The Mets and Jose Bautista are close to a deal, per report

It looks like Jose Bautista isn’t going to have to wait long to see what his next team will be

It was just a few short years ago that Jose Bautista seemed like he was on his way to getting a big pay day as he was mashing home runs for the Blue Jays (bat flips and all) and competing for division titles in the AL East.

Unfortunately, time catches up with us all. Bautista didn’t ultimately get paid as much as he wanted and his last year in Toronto did not go particularly well. This past offseason, he found himself without a major league job to his liking until he touched base with his former GM Alex Anthopoulos who is now with the Braves. The Braves gave him an opportunity to play third base, which he hadn’t played in about a decade, and the results were....not great. While it was a small sample, Bautista only managed to slash .143/.250/.343 in 40 plate appearances with the Braves and looked like a shell of his former self at the plate before the team released him.

Now, it appears that a team that has been picking up scraps from the Braves recently is close to another such acquisition.

The Mets have already grabbed cast-offs from the Braves this season in Christian Colon and Ezequiel Carrera on minor league deals, so it does seems like the Mets are pretty constantly searching for players Atlanta parts with.

In fairness, there is some real upside with Bautista assuming he can find some semblance of his old form and now that he has some game experience at third in addition to playing the outfield extensively in his career, he has a certain amount of versatility that the Mets and others could see as valuable. This is particularly true of the Mets that have had several issues with injuries this season.

In Bautista’s career, he has posted a .249/.361/.480 line with 333 home runs with the bulk of his production coming in his time with the Blue Jays. Also of note, he turns 38 in October.