Inbox: Could Mets replace d’Arnaud with free agent?

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone as we descend into the meat-and-potatoes of this Hot Stove season. By the time you’ve picked those turkey bones clean, free agency will be hitting high gear, with the Winter Meetings just around the corner in December.

As far as the Mets are concerned, everything continues to revolve around Yoenis Cespedes. He is the centerpiece of their offseason, the starting point from which just about everything else will unfold. But neither the Mets nor Cespedes’ camp expect a resolution until at least December, as the All-Star outfielder feels out his market. In the interim, let us present a Cespedes-free Inbox addressing the Mets’ other issues:

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Do you see the Mets going after Wilson Ramos or Kurt Suzuki? — @cruzchristian88 via Twitter

Lots of questions this week revolved around Ramos, Suzuki, Matt Wieters and the Mets’ catching situation. And the answer, quite simply, is no. Both publicly and privately, the Mets maintain that they do not foresee signing or trading for a catcher to replace Travis d’Arnaud. Even if the Mets don’t sign Cespedes, theoretically freeing up money to spend elsewhere, they prefer to keep things unchanged behind the plate.

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The issue, mostly, is that the Mets do not see much value in an upgrade. While Wieters is certainly capable of outshining d’Arnaud defensively, he actually posted a lower on-base percentage than the incumbent Mets catcher last season. Now on the wrong side of 30, Wieters has significantly regressed each of the past two years.

Suzuki is two-and-a-half years older than Wieters and owns a .663 OPS the past seven seasons. I’m not sure there’s any reason to play him over d’Arnaud. There is also a dearth of catchers available on the trade market, for good reason: The good ones are pretty much all locked up.

If I were pulling the strings, the one move I’d consider would be a deal for Ramos, despite his potential to miss most of this season recovering from knee surgery. It seems like a fine risk until you consider that Ramos himself has questioned his ability to play the field until 2018. Without a designated-hitter spot to fall back on, the Mets might not have a place to put him.

So there is no perfect solution, which explains why the Mets are all but ignoring this market. They recently hired a new third-base coach, …

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