This past Friday was an important day on the offseason baseball calendar, as it was the deadline for MLB teams to strike deals with their arbitration-eligible players. If an agreement couldn’t be made by the deadline, each side would file the amount they felt was appropriate for a 2020 salary in advance of the dreaded arbitration hearings.
Luckily for the New York Mets, that won’t be something the organization will need to spend time thinking about as we continue creeping closer to Spring Training. It was no small feat, either, since general manager Brodie Van Wagenen and his front office had nine such players to negotiate with: Noah Syndergaard, Marcus Stroman, Edwin Diaz, Michael Conforto, Steven Matz, Seth Lugo, Brandon Nimmo, Jake Marisnick, and Robert Gsellman.
When looking at the projected salaries each player was slated to get before official agreements were made, there were guys on each side of the coin. Some will earn more than expected in 2020, like Nimmo, Marisnick, and Stroman. Some will earn less than expected, like Syndergaard, Diaz, and Conforto.
Although it’s not true in every case, a common characteristic many arbitration-eligible players share with one another is that teams are usually still getting significant bang for their buck — even in extreme cases. Mookie Betts‘ $27 million salary is a new record for an arbitration-eligible player (for now, at least). But according to FanGraphs’ Dollars metric, that salary is a huge deal for the Boston Red Sox:
Mookie Betts gets a record $27 million to avoid arbitration.
Based on @fangraphs' valuation of WAR to $, Betts was worth $53 million in 2019 in his 6.6 WAR season.
— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) January 10, 2020
If we take 2020 fWAR projections for the above Mets players and make some rough calculations, we’ll see that New York stands to get a nice return on their investments for the upcoming season.
By doing the math of Betts’ 2019 value, it susses out to just a smidge over $8 million per 1.0 fWAR. So with that in mind, I decided to take ZiPS fWAR projections for the Mets’ arbitration-eligible players so we can get an idea of how much value they stand to gain in 2020. For the sake of round numbers, I pinned the value of 1.0 fWAR at $8 million to get the below numbers:
Obviously, these projections are just that — projections. They should be taken with a grain of salt, but it’s rather eye-opening to see just how much more the projected value is than the 2020 salary in every player’s situation. If we total everything up, it’s even more eye-opening, too.
The Mets are planning to pay these nine players a total of about $48.5 million this season. ZiPS is projecting this group to produce a combined fWAR of 17.4, coming in at a total value of just over $139 million.
This is part of the reason why MLB players typically look forward to free agency — it’s a chance to get compensated closer to the level they’re producing at.
Upon focusing on the Mets’ arbitration-eligible players, it’s clear to see that the majority of this $139 million of projected value comes from one-third of the group in Syndergaard, Stroman, and Conforto. None of those projections are too out of line because these guys have reached the plateaus already set for them in the recent past.
The performance of all three were worth more than $30 million each in 2019, with last season being Syndergaard’s second consecutive year of surpassing that particular benchmark. Of course, Nimmo isn’t far removed from his breakout 2018 campaign, which led to 4.5 fWAR and was worth $36 million of value. And then there’s Lugo — his 2.2 fWAR was worth more than the rest of the Mets’ bullpen combined last year, and it was worth $18 million in value.
Even if some of these projected fWAR numbers don’t come to pass once Game 162 is in the books come September, none of these players have a huge mountain to climb with regard to at least equaling the value of their new contract. Only Syndergaard, Stroman, and Conforto need to accumulate at least 1.0 fWAR each — the rest would just have to do a fraction of that.
This is obviously easier said than done, as Diaz displayed in 2019. Despite making just $607K, he technically didn’t recoup that value since he produced a 0.0 fWAR.
Any way you slice it, though, New York seems to be getting quite a deal on the salaries of the nine ballplayers currently occupying roster spots. And when going down the line, each of them will have an important role to play if the Mets want to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
