Report: Mets and Yankees to pay more than $150 million combined in luxury tax

No wonder Steve Cohen and Hal Steinbrenner are so touchy when it comes to the Mets’ and Yankees’ payrolls.

The Mets and Yankees will be paying more than $150 million combined in luxury tax for the 2025 season, The Associated Press reported on Friday.

The Mets, who failed to make the playoffs last season, are paying $91,637,501 in luxury tax, according to the AP. That’s second in MLB to the World Series champion Dodgers, whose luxury tax bill is a record $169,375,768.

The Yankees, who made it to the AL Division Series before losing to Toronto, have a luxury tax bill of $61,774,820.

The tax bills must be paid to MLB by Jan. 21.

The Mets had a payroll of $346.7 million for 2025, according to the AP.

On Friday, Cohen posted on X about the Mets’ finances after a short item appeared in the New York Post claiming without attribution that the Mets expect their 2026 payroll to be between $310 million-$320 million.

That item got the attention of Mets fans and bloggers, who were aghast that the Mets would seemingly cut payroll after the disastrous end to 2025.

Cohen, who had not posted on X since an apology to fans after the season, posted on Friday morning: “As typical, the usual idiots misinterpreting a Post article on Mets payroll for ’26. I can’t imagine our payroll to be lower than last year. It’s always hard to predict but that would be my best guess.”

Cohen followed up with another post that read: “Payroll watchers always forget to budget for waiver claims, player movement from minors to majors and trade deadline moves. That’s how it typically works.”

Then, about 11 hours after the first post, Cohen responded to a Mets fan’s comment with a comment of his own that clarified who the “usual idiots” were in his view.

“I was just referring to a few media shills creating a false narrative on spending,” Cohen posted. “I would never dismiss the fans and the emotions they are going through.”

As for Steinbrenner, the Yankees owner took some flak last month after he said it would be “ideal” if the Yankees could lower their payroll to under $300 million for 2026.

"But does that mean that's going to happen? Of course not,” he said. “We want to field a team we know could win a championship — or we believe could win a championship."

The Yankees’ 2025 payroll was $319 million, Steinbrenner said on Nov. 24. He also said it’s “not fair” to say the Yankees made a profit last season.

"Everybody wants to talk about revenues,” Steinbrenner said on that date. “They need to talk about our expenses, including the $100 million expense to the city of New York that we have to pay every Feb. 1, including the COVID year. It all starts to add up in a hurry.

"Nobody spends more money, I don't believe, on player development, scouting, performance science. These all start to add up. If you want to go look at the revenues, you’ve got to somehow try to figure out the expense side as well. You might be surprised."

Nine of MLB’s 30 teams were hit with a luxury tax bill, according to the AP, with the others being the Phillies ($56 million), Blue Jays ($13.6 million), Padres ($6.9 million), Astros ($1.4 million), Red Sox ($1.4 million) and Rangers ($190,000).

Spokesmen for the Mets and Yankees did not respond to requests for comment.

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.