MLB

Mets could have had Street

From JOEL SHERMAN

Right after the Rockies obtained Huston Street from the A’s as part of the Matt Holliday deal, the Mets called and offered Aaron Heilman for the righty. Colorado countered by saying it would do a trade if the Mets sweetened the offer by making it Heilman and Pedro Feliciano, since the Rockies are hungry to add a lefty reliever. The Mets refused. But they know that deal is out there if they need to come back to it.

What I find interesting is that the more I talk to Met officials the more I sense they want to use Street as the eighth-inning guy and still obtain a closer such as Brian Fuentes or Francisco Rodriguez. The Mets recognize they do not just have a ninth-inning problem, but that their whole late-inning contingent was troublesome. Also, they recognized last year that when Billy Wagner went down they had no one else to trust in the ninth inning.

So if they were able to get Street to be their eighth-inning man, the Mets would know they had a legitimate closer replacement should something happen to their actual closer.

To continue reading this item, or for more on the Mets and all of baseball, go to Joel Sherman’s Hardball blog.