NY Mets: Top 5 teams that will compete to sign Marcus Stroman

Marcus Stroman is going to end up signing with the highest bidder this winter. There’s no doubt about it. The man pitched well enough for the New York Mets in 2021 to have an abundance of options when he heads into free agency for the first time in his career.

Now over 1,000 big league innings into his career, Stroman has shown signs of getting even better. Exactly what he can accomplish has been hard to diagnose. His down year in 2018 was an outlier of the bad while his most recent two full seasons match closely to what he did in 2017 when he became a full-fledged star for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Whatever you think Stroman is capable of, he’s going to have suitors all over North America this winter. These five clubs seem to stand the best chance at taking him away from the Mets.

The Chicago Cubs have emerged as a potential competitor with the Mets

Despite selling last winter and again midyear in 2021, the Chicago Cubs might not stay in baseball purgatory for long. They’re in a big market with some of the loyalist fans out there. It’s believable enough that they merely took a step back from spending big now so they can gear up and go for another championship in the not-too-distant future.

I’m not betting on them going nuts in free agency this winter. However, it wouldn’t come as a shock for them to pry Stroman away from the Mets to get the ball rolling.

The Cubs make my list mostly because Stroman has already talked about them and his willingness/interest in ending up on the Northside of Chi’Town. Had he not done so, I’m not sure this club would have necessarily clicked as one of the top options.

There always seems to be at least one organization that buys unexpectedly during the offseason. The Cubs could very well be that organization in the winter ahead of us.