Assistant general manager spoke to reporters on Friday on a variety of subjects, most of which we’ve covered issue by issue in the last 48 hours here on MMO. However, there were a couple of things Ricco said about our young starting pitching that are worth a closer examination and some discussion.
Kristie Ackert of the Daily News, reported that Ricco reiterated the front office’s stance that they do not plan to use any of their young starters as trade chips to accomplish any of their offseason objectives to improve, upgrade or bolster the team heading into the 2016 season.
“We think that’s our strength, that’s going to be what gets us back to the World Series and hopefully helps us win the World Series, so we have been asked a lot about our young starters, but the answer has been pretty much we are going to stick with those guys,” Ricco said.
“That includes Zack Wheeler. We get a lot of questions about him and it’s different because he is hurt, but we view him with the other four guys. We have players we like and who got us to the world Series, our goal is to supplement them with players that can make us even better.”
In the wake of recent mega deals to top of the rotation starting pitchers like David Price ($217M), Zack Greinke ($206M) and Jordan Zimmermann ($110M) – and even outrageous amounts of money being thrown at mid-rotation pitchers like Jeff Samardzija ($90M) – you have to appreciate the position the Mets find themselves in with their arsenal of elite cost-controlled starters.
That said, wouldn’t it behoove the team to keep that cost control as long as they can before Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz, and Jacob deGrom start nearing their arbitration and free agent years?
With Harvey now in his first season of arbitration and looking at a potential $4.5 million dollar raise, it’s easy to see how quickly things can begin to escalate and put the Mets in a situation where they must decide which pitchers they will be able to logistically keep and which they will be forced to deal. There is no team in baseball that could afford to keep five starters like this under team control once they start hitting those $10 million, $15 million and $20 million plateaus. It’s impossible.
Wheeler, deGrom and Syndergaard start seeing their arbitration clocks begin after the 2017 season, only two years away. So I was a little surprised to hear John Ricco admit that the none of the Mets young starters have been approached about a multi-year deal that could buy out their arbitration years and perhaps even a year or two of free agency.
For a team that still operates with a bottom 15 MLB payroll and is hoping that their payroll next season will be higher than last season’s $103 opening day payroll, you would think establishing some cost certainty with their most valuable assets would be high on their priority list.
After a 2011 season that saw Jon Niese post a 4.40 ERA and 1.412 WHIP, the front office saw fit to sign the left-hander to a 5-year contract that bought out all his arbitration years and one year of free agency – and actually three years if you count his 2017 and 2018 team options. Shouldn’t some attempt be made to explore a contract like this with Jacob deGrom at the very least – who is at the same exact point in his career as Niese was when the Mets locked him up?
It may be too late for giving Harvey an extension given that he now has three huge payday’s coming before he hits free agency and gets his $200+ million dollar mega deal. Plus with Scott Boras as his agent, the odds are slim he’d sign any contract that delays Harvey’s free agency for one minute.
While I would love to see the Mets touch base with all five pitchers and at least inquire and explore the possibilities, they still have at least a year until Syndergaard, Matz and Wheeler are at that Niese-Threshold. But it’s deGrom I’m most concerned about locking up right now. Waiting another year on him may put him exactly where Harvey is now and his agent may just advise him to keep pitching light’s out and exploiting the arbitration process for an easy $25 million before hitting free agency.
