The Mets used to have one of the top payrolls in the game. Since the Bernie Madoff mess, the payroll has not been nearly that high. The last three years, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, the Opening Day payroll has been in the $150 million range, with last year’s $158,652,231 being the highest raw dollar value ever.
But, barring a trade where they shed payroll, the 2020 number will be higher than that. There’s certainly been enough “smoke” around a potential Noah Syndergaard deal that we can’t rule out a trade that cuts payroll to get back to 2017-19 numbers.
Yet, there’s the possibility that Brodie Van Wagenen was promised more dollars in future payrolls when he took the GM job prior to the 2019 season. That scenario would certainly explain the deals to take on salary with Robinson Cano and Marcus Stroman.
If you believe that Van Wagenen was promised more payroll room, how generous do you think the Wilpons were in their promises? The current luxury tax threshold is $208 million.
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The high payroll for this coming season is on BVW. Adding Cano and Lawrie is redundant and tying up resources needed elsewhere. At MLBTraderumors it shows 54 million in arb hearings and you get 172 million opening day roster for 2020. I see Panik non-tendered so that’s 5 million less. Lawrie gets traded as a salary dump and you now have a payroll that’s consistent with the Coupons values at 156 million dollars.I think it’s fair to say by now that Fred is not reinvesting their insurance savings (Wright, Cespedes). So the Mets drew almost 2.5 million fans. If you just average the price at 50 dollars per seat you’ll see that attendance nearly pays for the entire payroll. (I know about the crushing debt the Wilpons have on Citi and the interest payments). I think Stroman was an insurance policy against Wheeler leaving.
My vote of 175M was just wishful thinking.
It’s pinned at at least 175M$ with no changes. So it’s going up unless the team sheds payroll big time.
I expect it at 175M$ with no changes and no Wheeler therefor a weaker team than the 2019 team. If the Mets sign Wheeler then the payroll would top at a 190M$ and that would only be treading water within the division. According to Cots, the Mets have 8 players under contract in 2020 at 126M$ and it doesn’t including arbitration players or free agents. It appears that aging stars like Cano and Lowrie should not have obtained and the GM has mismanaged the budget.