Late Thursday night news came out that Yoshinobu Yamamoto had come to an agreement with the Dodgers on a 12/$325 million deal. It’s been a terrific offseason for Dodger fans, who have seen the team add Shohei Ohtani and Yamamoto in free agency, while also trading for Tyler Glasnow. Some worry about teams that prioritize winning the offseason. May it work out better for this year’s Dodgers than it did for last year’s Mets.
It’s disheartening for this Mets fan to hear the Yamamoto news. We’ve yet to hear exactly how it went down for the Mets but it’s hard to believe that Steve Cohen didn’t do all he could to land the ace pitcher. Sometimes your best just isn’t good enough.
Now we’ll get to see what Plan B is. Some think that the Mets will spend the money that would have gone to Yamamoto on other players for the 2024 team. But it would surprise me if the Mets add $30 million to the payroll above what they’ve already committed. I’d put the odds at 50-50 if the Mets sign more than two players to major league deals before the start of Spring Training.
It appears that Cohen have the highest offer and the Dodgers were asked to match, to which they did. Cohen wasn’t afforded a counter offer after that. As they say in the street, he got played. I think there’s another pitcher like Yamamoto that may be posted next year.
Well, since they had tabbed Yamamoto as a unique opportunity that the other available pitchers cannot offer, why exactly waste a year of Alonso?
Trading Alonso is a full rebuild commitment. If they do that, I’d be looking to unload Lindor and Nimmo, then look to survive the dark years. Right now the Mets roster it’s in about the same position as the Wilpon years. Very little to attract major FAs and only a fair pipeline at best.
The imbalanced ML roster will be the hardest to address. Moving Alonso would certainly indicate plan b is not to dump fortunes in aging players to stay marginally relevant, like the wilpons did. Instead they really do need to wildly improve the pipeline. This will take years.
Am I the only Met fan not disappointed by avoiding a 12 year commitment and posting fee to a guy that has never thrown a pitch in the major leagues? If Cohen drove up the Dodger price, I’m glad.
Not just the posting fee, but also a bonus and more luxury tax. Total cost: $450+million?
1.025 B$ on 2 players. Cohen needs to revise his Dodgers East ambition.
Give the chance to be immediately in WS contention and get a chance to play alongside a Japanese juggernaut and possibly the best player ever, it would be impossible to turn that down. Oh yeah, add Betts and Freeman etc. No deferred salary.
If I’m Cohen today, I make the decision to rebuild. Half a$$ed relevance will never be an attractor, so just get this team right and then pack the FAs as needed. Realistically the Mets are farther away from relevance right now than ever. Looking in the mirror, the baby Mets besides Alvarez look like possible MLB players, but certainly not future MVPs.
This continues to show what a nightmare buying a clunker team like the Mets really is. Empty pipeline, poor infrastructure, wildly out of balanced roster. Fix each problem but this project isn’t solved by 25 in any way. A million miles away from the Braves and a light year or more behind Dodgers. Unenviable to say the least.
Chris, you broach many areas today, but I don’t agree with your dour outlook. The Mets aren’t rebuilding if Alonso leaves. In fact, he may in a year, then what’s? Is he really a savior? As we have pointed out, Alonso was #52 in overall offensive WAR on FanGraphs, behind Lindor’s 12th and Nimmo’s 23rd.
The Dodgers have deferred salary for Freeman, Betts and Taylor. They’ve been kicking the can down the road for years, it’s just that this year they really kicked it down the road. If at team can circumvent the CBT, what good is it? Can’t understand how MLB is allowing it.
Lastly, the Dodgers were his favorite team growing up. The #1 draw from your country just signed there and deferred all his money because he wants you to be there too. It’s the best toy store in the world’s and they are giving you the most toys. Would you not go?
If Alonso leaves this or next year the result is the same. The team is not good enough.
Right now the team has 1 major league outfielder.
There is no major league ready 3B. McNeil at 2B is ok but nothing special. His offense is variable, and defense is not particularly much to brag about.
The rotation is a shambles with really only 1 starter left worth a crap beyond this year. Who knows what an age 35 Quintana will muster. Past that there is no projectable serious starter on board. The disastrous outcomes for Scherzer and Verlander set the team back a long way. It was worth the experiment to try, but both signings were an overall bust.
The bull pen is the usual list of suspects that may or may not accomplish much. I like the approach of filling the pen with different arm angles etc, but is anyone here really excited about the pen?
So the major league team has a lot of holes to fill. It’s looking like a bunch of trying to see if any of the youngins can learn the game at a high level and aging vets that cannot carry a team to the playoffs. Why keep them? This is exactly the issue weve seen play out for ages. Paying a fortune for Lindor in his best years, but not having enough around him. Nimmo is now in the same boat. Long term commitment for Alonso only really works if the team is “win now”, which it most certainly is not. Unless there is a proper balance of ML above average young players like the Braves and prime of career FAs, the likelihood of success is minimal. Years ago I called this approach “rebuilding for it” – and because a key part of success is the capacity to have a strong pipeline to keep bleeding in young stars, which the Mets do not have, the imbalance remains. It makes no sense to be committing to long term FA deals while not having a solid remainder of the team. It cannot and will not work.
Not true. The team has several good core offensive players in Lindor, Nimmo, Alvarez, and McNeil – despite his variable offense, he’s still solid even in a down year. If Marte can be just as good as McNeil and add another bat? Now you have six core players. Will all the prospects suck? I think they are ok.
Sort of true.
True, but be nicer to McNeil. He just got a new car for a reason.
True
True
The first line is true, the rest is Maher 😉 of Panic City stuff. I’m not worried about the lineup, I’m worried about the pitching mound. That’s kind of why I said to use Alonso…
Not true. The team has several good core offensive players in Lindor, Nimmo, Alvarez, and McNeil – despite his variable offense, he’s still solid even in a down year. If Marte can be just as good as McNeil and add another bat? Now you have six core players. Will all the prospects suck? I think they are ok.
Compare the Mets to actual competitors like the Braves, Phillies, and Dodgers. We’re a looooooong way behind all of them in totality. Aside from Alvarez, the “kids are alright” is not enough to compete with “the kids are fantastic” in Atlanta.
Im pretty certain I read that salary deferment is in the CBA, so MLB is powerless. I think they should negotiate something like no more than 20 % of a player contract can be deferred, but deferred salary still counts 100 % against the CBT. This it gives the player the money but hold the team accountable. What the Ohtani deal did blew out of the water the simple spending a lot of money that Cohen did. It’s a complete joke.
^
Amen.
In the beginning, I wanted Yamamoto to be one of the the primary targets for the off season. If the Mets were competing for a playoff position then they needed to sign two front end starters . Yamamoto price tag was getting too much especially when Eduardo Rodriguez signed for only 4/$80. The signing of Severino was premature. Severino’s money ($13m) could have been combined with Yamamoto’s money ($27m) to get Rodriguez and either Giolito or Imanaga. Is Montgomery Plan B at 6/$150m or Snell at 7/$200m. I don’t think so at this point. It’ll be probably Giolito (2/$44m) or a trade for Corbin Burnes or Shane Bieber.
It is going to be very difficult to make the playoffs this year.
Tim Britton in The Athletic is now projecting Giolito to get “at least the four years and $70 million.”
I agree that Rodriguez was a missed boat. Would you pay Montgomery more than Rodriguez got? That doesn’t sound right.
Hoping that Severino’s oblique injury messed up his second half and he will rebound. Hope that Marte is healthy and productive. Hope, hope, hope….. the Dodgers hope Yamamoto and Ohtani stay healthy. Everyone has something to hope for; not having anything sucks.
The Mets didn’t touch their farm for Soto, so it’s doubtful they’ll do it for Burnes or Bieber. Glasnow was another slick move by the Dodgers that are totally acing this winter. Extending before signing for. Seems like the Dodgers are school every other team and taking advantage of the MLBPA’s strength to not be able to close these loopholes. There may be a civil war coming soon in MLB ownership.
Not hearing much talk about going after Imanaga. A rotation of Senga, Imanaga, Quintana, Severino, Hauser, and the young guys is passable for 2024. On the fence about adding Giolito. Maybe for two years max.
I was certainly saddened, but not surprised the Yamamoto did not sign with the Mets. I have been saying in several comments to various posts on this site, that if I were a free agent and interested in getting a ring, I would sign with the Dodgers. As currently formulated, we are essentially a fourth place team in our division. We all know that long-term deals have historically been the death of teams, but that seems to be common place these days. The one exception, has been the approach of the Atlanta Braves to sign their young players to long-term contracts, but not with ridiculous money. We should be looking to extend Alvarez for a number of years instead of waiting for him to become too expensive. And the notion of too expensive used to just apply to small market teams who could not compete. Now they apply to many teams because the money has gotten ridiculous. I would not get rid of our core players and instead looked to trade for an established number two starter and one more big bat in the lineup. I do believe that if we had a better mix of bullpen arms last year, we would’ve made the playoffs. So there is some solace in that. The bits and pieces that Stearns has picked up to vie for bullpen spots should get us to a much better place. Why the Mets did not go after some big name free agent relievers cannot be explained, especially since most could’ve have been had on a one year deal like Kimbrell or Chaffin. Still waiting for Stearns to show me the money.