Money, Money, Money

Morning Dose: Friday, January 10

☀️ Good Morning:

Thursday was a day of numbers.

If you spent anytime checking baseball news on social media, you inevitably saw a bunch of salaries being reported by the various insiders.

That’s because yesterday was the deadline for arbitration-eligible players to reach a salary agreement with their respective clubs for the upcoming season to avoid the painful process of a potential arbitration hearing.

The Mets were one of 18 teams to come to terms with each of their arbitration-eligible players. We will talk about the payroll impact next.

Overall, only 17 players across baseball failed to reach a new contract agreement, which means they will spend the next several weeks trying to bridge the gap between the two salary figures before an arbitration panel ultimately decides on a final salary.

When you hear the term “team-controlled” in reference to players on the roster, it means all of the players who are not yet arbitration eligible — generally, those with 0-3 years of experience and whose salaries typically land around the league minimum — along with these arbitration-eligible players who have at least three years of major-league service but not yet six years.

“Super Two” status is given to a subset of players with less than three years of service but more than two, allowing them to earn arbitration a bit early. The Super Two cutoff, which represents the top 22% of players in service time with between two and three years of experience, was set at 2 years and 132 days this year. No additional Mets reached this threshold.

Talk about dense reading on a Friday morning! That’s why you subscribe to Mets Fix!

☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose!

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💰 MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

We are lucky to have amazing projections from MLB Trade Rumors that give us nearly an exact estimate of arbitration salaries early in the offseason.

The actual arbitration amounts were a bit higher than expected for most of the Mets, with the exception of Paul Blackburn ($4.05MM versus a projected $4.4MM) and Tylor Megill ($1.975MM versus $2.1MM). Otherwise, there were no surprises in the final figures.

What does the 2025 luxury-tax payroll look like now?