Hopes Mets Will Spend Dashed With New Islanders Arena
This offseason, the Mets need to address the rotation, bullpen, catcher, third, center, and depth across the board. This becomes all the more complicated when you consider just signing Zack Wheeler will put the Mets over the luxury tax.
Still, there is some small hope. After all, David Wright‘s contract is insured and expiring. Yoenis Cespedes‘ contract is expiring as well. A good portion of Jacob deGrom‘s salary is deferred. Putting this all together, maybe the money is there, and maybe the Mets will take it on the chin one year and resetting the next.
It’s not going to happen.
Aside from the usual pessimism, Forbes reported “Sterling Equities has yet to put in any money for its share” of the “highly leveraged” new Islanders arena. Ultimately, it is unknown how much of the $800 million financing is the Wilpon owned Sterling Equities responsibility, but that’s just axiomatic as the money isn’t there.
If the money isn’t there for the Islanders arena, it does beg the question whether it’ll be there for the Mets. Perhaps, that is the reason why the Mets focused on a cheaper option in Carlos Beltran instead of a Joe Girardi. On that note, the Mets supposedly didn’t discuss the money available for a manager.
At this point, you really have to wonder what money is available. So far, there isn’t $1 available for the Islanders arena. If there isn’t any money available for a project the Wilpons are partially responsible for $800 million, you wonder how much more they’re going to contribute towards their mid market Mets payroll.
“At this point, you really have to wonder what money is available.”
–I hear that the budget isn’t going any higher than where it is currently. Fwiw I have the actual salary payout for 2020 at $174m, while the AAV that’s used for luxury tax purposes is at $177.17m. My assumptions are that the Mets will go to arb at the numbers MLBTradeRumors gave and that the only player the team won’t reup is Panik. I counted Cespedes and Wright’s salaries because that’s they way ownership counts, and I didn’t include any insurance payout settlement for Cespedes, no matter how likely, or the insurance settlement on Wright, even though that’s close to $9m. To fill out the 25 man roster with unsigned players, I averaged the remaining salaries at 600k. That’s how payroll is typically projected by places like fangraphs, Baseball America, Baseball Reference, and etc. Makes sense to me.
If anyone has different info, please post.