Mets Might Be Done Spending This Offseason

In an offseason where it seems that just about every team is refusing to pony up on boatloads of cash on top free agents like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, in Queens it is business as usual.

Because when it comes to the Mets it’s almost always about dollars and cents.

During a luncheon this week with Mets beat reporters at Citi Field, Mets COO Jeff Wilpon threw water on the idea they would jump into the mix for one of the prized free agents by saying the Mets already have a $30 million player in Yoenis Cespedes.

The same Yoenis Cespedes who is going to be out for more than half of the 2019 season as he recovers from heel surgery.  The same Yoenis Cespedes whom the Mets could recoup as much as a reported $7 million from in insurance should he be out through the All-Star Break.

“I don’t know how many teams have two  $30 million players,” Wilpon said.

Well, it is true; there aren’t a lot of teams with multiple $30 million players.

But the facts are there a lot of teams willing to spend close to that amount on multiple impact players. The Angels are paying Mike Trout $33 million and Albert Puljos $28 million this season.

The Red Sox are paying David Price $31 million, J.D. Martinez $24 million, Rick Porcello $21 million, and Mookie Betts $20 million this season.

The Cubs are paying four guys over $20 million this year, and they are still in arbitration years on Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo.

The Yankees are paying $26 million to Giancarlo Stanton and $22 million to Mashairo Tanaka, and they will eventually pay about that much for Aaron Judge and Luis Severino at some point in the near future.

The Mets? Well they have $29 million invested in a player who was great for them four years ago in Cespedes, and $19 million for a 36-year old Robinson Cano who will lace it up in Mets blue and orange for the first time in mid-February.

It’s just part of what we have come to expect from the Mets in the post-Madoff era. Expect little.

Even General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen who gloated when he first arrive that there isn’t a free agent the Mets wouldn’t consider and that the Mets are the “favorites” in the NL East has toned down the rhetoric.

In the same press conference this week he is quoted as saying, “We never looked at this off-season as having one player in mind or looking a this off-season to make one significant investment. The goal from the beginning was trying to address all our needs in the most efficient way that we could.”

This is what should bother Mets fans. Not that the team hasn’t signed Harper or Machado, but they have shown no inclination to even consider it. And this is a team that has money, and is the beneficiary of insurance not only on the Cespedes deal, but on David Wright’s contract.

As was reported earlier this month by Kevin Davidoff of the NY Post, Wright’s original salary for 2019 was $15 million, but upon his retirement he was able negotiate that figure down to $9 million. The remaining $6 million is deferred with interest.

Add the contracts of Cano, Edwin Diaz, Jeurys Familia, Jed Lowrie, and Justin Wilson, and the arbitration of $17 million for Jacob deGrom and $6 million for Noah Syndergaard, and the Mets payroll is a little north of $157 million, with $142 million committed to active salary.

The so-called luxury tax threshold in MLB this year is $206 million, so it’s not like the Mets couldn’t make another move or two. They just don’t want to, at least not one that will break the bank.

While the Mets have made moves this offseason, none of them feel like it will catapult the squad into contender status in a division where the Braves and Phillies are simply better. And there is still a chance that Machado and Harper could end up in the NL East with either the Phillies or Nationals.

While the slow free agency this off-season is a sign that we are heading for a work stoppage, perhaps as soon as 2022 in Major League Baseball, when it comes to the Mets it feels like we have seen this movie before.

Perhaps the Wilpons are still licking their wounds from the lessons learned by spending big on guys like Johan Santana, Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado a decade ago. Or maybe they are just going with the trend in the sport right now, which is don’t commit more than you have to.

Oh by the way, Bobby Bonilla is due $1.2 million and Bret Saberhagen $250,000 from the Mets this year. Meet the Mets.