No matter how this New York baseball season ends, enough bad stuff has occurred so far that the offseason will begin with large swaths of the two local fan bases screaming for the clubs to problem-solve with their wallets.
And I am not here to dissuade that. It is ridiculous how much the richest owner in the sport (the Mets’ Steve Cohen) and the most valuable franchise (the Yankees) fought to stay under the luxury-tax threshold in 2021 — made more ludicrous since part of the philosophy was to avoid future penalties at a time when there is no clarity what form (if any) a tax system will have in a new collective bargaining agreement (the current one expires Dec. 1).
I also am not here to trounce the mega-contract. The three largest free-agent contracts in history belong to Bryce Harper, Gerrit Cole and Manny Machado, and in 2021 that might represent the NL MVP, the AL Cy Young winner and a top-10 NL MVP finisher.
Conversely, it’s possible none of the three will be on a playoff team this year and none (at least in the brief term of their current contracts) has played in a LCS. Plus, the Nationals won the World Series the year after Harper departed, the Dodgers won two years after not retaining Machado, and the Astros have been better than the Yankees even after Cole switched teams.
Spending lavishly in the marketplace — winning the offseason — guarantees nothing more than headlines and expectations. Machado’s Padres were roundly viewed as the winners of last offseason. They are a third-place team in a battle to be the second wild card.
The more the Mets spent last offseason the worse they did — dealing assets, then giving a top-of-the-market extension for Francisco Lindor plus a four-year free-agent deal for James McCann. Their best stuff were one-year deals to Marcus Stroman, Kevin Pillar, Jonathan Villar and Aaron Loup.
So what can be learned from last offseason that can aid the New York clubs going forward?
1. Cohen should fully appreciate the strength of his wealth. A strong argument was made in real time (and obviously exists in retrospect) that the Mets should have retained their playing assets and just tried to address needs with cash, even if that meant going to the top of the free-agent market with J.T. Realmuto and George Springer.
But what compounds giving up players for Lindor was also extending him for 10 years at $341 million — and not getting one penny in discount for doing it before the shortstop’s walk year. If Lindor played great in 2021 and liked it here (which I assume he would have if he had played great), do you think anyone would really have outbid Cohen to steal him away? Would Lindor have cost more than $341 million, even off of a great season?
Off this actual Lindor season, it is possible Cohen overpaid by at least $100 million. Heck, it might be closer to $200 million. Cohen has the money to gather more information than most (Such as: How does a new acquisition adapt to New York?) before reaching into his pocket.
2. There is no such thing as a “must sign.” DJ LeMahieu felt like that after playing at MVP levels, and the Yankees have to operate in a real world in which they know both their clubhouse and fan base would have been furious if they had not retained LeMahieu.
But LeMahieu had just concluded his age-31 campaign. The Yankees could have asked these questions: Did LeMahieu just play, by far, the best two seasons he is ever going to play for us? How many times will LeMahieu even approach what he did in 2020-21 over the life of a four- to six-year contract? Once more? Twice?
Teams get in trouble when they believe they can’t find quality replacements in the market. One reason for the success of a tiny-payroll club such as the Rays is they avoid believing any one player is irreplaceable. They never get the star in at the top of the market. But they also never get the headache of watching that player age out during the life of a long contract.
Just consider that in the free-agent market last year, Josh Harrison signed for one-year, $1 million and Marcus Semien for one year $18 million. Harrison has outplayed LeMahieu in 2021 and Semien is likely to finish in the AL MVP top five.
The Blue Jays actually will encounter with Semien what the Yankees did last year with LeMahieu. Semien is excelling in his age-30 season. How many more will look anything like this in, say, the five-year deal he is heading toward? LeMahieu could rebound, of course — he is among the MLB leaders in hard-hit outs in 2021.
Still, this lesson is worthwhile for the Yankees to consider with Aaron Judge, a free agent after the 2022 season, because he will certainly come with a sense of “must re-sign.” But his walk year will be his age-30 season, and the Yankees are not going to have much (if any) precedent for how a player his size will age to use as a barometer. What they can ask, though, is how many of the next five years will approach being as good as Judge’s first five full seasons?
3. The second choice can be a booby-prize. Remember when the Mets found Matt Holliday’s demands too much after the 2009 season and went to the next best guy, Jason Bay? They did similarly last offseason.
They were concerned where Realmuto’s market might go and McCann was projected as the next best guy in the market. It turns out they likely gave a backup catcher $40 million. There are positions at which the gap between the best and the next group is substantial enough that you can’t pay big dollars just because it is the next group.
The Yankees overreacted and gave Aaron Hicks a seven-year, $70 million extension, believing that the best (Mike Trout) would never be available to them, and thus overpaying to get into the next group.
4. The qualifying offer is your friend if you can support a big payroll. It has to be a team that can afford a sizable one-year deal, because on occasion they can be duds (think Colby Rasmus with the 2016 Astros). But, even then, it is one-and-done.
But when it works, as it did with the Dodgers and Hyun-jin Ryu in 2019, or the Giants and Kevin Gausman and the Mets and Stroman this year, it is a boon for a club — terrific value without long-term risk. It will be seen if there will be a qualifying offer as part of a new collective bargaining agreement. But there is likely to still be one this offseason, and the anticipation is it will grow from $18.9 million to what one long-time player representative expects to be over $20 million.
The Yankees do not have anyone obvious to use it on this offseason, and the Mets cannot put it on Stroman, since no player can be made the qualifying offer twice. But the Mets should put it on Michael Conforto. The combination that a signing team would lose draft picks and Conforto is in the midst of a down season could chill the outfielder’s market enough that he would accept the one-year deal from the Mets to try to reestablish his market and free himself of the qualifying offer. Another Scott Boras client, Ryu, did that, then signed a four-year, $80 million pact with the Blue Jays.
The Mets would either get draft compensation if Conforto left or, if he stayed, they would be gambling he is much better than he showed in 2021. At worst, they would be using Cohen’s strength (money) to make the one-year play, and if Conforto still struggled, they would be out after the 2022 season.