A Proposed Trade

The Mets are rumored to have their eyes on some potentially-available high-profile outfield trade targets: Carlos Gonzalez and Giancarlo Stanton. One of these things is not like the other, so I'll ignore CarGo and focus on Stanton, one of the best players in the game. The speculation is that the Mets would have to give up both Zack Wheeler and Travis d'Arnaud, the two top prospects in the system, to land Stanton. I would not want to do that trade. I would, however, jump at a trade involving Wheeler and Wilmer Flores. Flores is the Mets' #2 position-player prospect, so he's not that much of a downgrade. He's not necessarily a downgrade at all for the Marlins, who have Placido Polanco playing third base, Wilmer's most likely position at this point, this year. That's not exactly a long-term solution. Their catchers, on the other hand, are the up-and-coming type. Now, I don't think that Wheeler + Flores by themselves are enough to bring back Stanton. Perhaps the Marlins might accept a Lucas Duda in addition? Their first-base situation is an absolute mess; they're going with essentially a fourth-string first baseman right now. And Duda has crazy raw power, just like Stanton; he would replace a lot of Stanton's home runs right away, if not his defensive prowess. You'd probably need to throw in a lower-level prospect or two to get the trade done, but I think Wheeler + Flores + Duda + low-level prospects for Stanton might make sense for both sides. Giancarlo is playing miserably right now and, honestly, just isn't in a position to succeed in Miami. You know he wants out, he's playing like someone who wants out, and there's no way the Marlins keep him anything like long-term. Meanwhile, Flores and Duda are both people who just don't really fit on the Mets, and Wheeler, well, we'd miss him, but we've got a lot of exciting pitching prospects and we don't have Giancarlo Stanton. If the Marlins wanted, say, Daniel Murphy instead of Duda, that would be fine as well; we've got Valdespin a potential decent replacement at second base. If Sandy Alderson could manage to pull off this trade without giving up d'Arnaud, and plunging the organization back into the depths of catching despair, I will be extremely impressed. And the Mets would, all of a sudden, look a lot more like a contender with Stanton's bat in the middle of their lineup.