According to a recent report from Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the Milwaukee Brewers believed they were close to acquiring Pete Alonso from the New York Mets at the trade deadline. For their part, the Mets disagreed with this characterization.

The term the Brewers source told Rosenthal “talks advanced to the point where the teams were within “field-goal range” of a trade.” Here’s a visual representation of that:

Put another way, there’s no way the Mets were close to trading Alonso to the Brewers.

Some background here. The Mets have long attempted to hire David Stearns away from the Brewers. Brewers owner, Mark Attanasio, has rebuffed the Mets while saying he does not like “small market teams” like he claims the Brewers to be serving as executive on the job training for larger market teams.

Stearns’ contract with the Brewers expires after this season. That leaves a clear path for the Mets to hire him.

Certainly, given the adversarial nature of the Brewers/Mets relationship, it would seem the Brewers have ulterior motives in leaking they were close to acquiring Alonso. It sows potential discord between the player and organization as potentially Stearns looks to extend or trade Alonso in the ensuing offseason.

Of course, all of this is pure conjecture as to why the rumor is bogus. There’s also a bigger reason why this trade was never close.

Alonso is the most popular Met setting team power number records. At some point, he’s going to emerge as potentially the Mets best homegrown position player. If the Mets trade him, especially with a year of control still remaining, the team needs an unquestioned haul in return.

Well, the Brewers were not going to trade their top prospect – Jackson Chourio. Chourio is a top 10 prospect in the sport, maybe top two. He’s the centerpiece needed to make this deal, and yet, he on his own would not be sufficient.

Sure, the Brewers have other top 100 guys, but they don’t have anyone sniffing the top 10 or 20 at the moment. Sal Frelick is top 25, but there’s not another top 30 prospect to pair with him.

The Mets simply cannot trade Alonso to anyone without getting their best prospect. There would be a backlash we haven’t seen for decades, which is saying something considering the Wilpons tenure.

The Mets aren’t dumb, and they know this. In all likelihood, they weren’t trading Alonso for prospects, but were perhaps playing the groundwork for a potential offseason deal which could include Major Leaguers. Who knows?

The only thing we do know is Alonso wasn’t getting traded for less than the best anyone could offer. It would’ve taken a nearly unprecedented prospect haul for a team to acquire Alonso, and the Brewers weren’t doing that.

Instead, the Brewers are trying to fracture the Mets relationship with Alonso. They’re trying to make Stearns’ job more difficult. In the end, Alonso, the Mets, and anyone with a brain should just disregard the Brewers nonsense here.