The Mets could have made a trade before Thursday’s nonwaiver trade deadline. They said they discussed deals involving significant players, but ultimately they stayed put. They held on to Bartolo Colon — for now. They held on to Daniel Murphy. They held on to their stash of young, talented starting pitching prospects.

General Manager Sandy Alderson has become more confident in the team, and he was careful about moving veterans. His inaction underlined the team’s in-between state. The Mets are no longer in a rebuilding mode, per se. But their next moves, the ones they hope could make them contenders, have to be well thought out. As the deadline passed, they were 52-56, six games out of the second wild-card spot.

“I think going in we didn’t intend to be sellers; we didn’t intend to be buyers, necessarily,” Alderson said on a conference call. “We were looking at the market and what it would dictate. We set a price on some of our players, and under the circumstances, they weren’t met. So be it. We’re happy with the team that we have.”

As the Mets discussed trades, Alderson said, the conversations tended to circle back to their pitching prospects. That presumably included names like Zack Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Rafael Montero, who are among the Mets’ best assets. But Alderson said the Mets were not ready to deal them yet.