This post was originally published on this site.
After six months of intermittent rumors, the Mets finally completed a trade for Luis Robert. The 28-year-old center fielder heads to Queens in exchange for Luisangel Acuña and Truman Pauley, the Mets’ 12th-round pick in last year’s draft. Robert is under contract for $20M in 2026 with an additional club option for $20M in 2027.
If you’re a Robert skeptic, I hear you. He batted only .223/.297/.364 for the White Sox last year, posting a pitiful 84 wRC+ equivalent to his 2024 mark. A history of hamstring, hip flexor, and other injuries (groin, calf, and wrist among them) has prevented Robert from ever topping 145 games in a season; he’s only topped 100 games twice in his six-year career. We’re now three years removed from Robert’s last above average offensive season, his career-best 2023 in which he hit 38 HR, posted a 129 wRC+, and accrued 4.9 fWAR.
Let’s lay out the positives, though. Even as his offense has fallen off the last two seasons, Robert has remained a high-quality defender in center field (1 OAA in 2024, 7 OAA in 2025). The physical skills—chiefly his bat speed and sprint speed—are both pretty clearly intact given the better-than 90th percentile marks he posted last season. Even his strikeout rate, which increased in 2023 and peaked over 30% in 2024, improved markedly in 2025, driven by both a higher contact rate and better swing decisions. In fact, Robert ran a 95th percentile SEAGER last season, the highest mark of his career.
That paints the picture of a player with a pretty solid floor, a high-quality center fielder with speed and power. There’s real upside here beyond that, though, as Robert was one of the unluckiest hitters in baseball last season by xwOBA. It’s not because his spray angles suck either, as he manages above average pulled fly ball rates. If you’re a fan of arbitrary endpoint analysis, we might’ve already gotten a glimpse at a more accurate representation of Robert’s output from June to August last season; .262/.326/.431, with a 109 wRC+.
We’ve not addressed the injuries of course, and indeed the date window above ends in August because Robert pulled his hamstring and missed the rest of the season. The Mets are particularly well positioned to accommodate this sort of injury prone upside play because of Carson Benge.
Benge is the #2 prospect in the system and is going to be a consensus top-20 or higher name by the end of the offseason (BA had him 19th, BP will have him higher). The Mets are pretty clearly giving Benge runway to win a job out of spring training and run with it, something they’re incentivized to do under the PPI system. With Robert around, Benge now projects as the starting left fielder, but he’s completely capable of sliding over to center if/when Robert misses time. If things really go south for whatever reason, Benge can stay in center with Brett Baty in left. Or maybe A.J. Ewing is ready. Or maybe the Mets make a trade for a corner bat (something that is usually pretty cheap at the deadline). The point is that the Mets have the optimal roster construction to roll the dice on a high-upside, injury prone center field option like Robert
In a vacuum, the return here is not strictly nothing. Luisangel Acuña has enough defensive utility to be an interesting bench bat and could maybe get the offense to passable given enough runway to figure it out. Truman Pauley is a fun prospect, a Harvard sophomore who never posted impressive stats but popped on stuff models. Both of those profiles have some level of value.
For the Mets, though, the cost is fairly inconsequential. Acuña’s bat is a weakness (no, you shouldn’t care about his Winter League home run barrage) and his ability to play shortstop doesn’t matter with the Mets’ current roster. Critically, he’s also out of options, meaning the Mets would have had to either carry a sub-optimal player on the bench and give him no development runway or lose him through waivers. Trading him is a far better outcome, both for the Mets and Acuña, who should get an extended run to see if things click in Chicago.
As for Pauley, you’d love to keep all of these guys, but the Mets drafted literally four other arms that fit this broad description with higher picks in the same draft, and have shown a penchant for improving most any arm they bring into the system. Moving this kind of player is an option afforded to you by having the best pitching development apparatus in baseball.
So in total, the Mets got a high-upside center field option with a clear floor independent of his top-line offensive output. They have the right roster construction to appropriately hedge the associated injury risk. If things work out, they can keep Robert for another season at only $20M; if not, they can decline the option and move on. And to add this player, they paid a cost that is inconsequential to the organization. Every part of this is a slam dunk win, making this move a clear A+.