Not much has gone right for the Mets this year, with superstars Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto both having missed time this year while the rest of the team has struggled significantly. That’s left the club near the bottom of the National League and completely buried in their division, making them one of the most obvious sellers in the majors at this point. Whatever hopes fans may have had of Kodai Senga saving this team are dashed at this point, leaving little reason for optimism.

All that has left the vultures around the rest of the league to circle the team in recent weeks looking for spare parts. No Mets player looks like a juicier trade candidate than Freddy Peralta, who FanSided’s Robert Murray recently spoke to league executives about. It seems as though the Mets will be able to set a high asking price for the righty, and the Dodgers could be the rare team with both the need and the prospects to get a deal done, especially if they don’t land Tarik Skubal.

Los Angeles has perhaps the best and deepest farm system in the entire game at the moment, littered with well-regarded prospects who appear to be mostly blocked at the big league level. Who could the Mets look to pry away from them, and who should they avoid asking about? Here’s a look at two prospects that fit each category.

Mets fans shouldn’t waste their time getting their hopes up for a Josue De Paula trade

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: there are some prospects who are simply too valuable to expect the Dodgers to give up in a trade for Peralta. The chief example of this is outfielder Josue De Paula, a 21-year-old slugger who looks like he could find himself in the middle of the Dodgers’ lineup for years to come once he arrives. Ranked by MLB Pipeline as the #8 prospect in baseball coming into this year, De Paula has somehow been even better than expected in his first real taste of Double-A.

Across 52 games this year, he’s walked (14.2%) more than he’s struck out (13.4%) with nine home runs and 16 steals to go with a .325/.423/.550 triple slash. Blue chip prospects of this caliber do sometimes move at the trade deadline, as seen with Leo De Vries last year, but that’s still no reason to expect De Paula to be available. Andrew Friedman is not nearly as aggressive as AJ Preller. Even if he was, a couple months of Peralta is not nearly as valuable as several years of Mason Miller was.

James Tibbs III has nowhere to play in L.A. but looks ready to mash in Queens

Fortunately, De Paula isn’t the only Dodgers prospect with considerable helium this year. James Tibbs III was actually a first-round pick by the Giants two years ago, but last year he was traded to the Red Sox for Rafael Devers and then to the Dodgers for Dustin May just over a month later. Now, Tibbs might be in line to be dealt for the third time in the past year.

Tibbs wasn’t viewed as a top-100 prospect around the industry headed into this year, but that’s nearly guaranteed to change soon with the way he’s been playing. The 23-year-old has been setting the world on fire for the Dodgers at Triple-A, slashing .317/.428/.647 across 58 games for Oklahoma City. His 24.9% strikeout rate is more than made up for by a whopping 18 home runs, and the 15.6% walk rate is also quite strong.

Perhaps the most attractive thing about Tibbs as a trade target is how close to the majors he is. He could theoretically be slotted into the Mets’ lineup immediately as either a first baseman. With the way the team’s first base mix has played so far, a more respectable replacement for Pete Alonso is desperately needed.

Kendall George wouldn’t offer the impact the Mets need to look for in a Freddy Peralta trade

Not every player the Mets target needs to be an already-established top-100 talent, as demonstrated by the perfect fit Tibbs would offer. Even so, there does come a point where even interesting prospects simply aren’t valuable enough to justify giving up a player of Peralta’s caliber for. Dodgers outfield prospect Kendall George is one such prospect.

Ranked 13th in the Dodgers system by MLB Pipeline, George was a first-round pick by the club back in 2023. To call him a prolific base-stealer would be an understatement. George is one of the fastest players in the entire game and swiped 100 bases in 111 games at the High-A level last year. The 21-year-old has also been an above-average hitter at Double-A this year, but there are some red flags in his profile that suggest he might be only a fourth outfielder in the majors.

While George has considerable speed, that hasn’t translated into elite defensive value the way it has for someone like former Mets prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong or former Met Harrison Bader. He’s still got the chance to stick in center field, but he’d be pairing less-than-elite defense with questionable offensive ability despite solid numbers on the surface.

George offers virtually no power whatsoever, with just four professional homers and none this year. His strong .333/.417/.397 slash line is carried by a massive .411 BABIP and seems unlikely to translate into a productive major league bat. While some players like Luis Arraez and Jacob Wilson manage to make the profile work, Kendall’s 16.5% strikeout rate is much higher than either of them. He’s unlikely to be more than a bench piece for the Mets, especially with Carlos Benge and A.J. Ewing in the fold.

River Ryan could be a long-term replacement for Freddy Peralta in the Mets rotation

While the Mets are extremely unlikely to turn things around for 2026 at this point, the club will surely be right back to attempting to contend for a World Series in 2027. That will require a lot more firepower in the starting rotation, so it’s a given that president of baseball operations David Stearns and his front office will be looking for starting pitching help in return for Peralta’s services this summer.

Enter River Ryan. The Dodgers righty dazzled in his big league debut back in 2024, with a 1.33 ERA across four starts that year. He ultimately ended up requiring Tommy John surgery and has been out of commission ever since. He’s made six starts at the Triple-A level this year as he works his way back into the fold, with a 2.89 ERA in 28 innings of work. That might not answer every question about how surgery may have impacted him, but there’s no obvious downturn in production yet.

That long layoff has allowed Ryan to retain prospect status even as he approaches his 28th birthday. With five years of team control remaining, he would be a long-term addition to the Mets rotation who could join Nolan McLean for years to come. Like Tibbs, there’s also the fact that he’s currently blocked in the majors. MLB.com’s Sonja Chen recently discussed Ryan’s situation, which has left him buried on the Dodgers depth cart in a way that might spur them to make a move.