Mets' trade for Freddy Peralta completes whirlwind week back to contention

Key Highlights

• Was it simply the market moving to an inevitable conclusion for the likes of Kyle Tucker and Cody Bellinger that led to the signing of Bichette and the trade of Robert Jr.?Or, to put it another way, was this always the plan, waiting to mid-January to throw huge money at the likes of Tucker and Bichette, or did the outrage of Mets fans over losing Alonso and Diaz reach such a crescendo that Cohen, in particular, decided he needed to react and flex his financial muscle to stem the tide?“Steve can certainly be reactive to situations like that,” said one person who knows Cohen on a personal level, more as the hedge-fund billionaire.
• “He’s very aware of public perception in everything he does.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSo it’s possible he ordered the Code Red, if you will, that finally jump-started the Mets’ offseason.
• Yet, to be fair, it’s also possible that the timing of the big moves coincided with Stearns’ plan to wait for the prices on both free agents and trades to fall enough to warrant sudden activity.“The offseason has a life of its own,” was the way an executive from another team put it Wednesday night.
• “I’d lean toward believing the Mets waited until they felt the time was right, and then one move leads to another move and so forth.”Whatever the impetus, the additions of Bichette, Robert Jr., and Peralta all filled important needs for the Mets and are impactful enough to make the case that the Mets now have a better team than they did before this offseason began. For that matter, with Bichette being introduced at Citi Field on Wednesday, some 12 hours after Stearns swung the deal to gamble on Robert Jr.’s high ceiling in center field, Stearns decided to have a Michael Corleone kind of day and settle all family business of sorts by making the trade for Peralta on Wednesday night. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAgain, why now?
• Was it because he decided Framber Valdez wasn’t going to settle for a high-AAV, three-year deal?Were the Brewers running out of suitors an.