One of the questions that stands out to me in this offseason is how many years the Mets will be willing to go with a long-term contract. They already have Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimmo inked to lengthy deals – are they willing to add a third player to that mix? There’s no reason that they can’t. Still, just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.
We saw with last year’s pursuit of Yoshinobu Yamamoto that the Mets were willing to commit long-term to the right player. Does that player exist this offseason? Juan Soto will likely take 10 or more years to sign. The Athletic made contract predictions for the major free agents and Corbin Burnes received a 7/$217 deal, while Alex Bregman was down for 7/$189. There were several other free agents with five and six-year deals, including Pete Alonso, with a 5/$140 projection.
The Mets are going to be linked to every top free agent out there – as long as they’re willing to play someplace besides SS and C. There’s no doubt that with the richest owner around, the club can afford any player’s asking price. Of course, the player has to want to come to Queens, as Yamamoto showed everyone last year. But the Mets will also operate with a plan in mind and it’s likely there will be top-flight players available who simply don’t fit their 2025 and beyond blueprint.
Maybe they shy away from anyone who wants more than three years. Perhaps they refuse to engage with anyone having a major injury the past 24 months. It might be they completely avoid pitchers who can’t throw strikes and hitters who can’t stop swinging at balls. Or it’s possible the plan revolves around something else, entirely.
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As everyone should know by now, the plan is to move over to Substack. Since the beginning of this month, the non-Open Threads have been posted with a teaser here and a link to Substack for the full article. Sometime between now and the end of November, all new posts will be exclusively at Substack. This site will remain active until the migration of my articles is complete. The export/import process did not work, so I’m left to do each piece individually. As you probably imagine, it’s a tedious task that requires way more hours than it should. All of my stories from 2024 are at the new site and now comes the task of getting the pieces from 2010-2023 there. My hope was to have that done by the end of the year but it will be longer than that. The end of January is the new target date but that might be optimistic, too.
One thing that bothers me is the amount of years for Soto. I’m tempted at the here and now, but while he may continue to be a very good hitter, I just don’t see Great Hitter! Ohtani got his deal because of his international appeal and he is both a MVP hitter and a Cy Young quality pitcher. How is Soto anywhere near that? Ohtani has a .575 lifetime slugging pct. and Soto is .532. I like the great walk rate, but we have learned that a walk is not as good as a hit. But, I confess that he is in a Hall of Fame road, but so is Mike Trout, and he’s 33, and breaking down and having seven more years at $50MM per season is head exploding stuff to me.
I am happy to build a perennial contender, but I also want to win now. They will likely need to ink some longer than what they’d like to deals to secure a couple of strong players to give them a better chance to win. Don’t see signing Soto and tying up all that money but would spend the same money on three good players. They need to do their due diligence on players and make good choices. But the team needs help despite how far they made it.
Don’t rush on the loading of the articles. It will get done when it gets done. You have to have a life too.