m gonna go back to when we got Luis Torrens, we got [Jose] Iglesias. We continued to add, whether it was a Maton or guys coming up from Triple-A, they always help. It’s different faces, different energy, the vibes.
“And they’re professionals, they understand it’s a business and there’s gonna be a lot of different people walking through those doors at times. The good thing is, we’re family there. And players will adjust to what we have going on there.”
What they have going on right now, it turns out, is pretty good.
