When Steve Cohen held his introductory press conference as the owner of Mets on Nov. 10, he mentioned the Dodgers as the team that wants him to emulate his franchise.
On Friday, Cohen and the Mets saw the gap between the franchises manifest when Trevor Bauer picked the Dodgers.
The gap is physics that the Mets could do nothing about: the 2,805 miles that separate Citi Field from Dodger Stadium. Bauer, from the Los Angeles area, comes home.
But Bauer accepted a few million dollars less in overall value to be Dodger instead of Met for more specific than peaceful reasons. The Dodgers are everything the Mets (and almost every team) aspires to be.
They are MLB’s safest contenders as they have won eight consecutive NL West and World Series titles last year. The Mets have reached the playoffs twice in 14 seasons. The Dodgers are at the forefront of pitching modernity; vital for Bauer, who has perhaps done more than any active player to incorporate cutting-edge tools to maximize performance. The Mets are trying to regain speed on this field. The Dodgers are blessed with the kind of mature clubhouse that a polarizing player can absorb. The Mets are still trying to prove that all of their store’s dysfunction was not caused by Wipon.
The Dodgers also provide a mega-city setting for Bauer, who has ambitions to have a powerful personal brand. New York City could get it too. Also, under Cohen, the Mets can be economically competitive compared to Fred Wilpon’s version, which was always trying to get the Dodgers back: the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The Mets offered three years for $ 105 million, which was believed to be $ 40 million in each of the first two years and the opportunity to stop participating after each: the annual value would have reached $ 35 million. of dollars, just below Gerrit Cole’s record $ 36 million. . The Dodger deal is $ 102 million over three years. Bauer is paid $ 40 million in year 1 and $ 45 million in year 2 and can choose not to participate after either.
The power of today’s Dodgers is that they have created such a monster or such financial flexibility, a productive farming system, and an attractive environment that they push almost every market to see if they can achieve differentiators. Their leverage is to know that they will still be fantastic without the player. They, for example, tried to take Cole last year, offered less than the other New York team and failed. They lost Kenta Maeda and Hyun-jin Ryu, who finished second and third, respectively, in the AL Cy Young race. And David Price opted for the season. Still, they won it all, in part, because they still had gorges to start pichiching.
This offseason, they didn’t offer as much as a New York team and got the winner of the NL Cy Young 2020 award. They tried this kind of short-term, high-value annual pitch a few years ago with Bryce Harper and it didn’t go away. work. He did so now, as the Dodgers surpassed the $ 210 million luxury tax cap, capitalizing on when other big-market clubs like the Yankees treat it as a demilitarized zone that should never be approached.
Bauer is likely to be at least two years away from jumping (healthily) from the $ 17 million outstanding for the final season of 2023. The Dodgers have about $ 87 million off their books later this year, specifically with free agents Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Jansen and Corey Seager. They will have to keep or replace Kershaw and Seager. But by the time they have to decide on Cody Bellinger and Walker Buehler, it’s likely that Bauer and his big pay days are gone.
In addition, this move counteracts the Dodgers ’strongest NL West pursuers, the Padres, who consolidated their rotation this offseason with Yu Darvish, Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove. Bauer joins Buehler, Kershaw, Price, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May and Julio Urias. This quality / quantity attacks a season in which teams worry about covering 162 inning games after the pitchers had only 60 working games last year (and none in the minors).
In addition, the Dodgers kept Bauer from the Mets, who with an ideal version of the righty would have become a stronger obstacle in the American League. It’s a loss that way. But I still believe he was the wrong guy at the wrong time for the Mets, as they try to foster a culture and a base that can absorb any kind of player.
The Mets still have ways to make a strong shot in 2021 without disturbing the future by improving at center with a Jackie Bradley or a Lorenzo Cain, making a play at the head with James Paxton or imagining – of all things – that the Dodgers have ended up spending and Sandy Alderson tries to reunite with Justin Turner.
But that’s roughly 2021. By failing Bauer, the Mets retain their second-round pick this June and $ 500,000 in international money (which would have been compensation for Bauer’s signing). They should use it with caution. There are many miles left to fulfill Cohen’s ambition of being East Coast Dodgers. On Friday they met first hand with what they are hungry for.