It’s not every day that a major league baseball player in his pre-arbitration years gets rewarded monetarily for his efforts in the previous year. For the most part, it usually the opposite.
There are examples of this every year — Jacob deGrom comes to mind before signing his contract extension — but more recently, Juan Soto and Jack Flaherty were in the news the other day because they couldn’t agree to terms with their respective clubs. That’s why it’s refreshing when a club goes against the grain to reward a player, like what the New York Mets just did with first baseman Pete Alonso.
The MLB rookie home-run king is going to reel in the highest salary ever for a pre-arbitration player entering his second season. Was it a huge stretch for the Mets as an organization? No, not really at all — the reigning National League Rookie of the Year will be making $652,521 in 2020, which is still less than $100,000 above the league-minimum salary of $563,500.
Either way, it’s nice to see New York in the news for something that doesn’t involve pinching pennies, even if it’s the smallest of gestures.
The key here, though, is that the Mets didn’t have to do this. Virtually all MLB teams don’t do this. Alonso is still criminally underpaid when seeing that FanGraphs values his 4.8-fWAR performance from 2019 at $38.7 million, but it’d be tough to know that after hearing some of his comments once the news of his 2020 compensation became public.
Upon hearing how New York was rewarding its first baseman from a financial standpoint, I immediately thought about the last time Brodie Van Wagenen did something similar, which was with deGrom last winter.
On the heels of his first NL Cy Young victory, the right-hander remained adamant about wanting a long-term contract to stay in Queens. While he didn’t get it right away last offseason, the front office made it clear he was a priority. They did this by being willing to give him a $9.6 million raise, agreeing to a one-year deal worth $17 million to avoid arbitration.
At this happened, it was yet another record raise, this time for an arbitration-eligible player. Although deGrom obviously wanted the security of a long-term deal, the organization at least made it clear that the right-hander was valued, both in the clubhouse and, more importantly, on the pitcher’s mound.
It took both sides right up until Opening Day to get the contract extension agreed upon, but it got done. Who knows how things would’ve gone if the front office didn’t make it abundantly clear how much they cared earlier in the winter. While you’d like to hope it wouldn’t have gone much differently, it’s not like fighting over every last penny would’ve been helpful in the long haul.
With regard to Alonso, does this mean his representation and the Mets are currently talking about an extension? I mean, that’s a possibility, especially with the trend of teams locking up pre-arbitration players and even those without any big-league service time to long-term deals. Given his situation, though, it doesn’t seem likely just yet.
This upcoming season will be important for Alonso from a contractual standpoint. If he’s able to have an encore performance similar to what he just accomplished, it’d be shocking if the Mets didn’t try to lock the 25-year-old down for his arbitration and some free-agent years. Alonso will be entering his physical prime just as he begins hitting arbitration. If his next two seasons continue building upon what’s already an incredible resume, the only known about the year-to-year cost for New York will be that the first baseman’s salary would be incredibly high.
So, the Mets will likely be motivated to get some cost certainty on one of their top young players, along with officially keeping him tied to the organization for the foreseeable future. Something of this nature happening would be similar to what New York did with David Wright and Jose Reyes in 2006, extending its young franchise cornerstones before dealing with arbitration.
It’s been a short period of time, but Alonso already has a special bond with Mets fans and has quickly become a crucial part of this organization, both right now and into the future. It’s only right for them to treat him in this way.
As long as things keep trending upward, this record-breaking salary increase should be just the first step in a series of events that continues distinguishing Alonso among the franchise’s most valued position players.
