Noah Syndergaard Rumors: Tuesday

The Mets have already added one of the most coveted starters on the trade market, but they’re poised to perhaps trade away one or two more. New York continues to listen to offers on righty Noah Syndergaard, who is still listed as the starter for tonight’s game. We’ll track today’s rumblings on him here and update throughout the evening…

• The Padres made what they considered a fair offer on Syndergaard — one that involved Major League players — but still aren’t close to coming to terms with the Mets, reports SNY’s Andy Martino (via Twitter). The Padres are widely believed to be willing to deal from their plethora of outfielders — Manuel Margot, Hunter Renfroe and Franmil Reyes are among the available names — and also possess one of baseball’s premier farm systems. San Diego’s interest in Syndergaard dates back to the offseason, and they’re still hoping to add a potential frontline starter to help them in 2020 beyond at this year’s deadline. While they’ve explored innumerable trade scenarios around the league, the Padres’ “most earnest” pursuit has been their ongoing effort to obtain Syndergaard, Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
• Similarly, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweets that the Mets have been seeking current MLB talent in all of their Syndergaard talks — even from teams with highly regarded minor league systems. That meshes with last night’s report (from LaVelle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune) that the Mets had asked the Twins for center fielder Byron Buxton as part of the return for Syndergaard — an ask that Minnesota was rather obvious unwilling to oblige. (Buxton is hitting .259/.313/.508, good for a 108 wRC+, and is arguably baseball’s best outfield defender.)
• “[W]hat they were asking it is not even worth a second conversation,” one executive tells Joel Sherman of the New York Post with regard to Syndergaard discussions with the Mets. “I’m not even sure it was worth the first. … [T]he Mets are not in the mode of meeting you in the middle of your offer and their ask, it is their ask or nothing.” As Sherman more broadly explores, Mets brass has no inclination to move toward anything but a win-now approach in 2020. General manager Brodie Van Wagenen was the only one of the dozen GM candidates for the Mets who did not recommend some level of rebuild to ownership, Sherman writes, and both he and the Wilpon family remain committed to constructing a roster they believe can compete in 2020. That seems to only further underline that the Mets would want multiple MLB or MLB-ready assets to part with Syndergaard.