Mets would prefer to hold on to their top prospects
Mets general manager Billy Eppler at spring training on March 14 in Port St. Lucie, Fla. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
At the trade deadline, the Mets were determined to hold on to their better prospects, so they opted for a series of smaller moves instead of the bigger, splashier kind for the sake of a brighter future, an approach of marginal upgrades that arguably eventually cost them the division title and who knows what else in the postseason.
This offseason, that strong preference and overarching organizational philosophy remains: Keep the top minor-leaguers.
“It’s the same,” general manager Billy Eppler said recently in Las Vegas, where he was attending the GM meetings. “There were deals at the deadline where players inside of our top 10 were in them. It just wasn’t going to be a handful of players inside our top 10 or multiple players inside our top 10.
“If you look historically at some organizations that have built that sustainability, they haven’t really traded inside of their top four for the first four, five, six, seven years of that type of blueprint being constructed and then implemented.”
The Mets are one year into the blueprint that is Eppler’s vision for the franchise. So this may well be the approach for a while yet.
“That’s ultimately where we’re at,” he said. “But if the right player comes along, there’s no absolutes. I don’t want to live in absolutes.”
The upside for the Mets and Steve Cohen, the richest owner in baseball, is they are able to and plan to spend money to make up for what they don’t want to spend in prospects. Their payroll last season was the highest in the majors, approaching $300 million, and they figure to be in that realm again in 2023.
But Eppler said more strongly this time what he has hinted at previously: The Mets don’t want to be at the tippity top of the payroll list perennially.
They view using Cohen’s cash to this extreme degree in free agency is a temporary fix. They aspire to be a self-sustaining organization fueled by young, homegrown players — who are paid a relative pittance, which frees up more money for selectively bringing in outside players.
“[Immense financial resources are] an advantage, no doubt. We’ll continue to try to make smart investments,” Eppler said. “I don’t think we want to carry the payroll at this level or need to carry the payroll at this level year in and year out. I think we’d rather be in a position where the free-agent market is used as a lever or a mechanism to complement a team and supplement a team and maybe help drive a couple extra wins in your projection, rather than to fill out a roster. We want to get to that place. But we’re not there yet.”
How long does that take?
“Those are generally five- to six-year builds,” Eppler said.
The Mets will look largely to free agency to piece together, for example, their pitching staff this offseason. They have just two starters (Max Scherzer and Carlos Carrasco) and two relievers (Edwin Diaz and Drew Smith) locked into jobs for 2023. Eppler repeatedly mentioned considering the trade market to fill those holes — plus any lineup changes deemed worthwhile — but acquiring impact players would require giving up impact players.
The tricky part of this for a team that wants to buy its way into the playoff picture: That might come at a prospect cost, too. Because the Mets exceeded the luxury-tax threshold last season, they would face more severe penalties if they signed a player with a qualifying offer attached: losing their second- and fifth-highest draft picks, as well as $1 million from their international bonus pool.
Bringing in, say, shortstop Trea Turner or lefthanders Carlos Rodon and Tyler Anderson or righthander Nathan Eovaldi would trigger a de facto subtraction from the farm system.
“You would look at that as a potential prospect loss. It goes into the calculus,” Eppler said. “It’s just baked into the overall acquisition cost. So it’s a calculation that you run. You do the math and if it makes sense, go ahead.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
