The Mets just lost to the Dodgers, the franchise that Steve Cohen nearly bought more than a decade ago, and the organization he has wanted to most emulate since he purchased the Mets.
So, a key to the Mets’ near future: how closely do Cohen and David Stearns believe the club is tracking the Dodgers’ trajectory? Is the run to NLCS Game 6 a sign they have significantly narrowed the gap with the perennial championship contenders? If so, should this be a go-for-it offseason akin to the Dodgers’ $1 billion-plus bonanza last offseason?
Or do they see 2024 as just a positive step in a year kissed by OMG/Grimace fortune and that the gap is still too large to truly push all-in? As one NL executive noted, the Dodgers have basically a whole strong pitching staff on the IL, but “a pitching machine” that keeps offering arms to help them get to a World Series.
The Mets are trying to replicate that, but it takes years and they are not there yet.
So if that is the case, should this be a second straight offseason of measured moves designed not to clog future payrolls/rosters or cost them good prospects in trades, but yet quality enough to keep the Mets’ playoff chances high?
The Dodgers’ $1 billion-plus offseason was built mainly around Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a trade and extension for a big-stuff, injury-concern Tyler Glasnow and Teoscar Hernandez.
The Mets’ version? How about Juan Soto in the Ohtani mega-signing mode, Corbin Burnes as the big free-agent starter/Yamamoto, a trade and extension for the big-stuff, injury-concern Garrett Crochet, and Tanner Scott in the Hernandez, we have more money and we can do it, so we will department.
It could be argued that even if the Mets still see a big gap between them and the Dodgers, this would nevertheless be the right time for this expenditure. Because it would enlarge the Mets’ chances to win the NL East the next few years, really enlarge their chances of making the playoffs annually and would provide prime-age protection for the continued growth of the infrastructure in a way that the aging Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer did not.
By the way, both Scherzer and Verlander are free agents … OK, just kidding.
But Scherzer and Verlander are fully off the Mets’ books now. Still even with that and 11 free agents who were on their postseason rosters potentially gone, a Dodgeresque splurge takes Cohen zooming well beyond the top luxury tax threshold and $300 million again.
Does Cohen want to do that? He has shown that his baseball team is like his art collection — he is willing to spend what is necessary to get what he wants. But he also has praised Stearns and, from all indications, listened to what his president of baseball operations has advised. Of course, no one should just concede that Stearns wants to do this on the cheap.
He was hired to be for the Mets what Andrew Friedman has been for the Dodgers — a guy who made the most from the least in Tampa Bay/Milwaukee and now can combine that with being able to shop at the highest end. Remember that even in an offseason of relative frugality, the Mets had the same bid ($325 million, which meant an additional $50.6 million in a posting fee) for Yamamoto as the Dodgers.
And I can’t get something out of my head that Brandon Nimmo told me when the Mets clinched a postseason berth in Atlanta. He revealed he had told Stearns he was “a great architect.”
“It means he’s done a good job with putting the right people in the right places,” Nimmo said. “That’s really important to where Steve and Alex [Cohen] want to take this team and organization. They don’t want to be the other team in New York anymore. They want to be more respected than that.”
The best way to not be stepbrothers to the Yankees would have been to beat them in the World Series and then take Soto away. Half of that is still possible. And Steve Cohen should try.
I do think Soto has loved being a Yankee, and, all things being equal (or close), would stay. But how close? Aaron Judge had stronger ties to the Yankees and agreed to a deal before fully exploring how far the Giants and Padres might go. I suspect this Scott Boras client will find out how far Cohen will go.
Again, think about Yamamoto at $375 million. Cohen went all-in for a pitcher, despite their higher frequency of injuries, while he also was an MLB mystery. All because he was just 25.
Soto turns 26 on Friday and will celebrate in Game 1 of the World Series. There are no mysteries with him. He has shown he can play in New York and October. He is an offensive culture-changer as a whole lineup sees how tenaciously he treats each at-bat. He wants to be historically great, so I do not think money will lead to him falling out of shape. He has a high baseball IQ.
For all of that, the Yankees want to keep him. Heck, every team should want him and many will bid on him. But I believe Hal Steinbrenner is serious about trying to draw the Yankees down from a $300 million-plus payroll, and so he will probably say “Uncle” in a mano-a-mano bidding war with Uncle Stevie. But will Cohen go all-out? He should.
Either way, here are a few other key issues:
— What to do with Pete Alonso? Stearns was hired to some large degree to put logic in front of emotion. He knows no matter how much the fans love Alonso, and how big a homer he hit against the Brewers, that Alonso’s next six years are nearly certain to be less durable and productive than the six that Alonso just had. He’s 30 and an awkward athlete. There is a right price for his power, durability and icon status. But it is far less than he is going to seek after rejecting seven years at $158 million midway through the 2023 season.
The reality is that Mark Vientos had the season that Alonso needed to fully pressure the Mets. And Vientos, for almost minimum salary, can stay at third or move to first in 2025 and either allow Brett Baty/Ronnie Mauricio to battle it out at third or perhaps ask this question: Would you rather re-sign Alonso and have him at first and Vientos at third for the next several years (with DH also included) or move Vientos to first and sign Alex Bregman for third? Could you bring in Hernandez, a free agent once the Dodger season ends, to play outfield/DH and provide a lot of what Alonso does on a lot shorter deal?
— Who is Kodai Senga? Have Tylor Megill and David Peterson earned the right to definitively be in the 2025 rotation? There is enough uncertainty there that the Mets need to add three starters.
Internally, do they tender Paul Blackburn after his spinal injury? How close to the majors are their two highest-ceiling starting prospects, Brandon Sproat and Nolan McLean? (Christian Scott — Tommy John surgery — will miss next year).
Sean Manaea, Jose Quintana and Luis Severino are all free agents. The Mets can try a reunion for multiple years with particularly Manaea and/or Severino. They should and probably will make both the qualifying offer. But the Mets will have to be at peace with them, and free agent Jose Iglesias too, that this was not just one really positive year.
On the outside, Stearns has inside information. He had Burnes in Milwaukee, he also had words with Burnes in Milwaukee over an arbitration hearing. So he will have definitive feelings about whether to reunite. If not, Max Fried is the kind of athletic, cerebral starter you would think could age well as long as you don’t view his 2024 left forearm neuritis as a long-term problem.
Crochet is going to be very available. The Mets have prospect collateral now to get him. The lefty has two control years and is hard to hit. He also has no track record of staying healthy as a starter.
Do the Mets try to take a one-year flier like those with Manaea and Severino designed to allow a pitcher to rebuild value? If so, Walker Buehler and Shane Bieber are enticing. I assume Nathan Eovaldi would want two years, but I have an outsized belief in him.
On the subject of a reclamation project, Jordan Montgomery just had a disaster in Arizona to the extent that owner Ken Kendrick all but said he wants him out of town. To get rid of the $22.5 million owed in 2025, would the Diamondbacks take on the $33.5 million Jeff McNeil has stretched over the next two years? If I were the Mets, I’d try that.
— Free agency/injury leaves Edwin Diaz, Jose Butto (who can still start) and Reed Garrett as the lone certainties for the ’25 pen. Stearns has shown he can improve pens on the fly. But he should try for the luxury item of Scott. It would provide two elements the Mets badly need: a caddy/insurance on Diaz and a dominant left-handed reliever.
