Mets say they can't afford Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, but that claim rings hollow
With apologies to Seattle Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto, no team has had a more wild offseason than the Mets and first-year GM Brodie Van Wagenen.
Between a trade for Edwin Diaz and Robinson Cano, signings of Wilson Ramos, Jeurys Familia and Jed Lowrie plus a handful of minor moves, the Mets have spent big to re-do their roster and bolster their playoff chances.
But despite their willingness to spend, the Mets have not been remotely tied to rumors about the top two free agents of the class: 26-year-old superstars Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. Van Wagenen admitted as much when speaking to the media on Thursday.
“So we talked about every player that was available both in terms of free agents and trade scenarios early in the offseason and often throughout the offseason,” Van Wagenen said, via The Athletic’s Tim Britton. “When we looked at our roster and we tried to build our plan, we recognized we had multiple needs that needed to be addressed — not just one area that needed to be addressed.
“We never looked at this offseason as having one player in mind or looking at this offseason to make one significant investment. The goal from the beginning was trying to address all of our needs in the most efficient way that we could.”
The Mets certainly had several holes to fill, but given their spending patterns and what is left to contend, the claim that they couldn’t have or can’t afford Harper and Machado rings a bit hollow.
The Mets can use Harper and Machado
The Mets entered the offseason wanting to upgrade their offense while still having several useful incumbent starters. Happy to play Jeff McNeil, Amed Rosario, Todd Frazier, Michael Conforto and Brandon Nimmo on a daily basis, they only needed to upgrade at three positions: catcher, corner infield and outfield.
At some point, the Mets are expecting their highest-paid player, Yoenis Cespedes back to take over in left field, and Juan Lagares, their most capable center fielder, is a fine stopgap. Meanwhile, their top prospect, first baseman Peter Alonso, has crushed the ball at every level of the minors and seems ready to take over at first base.
The Mets initially offered top catching free agent Yasmani Grandal a four-year, $60 million deal but ultimately settled on the second-best option, Wilson Ramos, at a nice discount. Fair enough there. But the puzzling part is how they spent the rest of the budget.
Instead of thinking big, the Mets took on what amounts to $66 million over five years of an aging but useful Robinson Cano and paid another $20 million over two years for Jed Lowrie to be an expensive utility infielder. That leaves a likely starting lineup with McNeil shoehorned into left field and at least one of Lowrie, Cano and Frazier playing off their natural position as well. Worse yet, there is no spot for Alonso or even former top-25 prospect Dominic Smith.
The more than $23 million annually due to Cano and Lowrie would nearly pay for Machado or Harper alone, and Mets COO Jeff Wilpon said that the team “still has some room in [the budget] to do some things.” The Mets had the money to sign one of them.
The Mets still have money to spend
Reallocating the money they spent on other players to one of the two superstars may not be feasible at this point — hindsight is 20-20 — but it’s still puzzling how the Mets can’t afford either player.
For one thing, the Mets are not a small market team. As much as they may gripe about self-imposed budgets, they are in the biggest market in baseball, and Major League Baseball is overflowing in revenue. Furthermore, the Mets still project to be well under their $154.4 million payroll, which set a team record in 2017, and they remain more than $40 million below the luxury tax threshold that some teams use as a hard cap.
This is also all before considering all the money the Wilpons will be recouping from insurance on Cespedes and David Wright’s contracts.
And it’s not as if the Mets couldn’t use Harper and Machado. Even if you subscribe to Van Wagenen and Wilpon’s idea that they are set in the outfield with Conforto, Nimmo and Cespedes, Machado would still be a massive upgrade in the infield. Overcrowding would not be an issue when acquiring one of baseball’s top players, as they could easily find a trade for McNeil or Rosario or even dump Frazier’s remaining $9 million in salary.
The Mets have the ability to add another superstar, they are just choosing not too. And given that the Mets only project to win 85 games at this point, they need every bit of help they can to get into the playoffs.
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