‘The offseason is still young, who knows what can happen!”
If you’re an optimistic New York Mets fan — I consider myself to be one — the above sentence is something you may have been muttering to yourself over the past few weeks as MLB free agents became available. The offseason is indeed still young, and with the Winter Meetings happening this week, there’s a unique opportunity for Brodie Van Wagenen and his front office to actually make some things happen for 2020.
But as Mets Minors’ Ernest Dove mentioned himself over the weekend, the math just doesn’t add up. The Mets as an organization are bumping up against the luxury tax threshold and haven’t shown an ounce of willingness to surpass it despite BVW saying at the start of the winter that New York has the ability to sign any free agent they wanted.
In a hot stove season that’s been more fast moving than the previous two winters, the Mets have been mostly sitting on their hands while others — especially those within their own division — make moves. Sure, re-signing Brad Brach and acquiring Jake Marisnick seem like good moves, but it doesn’t take away the pain of watching Zack Wheeler get a nine-figure deal to pitch for the Philadelphia Phillies the next five years. While Rick Porcello has experienced his share of success in the recent past, he’s not a slam-dunk kind of acquisition and may even be too rich for what New York is looking for anyways.
This is especially frustrating because the Mets have an intriguing nucleus of pre-arbitration and arbitration-eligible players currently on the roster. It seems like the perfect time to justify going over the luxury tax threshold for a year in hopes of getting one or two difference makers and getting over the hump. That certainly doesn’t seem to be the case as long as the Wilpons are in charge, which, hopefully isn’t much longer.
For the sake of the 2020 season, though, it’s not soon enough.
The Atlanta Braves are fresh off a National League East division title, yet have already fortified their bullpen with Chris Martin and Will Smith, along with bringing in Travis d’Arnaud and Cole Hamels. With an opening at third base because of Josh Donaldson‘s current free agency, they’re not done yet, either.
We already touched on the Phillies plucking Wheeler from Queens, and they’re likely far from done, too. Following an aggressive winter last year, Philly has already set the tone for another offseason of spending, as they’ve been connected to top-tier free agents like Anthony Rendon, Stephen Strasburg, and Gerrit Cole, among others.
The Washington Nationals may be saying they can’t afford to re-sign both Rendon and Strasburg, but chances are they’ll get one and quickly pivot to fill whatever holes remain on the roster. Heck, even the Miami Marlins are making some moves and taking calculated risks by acquiring Jonathan Villar and Jesus Aguilar.
Although it doesn’t pertain to the NL East, it also doesn’t help the Mets’ case that the New York Yankees are reportedly preparing a record-breaking contract offer for Cole.
We all know that championships aren’t won and playoff berths aren’t clinched in the middle of the offseason. The 2015 Mets are a good example of that — the midseason acquisition of Yoenis Cespedes and others helped catapult them deep into October, but they spent the first few months in the hunt with a roster that only added John Mayberry Jr. and Michael Cuddyer on MLB deals the prior winter.
Nonetheless, it’d be nice to see an effort toward landing impact players that appear to be necessary for New York to reach the next level of play. That’s what most of their divisional opponents have done recently and are currently doing, but the Mets are nowhere to be found in that respect. There can be some solace in the fact that these feelings of disappointment in team spending may finally be coming to a conclusion at some point in the future if the negotiations with Steve Cohen continue progressing.
And while I — and just about every other Mets fan on the planet — would want this kind of deal to immediately take effect, the five-year window is OK just because there’s finally an end date to the madness. But still, waiting five years seems like way too long.
With an already-active Hot Stove, one can also hope the Winter Meetings in San Diego will be more exciting than in recent memory by way of major transactions done. Who knows what could happen for the Mets with so many important team executives in one building at the same time. The immediate outlook for the remainder of winter and into 2020 could completely change with just one conversation.
That’s the optimistic side in me coming out at the moment. Unfortunately, everything is pointing in the other direction as opponents either take or aim to take significant steps to improve their respective rosters while the Mets only appear to be looking for smaller tweaks. I’d more than welcome being wrong on this hunch, though, but it’s one of those things where I won’t believe it until I actually see it happen.
