Credit: Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports
MLB’s non-tender deadline is tonight at 8 p.m. Before then, every team in the league will decide whether to offer the players on its 40-man roster with fewer than six years of service time a contract for 2022.
If a team chooses to non-tender a player they immediately become a free agent. Players can be non-tendered if teams think they’ll get a raise higher than their worth in arbitration or to clear space on the 40-man roster.
The Mets 14 arbitration eligible players are as follows:
- Pete Alonso
- Miguel Castro
- J.D. Davis
- Edwin Diaz
- Robert Gsellman
- Luis Guillorme
- Joey Lucchesi
- Seth Lugo
- Jeff McNeil
- Brandon Nimmo
- Tomas Nido
- Dominic Smith
- Drew Smith
- Trevor Williams
The most vulnerable to getting non-tendered include Gsellman, Lucchesi, and Williams.
Gsellman is coming off a season where he recorded a 3.77 ERA out of the pen but missed the final three months with a lat injury. Williams was a throwaway in the Javier Baez trade and a projected salary of $4 million makes little sense for the Mets to hang on.
Lucchesi had Tommy John surgery in June and will miss the majority of the 2022 season. Lucchesi is under team control through 2024 but it might make the most sense for the Mets to let him rehab on a minor league deal and not occupy a 40-man spot.
