Like any large trade, the Cano/Diaz deal has left a lot of fans scratching their heads wondering what this trade means and why it happened. This is a very bold move for a rookie GM coming into an organization which had been run by an overall conservative FO philosophy under Sandy Alderson which had focused on trying to build a winning team through the net production of many smaller, incremental moves. BVW instead has come in with the Cano/Diaz trade and made a clear statement: Sandyball is done and Wagenenball is going to be a more ambitious brand of strategy. For better or worse (depending on what you think of the trade) BVW has a clear outlook for the team and that's one of a team which, with the right offseason moves, is able to compete in 2019 despite an underwhelming 77 win 2018. I'm inclined to agree with BVW, especially after this trade. Let's break things down here.

Looking at the value of the trade:

Robinson Cano's age and his contract are of concern, but when we're focused on what this trade means for 2019 the answer is clear: Robinson Cano is still a very good baseball player and immediately becomes one of the best hitters and overall players on our current roster. Cano was worth 2.8 fWAR and hit for 136 wRC in his suspension-shortened 2018, prorating out to 5.2 fWAR/650 PAs from a player who never failed to notch at least 600 PAs from 2007-2017. There's decline to be expected, but likely not yet at 36 years old and coming off of a season where he provided vintage Cano value. For the sake of this exercise we're going to project him out for declining production:

2019: 4 WAR

2020: 3 WAR

2021: 1 WAR

2022: 0 WAR

2023: -1 WAR

Net gain: 7 WAR, $100 million salary

2019 gain: 4 WAR, $20 million salary

Edwin Diaz is arguably the best closer in baseball right now. In 2018 he saved 57 of 61 opportunities, struck out 44.3% of the batters that he faced while only walking 6.1%, posted an ERA of 1.96 and an FIP of 1.61 worth 3.5 fWAR. At only 24 years old, without excess mileage on his arm (only 191 career MLB innings across 188 appearances), and under affordable team control for 4 years he is a premier asset that I believe the Mets got at a steep discount in prospects due to their willingness to take on the majority of Cano's contract. To put it bluntly, if you think the Mets could've gotten 4 years of arguably the best closer in baseball for two prospects on the wrong side of all the major top-50 lists and a lottery ticket reliever, you're kidding yourself. Kelenic has some exciting upside, but he's on a very long list of teenagers who have exciting upside and many of those guys won't end up panning out into major league players at all, let alone stars. Justin Dunn has the upside to potentially be a #3 or 4 starter, but his most likely outcome looks like a middle reliever or back-end starter. He's 23 years old and had a 4.22 ERA in AA last year. By the end of Diaz's 23 year old season he'd already tallied 52 major league saves in his career. Let's take a look at what Diaz likely adds to our team. Relievers are a notoriously unpredictable lot in year-to-year variance, so rather than projecting him off of his 3.5 WAR 2018 season, I'm going to project him for a more conservative 2.5 WAR/season. Given historical arbitration salaries for relievers (all time record highest reliever arb salaries: arb 1 $6.25m, arb 2 $9.35m, arb 3 $11.4m) we can expect him to make somewhere in the ballpark of $20-25m over his 4 years with us, but I'll go with $25m to be safe:

2019: 2.5 WAR

2020: 2.5 WAR

2021: 2.5 WAR

2022: 2.5 WAR

Net gain: 10 WAR, $25 million salary

2019 gain: 2.5 WAR, $0.5 million salary

Jay Bruce is a man with bad feet in search of an AL home. He's worth more to the M's than to us since they can use the DH and 1B to keep his plantar fasciitis at bay and hopefully get some value out of him. To us, he's not much more than bad money born out of a failed Sandyball strategy of using second-tier solutions to first-tier problems (Lorenzo Cain earned $3 million more than Jay Bruce in 2018, but would've ruined the Sandyball philosophy of avoiding long-term commitments) so shipping him is a very clear net positive for us. For the M's he might be even a 2 win player if they can keep his feet attached to his body through the DH, but running around in right field for us means he's likely not more than a near-replacement level player who probably would spend a good amount of time on the DL:

2019: 0.5 WAR

2020: 0.5 WAR

Net gain: -1 WAR, -$28 million salary

2019 gain: -0.5 WAR, -$14 million salary

Anthony Swarzak is the epitome of reliever uncertainty. He had a career year in 2017 with a 2.33 ERA and 2.74 FIP, but then crashed back down to earth in an injury-riddled 2018 where he only threw 26.1 innings to the tune of a 6.15 ERA and -0.4 WAR. Overall through his 9 year career he's been a bit of an enigma bouncing between good years and terrible ones, with the net result being an unimpressive career 4.30 ERA and 4.15 FIP. It's hard to know what Anthony Swarzak is going to show up in 2019, but if there's one thing for sure it's that the Mets are probably best off not rolling that $8.5 million set of dice. We'll be kind to Anthony and project him to a 1 win season, a feat he's actually only accomplished once in his career:
2019: 1 WAR, $8.5 million

Net gain: -1 WAR, $8.5 million salary

2019 gain: -1 WAR, $8.5 million salary

The final tally

Net gain: $88.5 million salary, 15 WAR, $5.9 million/WAR
2019 gain: 5 WAR, decreased payroll by $2 million

Discussion:

That last line in the final tally is where the kicker is: by leveraging two good-but-not-premier prospects, we've improved the 2019 roster by 5 WAR while resulting in a marginal net DECREASE in expected payroll. This is a clear win-now move that even from a long term standpoint ($5.9 million/WAR) looks better financially than what we would've gotten through free agency alone. But more importantly, in the short term this move does something that free agency alone could not: it improved the team to a point where going all-in makes sense but still having the money free to actually turn the team into a contender. The question is no longer "why the hell is a team that finished with a 78 win Pythagorean record last year in a win-now mentality?" thanks to those added 5 WAR in value. It absolutely makes sense for an 83 win team to make some bold moves in a strong free agent class in order to turn themselves into an 88-90 win team that has a shot at the playoffs. This move has set the stage for "win-now" to make total sense. Before the trade it was pretty iffy whether we could afford to turn the 2018 Mets roster into a winning 2019 roster through free agency alone without dramatically expanding payroll. Now, the "iffy" is gone. A few more bold moves this offseason and we're right into the hunt in the NL East.

There's another point to consider with the "bad money" we're taking on in the back half of the Cano deal: Thanks to Sandyball's unwillingness to hand out extended contracts, Cano is literally the only veteran contract that the Mets have on the books for 2021 and beyond. We're hardly handcuffing our financial future here. The only three Mets with guaranteed money in 2021 are Robinson Cano, Bobby Bonilla, and Bret Saberghagen. A little bad money in exchange for a shot at a good 2019 season is hardly going to break the bank. As much as the FO's conservatism under Sandy may have squandered prime opportunities in 2017-18, it did leave the door open for BVW to make bold moves now without screwing us in the long term. The idea that a NYC market team can't handle $20 million/year in bad money for the last year or two of Cano's contract is absurd. We already were prepared to handle nearly that much bad money now for 2019-20 with Bruce.

Overall, I like this move and you should too. Prospects are just that: prospective talent. Hoarding talent is a good thing when you're trying to build a good team down the road, but not to the point of valuing prospective talent more than already-proven talent. The best case scenario for Kelenic and Dunn is that they turn into the kind of players that Cano and Diaz already are. If they were the kind of can't-miss prospects that make the top-10 on the overall lists I'd feel differently, but Kelenic and Dunn aren't those kind of prospects. A teenager with a high ceiling and a college arm with control issues should NEVER be a stumbling block to landing two All Star caliber players at a time when the team is in a competitive window. And if Kelenic and Dunn do end up turning into studs? Good for them, I'll be happy for them. Trades are supposed to end up being beneficial for both parties, otherwise people will stop trading with you. Trades aren't about beating the other team, they're about finding a team whose needs complement your strengths and vice versa. Michael Fulmer has turned into a great baseball player and I hope he has an awesome career. Nothing that he accomplishes in his career will ever take down the 2015 NL Pennant that hangs at Citi but probably wouldn't if we hadn't traded Fulmer for Cespedes in 2015. Players come and go, hyped prospects bust sometimes and sleeper prospects flourish sometimes. But once you hang that banner up, it's there for good. The Cano/Diaz trade was a "let's get a banner" move.