Major League Baseball had each team contribute $1 million to pay hourly wage employees affected by the COVID19 shut down. Some teams have gone over and above that by increasing that amount independently. The Mets, well, as we know by now, they do things differently than everyone else.

JUST IN: Letter sent to all staff members for the New York Mets. pic.twitter.com/9NAh6diNlr

— Gary Sheffield Jr. (@GarysheffieldJr) March 30, 2020

Based upon this letter, while the Mets purportedly contributed $1 million to the fund for the ballpark employees affected by the COVID19 shutdown, they are not going to pay those employees. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Rather, the Mets are not going to “re-employ” some of those people they have employed in year’s past and were expected to employ again in 2020.

There may be an important distinction in that these letters went out to people not directly employed by the Mets but rather the Queens Baseball Company, L.L.C. Whatever their function, it is important to note this was a letter sent on Mets letterhead by the Mets Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer. According to Bloomberg, this company is a wholly owned subsidiary of the New York Mets.

Now, you can question the authenticity of this letter as it’s existence has yet to be fully confirmed or denied by any news reporting agency. Also, at least in theory, it is possible this letter is indeed real, and in a separate correspondence the Mets sent payment to these same people. It is also possible by sending these employees letters like this, they are making it easier for them to pursue other employment opportunities, to the extent there are any, or to obtain benefits, which is unclear at the moment.

At the moment, no one knows when baseball is going to return. With that being the case, those employees most affected have no way of knowing when their next paycheck is going to come. If this letter is real, it at least appears the Mets plan is to simply not pay those employees and to let them find money elsewhere.

We have known for years the Mets have had financial difficulties, and before the COVID19 outbreak the Wilpons had not secured their share of the funding for the Islanders new arena,.

At this moment, we don’t even know the Mets capacity to pay anyone with their being no games played. We also don’t know what measures anyone in the Mets organization are willing to take (for e.g. pay cuts) to get these people paid.

The only thing we know for sure is there are people wondering when they’ll be able to be paid again, and based on this letter, it seems that future pay day will not be coming from the Mets.