A Very Dark Knight
Plus, the latest on the lockout, Juan Soto intrigue and more!
Good Morning,
During a week in which we should be celebrating the sound of popping mitts and the palpable rhythm of baseball coming into season, we are stuck in a labor song-and-dance that MLB is content on continuing while having the music stopped.
It took 15 minutes for the players to present their latest proposal to the league on Thursday, or 30 minutes less than it takes me to negotiate with my six-year-old to get to bed each night.
As we have mentioned in each newsletter we have published over the past few weeks, there’s no real urgency to get a deal done until there’s a real deadline with a real consequence, which is March 1, after which the start of the regular season would likely need to be delayed.
Sure enough, late last night we learned the two sides plan on holding multiple bargaining sessions (perhaps daily) beginning on Monday, with multiple owners and players expected to fly in to participate in talks. This creates the runway to build momentum towards a deal in the week leading up to the March 1 deadline. It’s worth noting the union told MLB they should not expect expanded playoffs in 2022 if the players aren’t paid for a full 162-game season. Both sides are exerting the necessary leverage to make March 1 a real deadline with a real consequence. This is how a deal gets done.
With the labor update out of the way, let’s get into the Mets. Again, we wish we were talking about intriguing invites to spring training, but we feel compelled to discuss the unfortunate situation surrounding Matt Harvey and the worst aspects of sports media today.
But before we do that, let’s get you caught up on the latest rumblings.
💸 FUTURE SPENDING
Washington Nationals superstar Juan Soto confirmed on Wednesday that he turned down a 13-year, $350 million extension offer before the MLB Lockout.
🔹 WHY DOES THIS MATTER? Soto is set to become a free agent following the 2024 season. That’s two years away, but it’s never too early to make him feel wanted, as NBA star (and Mets fan) Donovan Mitchell did on Instagram this week:
Obviously, the Mets aren’t allowed to contact Soto while he is under contract with the Nationals, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get creative:
🔹 COMPETITIVE BALANCE: As much as the MLB-imposed lockout is a war between the league and the players, it is also a battle among big-market and small-market (or less inclined to spend) owners. As we discussed in a previous issue, in MLB’s latest proposal to the players, they are trying to increase both the tax and draft pick penalties for teams exceeding the luxury tax thresholds.
Essentially, many owners are afraid of a situation like one that could present itself in 2024 when Juan Soto becomes a free agent. By then, who knows where the Mets’ payroll will be, but Steve Cohen lingers as a threat willing to blow past the current caps to field a competitive team (the audacity!)
📚 LEARN MORE: Find more detail about the impact of changing the CBT thresholds and penalties by checking out this breakdown by Ben Clemens of FanGraphs.
💰 BEST CASE: Tim Britton of The Athletic breaks down where the Mets would stand under the union’s more forgiving CBT proposal: “Under the proposal from the union, the Mets would be just $11 million over the threshold, and the surcharge would be all of $2.2 million for a first-time offender. (The union proposal retains the current system of escalating financial penalties for repeat offenders.)”
📰 CLIPPINGS
A few more news and notes before we get into our conversation about Matt Harvey…
▪️ Pitching coach Jeremy Hefner says he is “anxious to get to work” with new Mets manager Buck Showalter.
▪️ In his latest MLB farm system rankings, Kiley McDaniel places the Mets’ system 18th overall in baseball: “Given the posture of the big league team moving forward, being able to insert a few rookies at the league minimum and/or have key pieces for trades is key. The issue is that the depth of the system is below average -- the average team has 14.3 players over a 40 FV -- so the players who actually get traded in significant deals, those outside the top half of the top 100 who are also better than a 40 FV, are in shorter supply than you'd prefer.”
▪️ Baseball Prospectus released the PECOTA projections for the 2022 season. Jacob deGrom is projected to be the most valuable player in baseball with a 5.1 WARP, which is absolutely insane considering they only project him to pitch 126.3 innings this year. Brandon Nimmo is projected to be the most valuable hitter for the Mets.
Nimmo is entering his walk year before becoming a free agent. In a conversation with Tim Healey of Newsday, he discussed wanting to play centerfield — a position, as Healey notes, that pays more than a corner outfielder:
“You do think about that. But the good part is, last year I kind of solidified that I can play centerfield. If you need a centerfielder, I can be that guy."
📖 READ MORE: Mets' Brandon Nimmo, entering free-agent walk year, wants to play centerfield, by Tim Healey, Newsday
A Very Dark Knight
by Peter Kauffmann
I didn’t expect to spend much time during the week that pitchers and catchers were supposed to report to Spring Training thinking about Matt Harvey. Like a lot of Mets fans, I felt closure after his return to Citifield in May 2021. After a long wait, he finally said all the things we needed to hear. For the first time, Matt Harvey sounded like a man who had done some maturing. He was no longer the Dark Knight of Gotham, and by finally acknowledging that obvious yet painful reality, we could celebrate what he did achieve and say thank you.
The Dark Knight of Gotham was fun to watch. He added a swagger to the team that had been missing, and like Seaver and Gooden before him, he gave us hope for better days ahead. I’ll never forget that game in April 2013, when he beat the Nationals’ super-hyped phenom, Stephen Strasburg, and Mets fans chanted “Harvey’s better!” And for a time, he was. In his first three seasons, he had a 2.53 ERA with 449 K’s in 427 innings.
My favorite Harvey memories are from his biggest moments. I was at the All-Star Game he started in 2013, which was the first time we got to see Citifield buzz with electricity, providing a brief glimpse of what playoff baseball might feel like in the Mets’ new home. I was also at Game 5 of the 2015 World Series, and my daughter and I jumped to our feet when he sprinted to the mound in the 9th inning. He was Old School and he was our guy.
The Matt Harvey that pitched to a 6.27 ERA for the Orioles last year, the one who was subpoenaed to testify in court this week about his friend’s tragic death, is not a comic book superhero. This new Matt Harvey is a man who has been forced to face his career mortality and reflect on a life in which he might never be paid to play a child’s game ever again.
No one I’ve talked to this week is surprised to hear Harvey admit to partying with cocaine. No one is surprised to hear how perfectly this new Matt Harvey fits into an old, clichéd narrative – the cautionary tale about the fallen hero and wasted potential.
But before we hop onto our collective soapboxes, we might want to show some humility of our own. Because for all we think we know about this situation – and, for that matter, the lives of all of our athletic superheroes – the reality is that we don’t know anything about these men. An entitled athlete dating models and partying with coke might just be an immature frat boy who needs to grow up – or he could be a person suffering from addiction who needs treatment. A former superstar struggling to make a comeback after injury who talks about “maybe ending it” could just be a frustrated prima donna – or he could be suicidal and asking for help.
The point is that we don’t really know, and we’ll probably never know. But one thing we can maybe all agree on is that whichever version of this story is closer to the truth, nothing is solved by his former manager running to do a media tour to dunk on Harvey at his absolute low point. Or by the anonymous MLB official who threatened to reward Harvey for his honesty with a 60-day suspension.
The fever pitch response to Harvey’s testimony this week was a showcase of all the worst aspects of sports media today. The retired coach, wanting to stay relevant, who couldn’t leave it at “no comment.” The talking heads, desperate to fill air time in the absence of actual baseball, jumping to exploit this tragic story. The sources close to the former owner desperate to cast blame elsewhere. The fans passing judgment on social media about a person they have never met. The league official, hiding under the cloak of anonymity, sending a message to other players who might be tempted to blow the whistle on their own clubhouse cultures. There are no heroes in this part of the story.
Matt Harvey may never throw another pitch in professional baseball again. If he doesn’t, I hope that he can find a sense of peace in his life beyond the game. We wanted him to be one of the greats – a superhero. It turns out, he’s just a man. For a time, that man was a damn good pitcher – and a lot of fun to watch.
🔹 A Texas jury found former Angels communications director Eric Kay guilty of providing Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs with the drugs that led to his death in 2019.
🔗 Terry Collins Just Proved Why So Many People Suffer in Silence, by Nicole Cahill, Pitcher List: “I won’t pretend to know the dynamic of a professional locker room, but I do know what it feels like when someone you trust uses your personal struggles as a wrecking ball and leaves you to pick up the pieces. In his testimony, Harvey admitted to his own struggles with substance abuse. For Collins to take that a step further and divulge private information about why Harvey was referred to the team’s psychologist for mental health treatment is disgusting. It’s even more inconceivable that he did so to the press.”
🔗 How often have the Mets been a second-half team? by Matt Musico, MetsMerized Online: “The 2019 and 2001 seasons both seemed to follow a similar pattern. In each instance, they dug themselves into too deep of a hole in the first half, and while they played better than .600 ball to finish the year, it was too little, too late. The 1973 and 1969 seasons share a similarity in that they each appeared in a World Series, but they got there in very different ways. The ’73 club needed a second-half push just to squeak into the playoffs in the first place. The ’69 club needed to at least keep its first-half pace, but they found another gear to win the division by eight games over the Chicago Cubs. As for 1999, they were just good all year. Man, that was such a fun team.”
🔗 Will Mets steal New York from Yankees? Beat reporters breakdown, NJ.com: “The Mets are on the rise. It’s not necessarily true that a World Championship is around the corner, but something’s going on in New York.”
🧩 Great job for everyone who guessed “CATCHER” in our last Wordle. Here is a new Mets-themed Wordle to keep you busy. Tag us on Twitter to let us know how you did. We will reveal the answer in our next issue.
And we leave you with this awesome reel of every Brandon Nimmo 3-2 walk from last season…
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Peter, that was very well written. I completely agree with your critique of the Media, the League, and, sadly, Terry Collins. I’d like to think Terry was acting more out of obliviousness than any conscious act of self promotion at the expense of his former player. Such a sad sad story.
I dont know why but this Harvey story has made me very emotional all week. This is a very good piece Peter that basically sums up my own feelings. We were there the second night of the season when he came back from his injury - it was like a football game everything including him was electric. For that story to end like this is very very very sad.