Beware MLB: These Aren't the Same Ole Mets After Francisco Lindor $341M Contract
With mere minutes to spare before Francisco Lindor's deadline for a new contract, the New York Mets agreed to make him one of the richest players in Major League Baseball history.
As MLB Network's Jon Heyman was first to report late Wednesday night, Lindor and the Mets have agreed to a 10-year, $341 million contract that will run from 2022 through 2031.
The two sides had previously been at a stalemate, with Lindor reportedly demanding $60 million more than what the Mets were offering. By coming to an agreement, both sides have vaulted the Mets into an era that should be marked by extravagance and, hopefully, success.
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Or, pretty much the opposite of what Mets fans are used to.
Francisco Lindor's Resume
A Contract Worthy of an Elite Shortstop
To the extent that Lindor and his camp countered an initial 10-year, $325 million offer from the Mets with a 12-year, $385 million proposal, his new contract isn't quite what he wanted.
Yet it's no great surprise he was willing to settle.
Fernando Tatis Jr., a fellow superstar shortstop, effectively set the bar for Lindor's contract when he signed a 14-year, $340 million extension with the San Diego Padres in February. Though Lindor's new deal barely beats that in total guaranteed dollars, it blows it away with its average annual value of $34.1 million.
Strictly in terms of new money, Lindor's contract with the Mets slots behind only those of Mookie Betts (12 years, $365 million) and Mike Trout (10 years, $360 million). That's fair, considering there's a case for Lindor as MLB's best player outside of those two.
Shortstop is one of the most important positions on the diamond after all, and Lindor leads everyone at the position with 27.9 rWAR since 2015. He was especially good between 2017 and 2019, posting a 122 OPS+ with 34 home runs and 21 stolen bases per season, all while playing Gold Glove-caliber defense.
Whether it was because of distraction relating to his contract status or being unable to feed off crowds with no fans in attendance, Lindor struggled enough to post a career-low 102 OPS+ in 2020. In this context, his new deal is an even bigger leap of faith than the standard $300 million contract.
Yet the Mets had more license to believe in Lindor than just his stellar track record. As he maintained above-average marks for strikeout rate and exit velocity, there was also a bad-luck element to last year's struggles.
The Mets therefore can be—and very obviously are—confident that Lindor will perform at a superstar level for years to come. They can also rely on his movie-star charisma being good for business. He already has one of baseball's best-selling jerseys, and he's sure to sell a ton of tickets at Citi Field over the next 11 seasons.
Remember When the Mets Were a Joke?
After Steve Cohen's $2.4 billion purchase of the Mets from the Wilpon family became official in November, the billionaire hedge fund manager made two key proclamations.
First, that the organization would have the budget of a "major-market team." And second, that he would be disappointed if the team didn't win the World Series within the next three to five years.
Essentially, Cohen assured Mets fans he would be the anti-Wilpons.
After first buying a stake in the Mets in 1986, Fred Wilpon and his family took on a controlling interest in the franchise in 2002. The club went to the National League Championship Series four years later and had top-10 payrolls annually through 2011.
Then the Wilpons got caught up in the Bernie Madoff scandal, and the club's budget suffered accordingly as their payrolls typically ranked in the middle of the pack between 2012 and 2019. In spite of a trip to the World Series in 2015, the franchise also became something of a laughingstock—immortalized on social media with the #LOLMets hashtag—through its near-constant unforced errors.
There were plenty of those just in the final years of the Wilpons' reign.
They baffled everyone when they hired Brodie Van Wagenen, who had previously been an agent, as their general manager in 2018. His moves to acquire former clients like Robinson Cano and Jed Lowrie famously backfired, and he stepped into a needless controversy with Yoenis Cespedes in 2020.
It was refreshing, then, not only to hear Cohen's promises but also to immediately watch him try to make good on them. The Mets were one of MLB's most active teams during the 2020-21 offseason as their haul also included Carlos Carrasco, James McCann, Trevor May, Taijuan Walker and others in addition to Lindor.
Yet the catch with Lindor was that he only came to the Mets with one year of club control left before free agency. There was never any way the club was going to sign him for less than $300 million, so the pressure was on Cohen to truly align his money with his mouth via a megadeal for the star shortstop.
It was only days ago that the odds of a deal actually happening seemed slim, and Cohen himself apparently forgot the cardinal rule of Twitter is to "Never Tweet." He tried crowdsourcing a contract offer for Lindor and even pressured the shortstop to sign something Tuesday:
Watching this unfold would have been mindboggling if it wasn't so...well, so Mets. Even though his pockets went so much deeper, it looked as if the team's new owner was inflicted by the same hex that had led the Wilpons from one tragicomic calamity to another for nearly a decade.
But then, suddenly, there was a deal. And it's a real one as only $50 million of Lindor's $341 million guarantee is deferred, and he has no opt-outs. In all likelihood, he will be a Met for life.
Beware the Mets, Both Now and Later
Even sans an extension for Lindor, the Mets would have gone into Opening Day of the 2021 season as a threat to win not only the National League East, but also the World Series.
With Lindor and McCann in place, the Mets have an even stronger offense than the one that ranked third in the majors in OPS+ last season. With Marcus Stroman back to support two-time Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom, the Mets also boast an excellent one-two punch in their starting rotation. What's more, their bullpen is headed by three of last year's nine best strikeout artists.
The Mets are favored to win the NL East by both Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs, and the latter gives them an 11.3 percent chance of winning the World Series for the first time since 1986. Among National League clubs, that's second only to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
At least expectations-wise, it's all too appropriate that the Mets are in the same sentence as the Dodgers.
By going from a cheap joke under Frank McCourt to high-priced winners under Magic Johnson starting in 2013, the Dodgers built the model the Mets are now trying to follow. Though this will be a long process, they couldn't possibly have taken a better first step.
Of course, there's no guarantee the Mets will immediately fulfill their potential. But if they don't, all they've done in recent months—from their offseason shopping to Lindor's monster deal—inspires confidence that they'll keep trying until Cohen's World Series promise comes true.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
