When Steve Cohen held his introductory press conference as the owner of Mets on Nov. 10, he named the Dodgers as the team he wants to emulate with his franchise.
On Friday, Cohen and the Mets saw the divide between the franchises manifest when Trevor Bauer chose the Dodgers.
The canyon is the physical canyon that the Mets couldn’t do anything about – the 2,805 miles that separate Citi Field from Dodger Stadium. Bauer, from the Los Angeles area, can go home.
But Bauer accepted a few million dollars less in total value to be a Dodger rather than a Met for more specific reasons than Pacific reasons. The Dodgers are everything the Mets (and pretty much any team) want to be.
They are the most likely contender for MLB, with eight consecutive NL West titles and last year’s World Series. The Mets have made the playoffs twice in 14 seasons. The Dodgers are at the forefront of modernity; vital to Bauer, who has done perhaps more than any active player to mainstream advanced tools to maximize performance. The Mets are trying to catch up with speed in this arena. The Dodgers are blessed with the kind of grown-up clubhouse that can absorb a polarizing player. The Mets are still trying to prove that all the malfunctions in their store weren’t caused by Wipon.
The Dodgers also provide a mega city stage for Bauer, who has ambitions to have a powerful personal brand. New York City could deliver on that too. Plus, under Cohen, the Mets can be financially competitive when compared to the Fred Wilpon version, which was always trying to recapture the Dodgers – the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The Mets were offering three years for $ 105 million with what was believed to be $ 40 million in each of the first two years and the chance to forgo after each year – the annual value would have come in at $ 35 million, just under Gerrit Cole’s record of $ 36 million. The Dodger deal will run for three years for $ 102 million. It pays Bauer $ 40 million in Year 1 and $ 45 million in Year 2, and he can opt out after that.
The strength of today’s Dodgers is that they have created such a monster of financial flexibility, productive farm system and attractive environment that they are entering just about any market to see if they can land difference makers. Their influence is that they know they will still be great without the player. For example, they tried hard on Cole last year, offered less than the other New York team and didn’t get a hold of him. They lost to Kenta Maeda and Hyun-jin Ryu, who finished second and third respectively in the AL Cy Young race. And David Price did not participate in the season. Still, they all won it, in part, because they still had a ton of budding ptiching.
Off-season, they didn’t offer as much as a team from New York and still won the 2020 NL Cy Young award winner. They tried this kind of short term, high annual value pitch a few years ago with Bryce Harper and it didn’t work. It did now, as the Dodgers blow well past the $ 210 million luxury tax threshold, capitalizing on when other big clubs like the Yankees treat it as a demilitarized zone they will never approach.
Bauer will likely be in for at least two years before (with health) skipping the $ 17 million due in the final season of 2023. The Dodgers have written off about $ 87 million from their books after this year, namely with Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Jansen and Corey Seager free agents. They will have to keep or replace Kershaw and Seager. But by the time they have to make a decision about Cody Bellinger and Walker Buehler, Bauer and his large sums of money are likely to have disappeared from the books.
This move is also against NL West’s strongest pursuers, the Padres, who bolstered their off-season rotation with Yu Darvish, Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove. Bauer joins Buehler, Kershaw, Price, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May and Julio Urias. That quality / quantity attacks a season where teams are worried about 162 games of innings after pitchers had only 60 games to work last year (and none in the minors).
Plus, the Dodgers loved Bauer from the Mets, who with an ideal version of the righty would have become a stronger NL obstacle. In that way it is a loss. But I keep believing it was the wrong guy at the wrong time for the Mets as they try to foster a culture and base that can absorb any type of player.
The Mets still have ways to take a strong shot in 2021 without disrupting the future by improving in the center with a Jackie Bradley or a Lorenzo Cain, playing an up game on James Paxton, or envisioning – of everything – the Dodgers are done spending Alderson tries to reunite with Justin Turner.
But that’s about 2021. By failing on Bauer, the Mets are retaining their second round in June and $ 500,000 in international pool money (which would have compensated for Bauer signing). They must use it wisely. There are many miles to go to achieve Cohen’s ambition to become the East Coast Dodgers. On Friday they got to know what they wanted to be firsthand.