CINCINNATI — Boon: (Expletive). Otter, this is ridiculous.
Pinto: What are we gonna do?
Otter and Boon (in unison): Road trip.
— “Animal House”
Switch the principals’ names to Sandy, Terry and Jeff, and change “Road trip” to “September trade,” and you very well could be describing the plight of — and solution for — these 2016 Mets.
Oh, nothing’s doing at the moment on the Mets’ trade front.
“We’ll keep an eye and watch this team if things change,” Mets vice president and assistant general manager John Ricco said Tuesday at Great American Ball Park before the Mets’ 5-3 victory over the Reds, “but right now, I would be surprised if we did anything in September.”
Nevertheless, these Mets fit the profile for the rare club that conducts September business:
1) Alive in the playoff hunt, but behind.
2) Hurting.
The rub to a September transaction lies in the fact that the player has missed the Aug. 31 deadline to be eligible for a club’s postseason roster. Therefore, you’re getting someone as a boost, knowing that if the move actually works and he helps you advance to October, he’ll be sitting on the sidelines.
The Yankees acquired Brendan Ryan from Seattle in September 2013 after Derek Jeter’s left ankle injury shelved him for good. Twenty years prior, the 1993 Yankees, desperate for starting pitching, picked up veteran lefty Frank Tanana from the Mets. Eight years before that, the Yankees, desperate for starting pitching, called the Astros about Joe Niekro and reunited the knuckleballer with his older brother Phil.
None of those moves, it should be pointed out, proved particularly impactful. All of those Yankees teams missed the playoffs.
The Mets, who welcomed six players from Triple-A Las Vegas into their clubhouse Tuesday, before they took on the Reds, now are deploying an unwieldy, 34-man roster and hope they are set.
“We feel pretty good about what we have,” Ricco said. “I don’t think we need any more veteran this or veteran that. I think we can get what we need from the guys we brought up, whether it be lefty hitter, righty hitter, another arm.”
This situation remains fluid, however, most of all because of the Mets’ starting rotation. Neither Jacob deGrom (right forearm) nor Steven Matz (left shoulder) has advanced beyond playing catch on flat ground, and the Mets are enjoying unexpectedly stellar showings from unheralded rookies Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo, with Rafael Montero starting Tuesday night. Maybe the Mets can maintain this magic act. Or maybe deGrom or Matz actually will make it back in time to help.
If not, though? Given how much the Mets already have invested in this season, would they really stop now? They’d have to open themselves to the unconventional.
The most prominent names that cleared waivers come with risks, naturally. The Twins’ Ervin Santana is due $13.5 million each of the next two seasons, plus a $1 million buyout (against a $14 million team option) for 2019. While former Mets prodigy Scott Kazmir of the Dodgers can opt out of his deal, he probably won’t, given his poor 2016, and then he’d get $16 million salaries, with half of that deferred, through 2018.
There are rewards, too. Santana actually has pitched well this year. Kazmir’s roller-coaster career features many rises from the dead. In either case, such an acquisition would probably result in not retaining Bartolo Colon beyond this season.
“We’ve kind of already been through that,” Ricco said of the starting-pitching pool. “We had more of a need heading into [Aug.] 31. If there was something, we would’ve done it then. From within, we’re comfortable. Hopefully, that holds up.”
You don’t bet on a trade happening. Then again, you never would’ve bet on the Mets’ September starting rotation being without deGrom, Matz, Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler. Ricco used the phrase “If things change,” and that could be the defining phrase for these Mets.
If things change? Maybe we’ll see a September trade, the rare bird of baseball’s sky, in Flushing.