Front office ready to listen to offers

With less than a month before the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline, Mets co-interim general manager John Ricco characterized the current trade market as “fairly normal,” while estimating roughly half the league consider their teams buyers.

The Mets are looking to next season, and their recently formed threeman GM team — Ricco, J.P. Ricciardi and Omar Minaya — speak twice a day on conference calls, discussing how best to build for the future.

“A lot of calls coming in, a lot of calls going out, still a little bit of a dance,” Ricco said. “They’re all trying to gauge what’s out there and what’s available and what the price might be, and we’re trying to do the same thing. We’re trying to see who might be real fits for our players.”

Though Ricco recently said the Mets are open to discussing Jacob deGrom, and Noah Syndergaard, the longtime Mets executive also stressed his desire to contend for the postseason next year, and his reluctance to start from scratch without the team’s top pitchers.

Still, deGrom and Syndergaard haven’t been labeled untouchable.

“If the return is the right one and you’re getting young players that are major league ready, I think you can,” Ricco said. “I think some organizations have shown that — that you can do a pretty quick turnaround. Like I said, it would have to be somewhat of an overwhelming return for us to even consider something like that.”

Though the identity of next season’s general manager remains unclear — and could come from outside the current triumvirate — Ricco said a franchise-changing trade could still occur.

“From my perspective, we’re just looking to make the best decisions for the organization,” Ricco said. “To the extent that we’re gonna make any organization-changing decisions, we’ll check with ownership, and we’ll present them, and if the group feels it’s the right thing moving forward, we’ll proceed accordingly.”