3 high-priced Red Sox trade candidates the Mets should consider adding

Steve Cohen has the chance to flex his financial muscles once again.

The Boston Red Sox had themselves an eventful weekend, signing Lucas Giolito to a deal the New York Mets should’ve topped, and trading Chris Sale to the Braves for Vaughn Grissom. The Red Sox improved their biggest weakness, their starting pitching, by signing Giolito, but then took another step back by trading Sale.

With them clearly needing more pitching, the Red Sox appear to be focused on the free agency market to fill that need. Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com reports that “the Red Sox have told at least one free agent target that they need to shed more payroll before pursuing him as aggressively as they want to.” It’s crazy to see a big market giant like the Red Sox penny-pinching like this and is very reminiscent of how the Wilpon Mets used to act.

Fortunately for the Mets, they now have Steve Cohen who can take advantage of teams looking to clear money. The Mets already did that once this offseason with the Brewers, trading Coleman Crow in exchange for Adrian Houser and Tyrone Taylor. The Red Sox won’t trade players like Rafael Devers or Masataka Yoshida to clear money, but any of these three players can be seen as realistic options that the Mets can try and acquire.

1) Kenley Jansen

One player Cotillo notes as an “obvious trade candidate” is Kenley Jansen, a reliever who is still quite good but is owed $16 million in 2024. The Red Sox don’t appear to care about Jansen still being a solid reliever and are so focused on shedding money to the point where he might not cost much at all to acquire.

Jansen is known for his dominance with the Dodgers. While he’s not quite as good as he was back then, he’s still a fantastic high-leverage reliever and would be a strong option setting up for Edwin Diaz. This past season, he posted a 3.63 ERA in 51 appearances and 44.2 innings of work for Boston, converting 29 saves in 33 opportunities.