Owner Steve Cohen told the media at a news conference ahead of Opening Day that he will continue to spend if the right opportunity presents itself despite the Mets being well over the luxury tax line.
“I am competitive,” Cohen said before his fourth Opening Day as Mets owner. “If the right thing comes along at the right moment, we will explore it.”
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New York’s projected 2024 total payroll is $307 million while its estimated luxury tax payroll is over $337 million, per Spotrac. With the 2024 luxury tax threshold set at $237 million, the Mets are forced to pay a 110 percent penalty for adding salary after pushing past the fourth tier of the tax.
Cohen said the only way to get below the luxury tax is to cultivate players from the farm system, but realistically he doesn’t expect to get below the tax line and the team will be a blend of homegrown players and free agents while conceding that he may have gone overboard last year.
“The reality is you got to expect something in the middle,” he said. “Spending $375 million, we did last year, seemed a little bit over the top.”
The trouble with free agency, Cohen declared, is the aging curve. Over time, teams pay older players for declining performance. That is why it is important to have a mix with talent from the farm.
“No different than my hedge fund,” he said. “Where we develop a lot of talent as opposed to trying to buy free agents from other firms.”
Cohen said the fans he interacts with continue to be positive even though the Mets finished in fourth place last year despite lofty preseason expectations, though he also understands patience may run thin if there is a continued lack of results.
“They are still pretty supportive,” he said. “I’m waiting for that to run out. We gotta win at some point.”
As for this year, Cohen conceded that another year without a playoff berth would be an objective disappointment for the Mets and that he expects them to be playing into October.
“I think the goal is to make the playoffs,” he said. “Pretty simple. Let’s not overthink this. If we don’t make the playoffs, obviously I’ll be disappointed.”
President of baseball operations David Stearns also addressed the media, emphasizing the importance of team chemistry and playing fundamentally sound baseball.
“I think early in the season you want to see a team camaraderie and a team energy that you think is consistent and that could lead to wining baseball, and I felt like we had that in spring training and so I’m eager to see how we carry that over into the regular season,” he said. “You always want to play clean baseball. I think we have a team that is capable of playing clean baseball and so I’ll be looking for that as well.”
Stearns stated that ace Kodai Senga, who is out with a shoulder injury to start the year, is making good progress but didn’t have a clear timetable on when he would return.
“Probably another week or two before we can map out a real throwing program and get a sense of when he can be back on a major league mound,” he said.
He added that reliever Sean Reid-Foley has an impingement in his shoulder, which landed him on the 15-day injured list, but it is “not overly serious.”
He also said Starling Marte is looking healthy, which is a good start, but that he wasn’t going to put any “arbitrary expectations on what we are going to get.”
Stearns mentioned that it was tough to send some of the good young pitchers down to Triple-A Syracuse at the end of spring training, but that he expects them to rise to the occasion in Triple-A before potentially appearing in the majors later in the year.
“I’m eager to see how they take to the Triple-A challenge,” he said. “I would expect that at least some of them will make their way up here at some point during the season.”
