On the surface, the New York Mets supposed plans to eat a bad contact to get a good player makes a lot of sense. After all, it’s what we say he Los Angeles Dodgers do when they first started their current run.

It’s also a great way to maximize Steve Cohen’s financial muscle. Go after teams at the mercy of a bad contract and see just how badly they need to get rid of the deal. For an owner like Cohen, that bad contract may be nothing more than a rounding error.

Who knows? Maybe the Mets can turn that bad contract into something too.

Take Steven Matz as an example. He’s had success in the past with the Mets. He’s got a good relationship with Jeremy Hefner. His splits against left-handed batters suggest he could be an effective left-handed reliever/long man.

Who knows how much the St. Louis Cardinals want to me rid of him. Do they give up a decent prospect? Maybe a decent reliever? It’s worth gauging interest.

Going back to the Dodgers, the plan worked beautifully because Andrew Friedman was in charge. Friedman is among the best there is.

As for the Mets, they have Billy Eppler. He’s the same GM who couldn’t win with Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. More recently, he’s the one responsible for the current Mets roster issues.

To execute trades like this, you have to trust your current GM. Looking at Eppler’s Mets trade history, the only trade that hasn’t proven to be a debacle has been the Chris Bassitt trade.

Based on that trading history, you really can’t trust Eppler with executing trades of this nature. He is going to be inclined to attach a prospect with real value for what will amount to little more than a salary/contact dump.

The obvious retort is he is the GM, and you need to be able to trust him to make these (or any) trades. However, Eppler has a long history as a GM now, and nothing there suggests he can or should be trusted.

Put another way, Eppler should not be the GM. In fact, he never should have been hired. It’s better to not let him screw things up more and reset in the offseason. After all, Eppler has shown he can make any situation worse.