Any chance that might’ve existed for a reunion between Daniel Murphy and the Mets evaporated with the news of Murphy’s three-year agreement with the Nationals. Murphy going to an NL East rival probably stings the Mets, though the club had never expressed too much interest in re-signing the infielder and had already moved on by trading for Neil Walker and signing Asdrubal Cabrera to address middle infield needs. Because Murphy rejected the Mets’ $15.8MM qualifying offer (an offer that was no certainty to be extended prior to Murphy’s huge postseason), New York now receives a compensatory draft pick between the first and second rounds of next June’s amateur draft. Here’s some more from Queens…
- The Mets’ 2016 payroll stands at roughly $106.5MM, according to ESPN New York’s Adam Rubin. This total includes projected arbitration salaries, estimated $600K salaries for pre-arb players and another $600K for the right-handed hitting outfielder Rubin feels the team will add before Opening Day. While $106.5MM is low by the standards of a big-market club (especially one in New York), it’s actually slated to be the Mets’ highest Opening Day payroll in five years, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts.
- In a follow-up tweet, Rubin feels the payroll could be in the neighborhood of $112MM depending on the backup outfielder and if the Mets acquire a setup man.
- While the Mets continue to be criticized for their modest spending, Joel Sherman of the New York Post wonders if the critics would’ve disappeared had the team been successful in landing Ben Zobrist, who the Mets made a huge push to sign before he opted to join the Cubs. That said, Sherman wonders if the Mets front office has by this point simply “just learned not to even go to certain areas” in terms of player contracts since it knows that ownership doesn’t have the funds. Sherman believes, for instance, that Darren O’Day would’ve been an ideal target and could’ve been a huge upgrade for the Mets’ bullpen, yet the club refused to spend at the top of the relief market.
- In other Mets news from earlier today on MLBTR, the club has ruled out a pursuit of Yoenis Cespedes. According to CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman, the Mets made Cespedes an offer of two or three years, though no salary figures were discussed.
The Wilpon’s have been putting a team on the cheap on the field for 7 years. Now they have a dream pitching staff of 5 aces and what do they do? Put a group of scrubs surrounding them. Other than the Fab Five pitchers is there a single player anyone would pay to see play? Nope!
Don’t support the Wilpon’s and hope they get the message and sell the team.
Would you like them in two or three years not be able to sign these dream pitchers because they are stuck with some long term contract for some super star striking out 200 times per season. I would rather see the money saved now and spent later on some of these pitchers who are striking out 200 batters. Then trade the others to restock the system and keep it all in a cycle.
As a Meta fan I can tell you that the money they have saved will not go to signing all 5 of these guys. Harvey might as well get traded already.
I hope you realize that this is 100% wrong, the Wilpons are broke and the only reason they haven’t been force to sell like the Dodgers was because they’re best buddies with Manfred and Selig
Theres darnaud maybe
I agree 100 percent. If the Wilpons don’t support the team why should the fans.
Can you name any team in the league with 5 players you would pay to see?
Cubs
so long as kang is more or less the same after recovering from the leg injury (he’s relatively young, but still a concern), then the pirates have cole/liriano/mccutcheon/marte/kang.
i’d pay to watch an mvp, an ace, a top-ten outfielder/gold glover, the best slider in the bigs and a korean ss/3b w/ an ops above .800
A bunch of scrubs? It’s amazing how clueless some fans are. Who would you pay to see on the Royals? They won the World Series, if you weren’t aware. Other than Buster Posey who are you paying to see on the Giants winners of 3 of the last 5 series. How about the Cards? Is that what wins, big name players? A team that is full of professional, relentless hard to get out hitters with versatility. That’s what they’ve built. They improved at second base, ask any scout or baseball exec and they will tell you Walker is an overall upgrade. They are significantly better on opening day 2016 than they were on opening day 2015. Get a full year of Conforto and D’arnaud and full year of Wright helps as well. Now you have Tejada and Flores as guys who can play around the infield and improve the bench depth. Matt and Wheeler added to the full year roster…Wheeler in July that is. The Nats have regressed losing Escobar, Zimmerman, Desmond and only adding Murphy. Here’s the kicker, by not overspending on flawed players on the market and locking themselves into long term deals they have the flexibility to make moves the trade deadline if there are deficiencies. Similar to what they did last trading deadline when many of the complainers probably sat there thinking they’d do nothing. You don’t win with sexy names, you win talent. Maybe they didn’t spend on Upton or Cespedes or Heyward because they didn’t think they were worth the money. The Mets offered 60 million for Zobrist, so they showed they were willing to spend but on the right player. Spending for the sake of spending is how you become the Yankees saddled with old overprice players clogging up your lineup and salary structure. That’s why they are stuck with Wright for the next 5 years at third, hoping he doesn’t completely regress with his bad back. That’s what happened when they bought Jason Bay under pressure from the fans who wanted a name player. That’s what the Red Sox are dealing with with Sandovar and Ramirez.
They’re much better off with Walker and a compensatory 1st round pick. Losing Cespedes will hurt but he’s not worth the contract he will end up with.
Spending money doesn’t equate to championships. It’s been proven over and over.
Time for the Wilpons to sell.With the quality of their starting pitching,a big bat to replace Cespedes is a must.The time to spend is now!!!We need to score more so the starters don’t have to pitch zeros each game.The pen could also use an upgrade.I guess my hopes are just a pipe dream.Thanks a lot Fred and Jeff.
The Wilpon’s are disgraceful. They let their greed blind them to what their friend Mr. Madoff was doing. Now they are trying to re-coup their losses on the backs of the fans. They are the vilest of the vile. For a NY team worth over a BILLION dollars to not go out and spend on a middle of the order bat after what last season taught them just proves this point.
walker has been a solid #5 hitter for the bucs, and can be serviceable as a #4 hitter when no ideal #4 exists on the team. he has also had success as a #2 hitter, but is of average speed on the bases. he jumped around in the order a lot the past two years due to pedro alvarez’s issues in the #4 hole (amongst other issues), polanco’s struggles and progress, and marte’s blossoming power.
When are people going to stop trying to equate team payroll with success. Last two teams standing last year were the Mets and Royals. The teams paying a luxury tax were home watching. It isn’t the amount you spend as much as how and on whom you spend it. Just because a player and his agent claim he is worth a certain amount doesn’t mean you have to pay. If someone else decides to pay so be it. Do you still think St Louis should have paid $300 million for —– ( fill in the name if you can remember it). How about Fielder? Howard? Reyes? Etc. etc. etc.
While spending doesn’t gaurenteed a WS…with those alarms I’d feel a lot better about the team w. another solid bat and at least 1 more elite BP arm like O’Day.
I’m not at all saying they should just throw money around unwisely, but anyone bringing up having to sign the young SP’s has got to be kidding me. Again this is a super rich New York market team and they don’t have to worry about long term contracts for any of them for another three years. I understand that arbitration will drive their salaries up but in todays market the Mets realistically should be looking at a $130-150 million dollar payroll. Not $110 million. Again, they are worth over a BILLION dollars! They proved the first half of last season that all that pitching isn’t going to win if you don’t score any runs. Replacing Murph & Flores with Walker & Cabrera is in no way shape or form an upgrade to their line-up. If you aren’t willing to go out and spend why not make the decision to trade one of the pitchers? Even if it was for only two months, Cespedes proved you need to have that guy in the middle of the order who changes the way the other guys in your line-up get pitched to because of him. No one is scared of Duda and D’arnaud.
Lets not kid ourselves about why this team isn’t spending. It is simply because the Wilpon’s lost gazillions of dollars in the Madoff scandal and they are re-couping their losses without any consideration for the fan base..
The Mets should cash in now on part of their starting rotation asset, in order to alleviate their payroll and take advantage of the abundance in their excellent starters.
If they plan on maintaining their 40-man 2016 payroll around 107MM they could for example cash-in on Noah Syndergaard for a very good defense center fielder and average plus potential right-hand hitter like Rusney Castillo and replace Noah with lefty Henry Owens plus righty Matt Barnes as a possible setup pitcher or depth in their rotation until Zack Wheeler is ready. Lastly, since the Mets could not hire the elite utility Zobrist they needed this off season they could complete the trade with another young proven utility All.Star player in Brock Holt.
Okay folks we all know that Castillo is owned 56.5MM during years 2016 through 2020 and that he has an opt out in his contract after 2019. So for the Red Sox to make this trade more interesting they could pay all of Castillo’s salary (43MM) until the opt out is decided in 2019, making the Mets pay only his 2020 salary (13.5MM) if he decides to stay or they could trade him if they need to.
Here you will replace Noah Syndergaard in the rotation with a young 1st round pick in lefty pitcher Henry Owens who did very well last year in his first time around in the majors and is expected to improve next season. Matt Barnes another 1st round pick ahead of Owens in 2011 is a good hard throwing right-hander who will benefit from a change of scenery by pitching in the National League.
Here we have another interesting 1 for 4 player trade that would make many in New York and Boston shout in approval as well as creating in both cities serious havoc at the same time. Nevertheless, New York will still keep a first class rotation for the next 3 to 6 years and fill in all their other holes now while maintaining their payroll under last season. Boston would get their number 2 pitcher under control until 2021 and replace Brock Holt with Deven Marrero and try to replace Castillo internally or through FA by getting a David Murphy or an available player before July’s deadline.
That’s funny…
They’ve been saving money for years. Don’t try to substitute a philosophy or a method of doing things for not even trying. Their method up until this year was to lose and not improve the team. Great year last year because of the pitching and the Nationals fell apart. Everything the Mets do is gauged to try to make fans think they might be trying but they are just playing intellect games with the fans and media. They’re simply not wealthy enough to own a professional team. Until Manfred intervenes he’s just a tool.
Some of you don’t get it. The Wilpon’s are NOT spending now or ever. They won’t even accept Mike Trout even up for Harvey because they will not pay him or any superstar player and that includes their five ace pitchers. The Mets had a chance to be The Most Dominant Team in baseball for the next 3 years. Instead they rented a 2nd baseman for one year before he walks and a shortstop on the decline for 2 years. It will be rinse and repeat next year and the year after. Then these pitchers get traded/given away for prospects. Window closed.
These are the same Wilpon’s that infuriated the Mets fans that bought seats in the 90’s. Before you could renew for the 1994 season the Wilpon’s wrote to all their season ticket holders that they could take away your seats and move you whenever they wanted. How any of you can remotely defend these greedy scavengers who do not appreciate their fans or this window of opportunity is beyond me?
You have to spend money to make money. This is yet another lesson the Wilpon’s still haven’t learned. You wish to root for the Mets do so at your own risk. The Wilpon’s are bad people. Boycott and force them to sell the team. Stop buying the Kool Aide the Mets spin!