Texas Jake
Good Morning,
On the morning after one of the greatest players to ever wear a Mets uniform decided to bolt for another team, I am going to start with a bit of good news.
There is no widespread panic among the fan base.
It sucks. I prefer to have Jacob deGrom on the Mets instead of the Texas Rangers. But the circumstances of him leaving make it hard to be upset with the organization we all come to this newsletter to talk about. And that says something right there.
Being a Mets fan isn’t easy. There have been a lot of lean years. The payroll hasn’t always been reflective of the market where they play. But Jacob deGrom isn’t a Texas Ranger this morning because the Mets are cheap, or worse yet, stupid. Jacob deGrom is a Texas Ranger because he found a team willing to pay him — granted, a superstar, but an aging, injury-prone one — $185 million over five years and because he seemingly preferred to play somewhere else. The Mets weren’t even given the chance to make a final offer.
What does this mean for the Mets?
Well, we are going to find out based on what they do over the next few days, weeks and months. We know what the team lost. There is no replacing a Jacob deGrom. Even if the Mets pivot to Justin Verlander or Carlos Rodón, as it appears they will, nothing matches the aura of a homegrown star. But as I wrote yesterday, the Mets gain a lot of flexibility in constructing their roster when $40 million isn’t tied up long-term in their former ace (Joel Sherman reports the Mets’ offer to deGrom was three years in the $120 million range).
“I wish him well,” owner Steve Cohen told SNY after the news broke. “He has the right to choose his team. Now this team has to move on to the next thing.”
Before I discuss this in more detail, I want to thank everyone who jumped into our first subscriber chat last night. I really enjoyed having a space to vent in real-time with a select group of people. We had over 300 comments. An email will be sent when we kick off a chat, so keep an eye out for that, especially when there is breaking news. You can learn how to access the chat here.
💰 Let’s start with the contract specifics. Jacob deGrom got PAID. You can read the graphic above. deGrom is also set to receive the second-highest AAV for a pitcher on a $100-million deal (again second to Scherzer), per ESPN. He will also pitch at least 50% of his games in Texas, where there is no state income tax. The deal has no referrals and a full no-trade clause, per Jeff Passan. He also got a conditional sixth-year option that can balloon the total value of the contract to $222 million. However, there is no guaranteed money on that sixth year. You can see the breakdown of the contract in terms of how he will be paid (different from the AAV used for luxury tax purposes) below.
What does this mean for the Mets?
The news is less than 24 hours old. As I mentioned at the top, we can’t possibly evaluate what this means until we know how the Mets react in building their roster. We will find out many years down the road if deGrom can prove to stay healthy for the majority of that contract, making it a no-brainer, if he does. For now, I will do my best to give you some initial thoughts.
1️⃣ It’s ok to feel sad.
I will start with the fan’s perspective. This is baseball. It’s not supposed to be Accounting 101. I’m as guilty as anyone in focusing on the market dynamics of the game. I’m an economist by trade. That’s just how I think. But we don’t watch this sport, we don’t follow this team to celebrate financial prudence.
One of my favorite things in life is sitting in the Citi Field stands with my dad on a warm summer day when deGrom is on the hill and Simple Man starts blaring over the loud speakers. The entire game is ahead of us. And the best pitcher in the world is on our side. That feeling. That experience. I will miss that. I don’t care how much money they save or how else they allocate it.
There will surely be new experiences ahead. And probably with some pretty incredible pitchers in deGrom’s place. But that chapter of being a Mets fan is gone. It’s ok to feel sad about that.
2️⃣ 156 innings
Romantic feelings aside, baseball is still a game, and every game requires strategy. As I wrote yesterday, there’s no hard salary cap to keep Steve Cohen from spending whatever he wants, but there are definitely stiff penalties, and eventually they will catch up to you, either financially, or through the draft. For example, the Mets will receive a draft pick after the fourth round for losing deGrom to the Rangers. It would have been a lot higher (last season it was a 62-pick difference) had they not been a tax-paying team last year.
Which brings me back to 156.3 innings. That’s how many Mr. deGrom has tossed over the past two seasons. As many have pointed out, the Mets won 101 games in 2022, deGrom won only five of them. Overall, the team was 6–5 in games he started.
And when they needed him most, down the stretch against a terrible Oakland team, and later against Atlanta, he couldn’t deliver the start they needed to clinch the division. Perhaps that wouldn’t have mattered. We saw how all the top National League teams faltered in the expanded playoff format. And he was good enough in the team’s lone win against the Padres in the playoffs.
But you pay Jacob deGrom whatever he wants and you live with him making only 15-20 starts (as you can see ZiPS projects him averaging over the next five years) in hopes he will be healthy in September and October to dominate and be the difference-maker in a pennant race and playoff series. At this point, there is no guarantee he can do what he did in 2015 with the Mets.
Signing deGrom to a short-term deal with a high AAV is one thing. Signing him to a five-year deal carries significant risk. It’s not like the Mets won’t spend that money elsewhere, as we used to worry about with the Wilpons. Can they get more bang for their buck on a per-start basis than what Texas will with deGrom? Can they spread that money around a little more? Can they find a top-end starter who actually improves their World Series odds in 2023? We will find out.
3️⃣ What happens next matters most
deGrom is gone. So now what? That’s what we are waiting to find out. How the Mets pivot will dictate what losing deGrom really means for the team’s chances of competing for a championship in 2023 and beyond.
This should be good news if you are a proponent of re-signing Brandon Nimmo. The Mets can afford to bring him back, sign a mid-tier starter and some bullpen help for the AAV cost of doing business with a deGrom/Verlander type.
There’s no denying the Mets have serious work to do to fill out their rotation. As of this morning, Carlos Carrasco, Tylor Megill and David Peterson represent their 2-3-4 starters. I don’t even know who would be the fifth behind that.
That’s why Billy Eppler is certainly focused on the starting pitcher market. According to Andy Martino, the Mets are looking to acquire one of Justin Verlander or Carlos Rodón, along with another mid-tier starter, such as Andrew Heaney, Kyle Gibson, Ross Stripling, Jose Quintana, Kodai Senga, or even bring Taijuan Walker back. Jon Heyman adds Jameson Taillon’s name to that list.
If the Mets can convince Verlander to sign a two-year deal, they could arguably improve the top of their rotation in the short-run, given what we have seen from him over the past calendar year, even at the ripe age of 40 (he turns so in February).
Rodón is an intriguing option. He’s a lot younger than deGrom or Verlander, but he has had plenty of his own injury problems in the past. Remember, the White Sox didn’t even give him a qualifying offer last offseason after he only made 33 starts over the previous three years. However, he did make 24 in 2021 and proved healthy and dominant in 2022 with the Giants, leading him into this current marketplace as a starter who will surely command a lucrative long-term deal.
Is it possible the Mets could sign Rodón for 5-years, $120 million and still have breathing room to re-sign Nimmo for around the combined AAV cost of paying deGrom or Verlander $40+ million? And then use the rest of their budget to add that mid-tier starter, fix up the bullpen and perhaps use the trade market to figure out the rest? I could see that as a realistic path. Although, the way the pitching market is going, who knows what Rodón ultimately fetches.
The term for Verlander, as it was with deGrom, is obviously most important. Verlander for two years and Nimmo for five years means the contracts only overlap in 2023 and 2024. That’s why five years at $37 million AAV for deGrom is so challenging. It doesn’t give you any space to outrun it with more efficient long-term deals this winter.
🍎 Final Thoughts
It’s sad to see deGrom go. It will be interesting to see how fans react when he returns to Citi Field wearing a funky Texas Rangers uniform in late August next season. I’m sure there will be plenty of reporting and speculation about deGrom’s true intentions between now and then.
But we move on. This isn’t the disaster it would have been for most of our lives as Mets fans. By Monday morning, we could be talking about a new ace at the top of the rotation. What the Mets do next matters most.
◾️ The Mariners acquired second baseman Kolten Wong from the Brewers on for outfielder Jesse Winker and infielder Abraham Toro.
◾️ The Red Sox signed reliever Chris Martin to a two-year, $17.5 million deal.
◾️ Former Met Miguel Castro inked a one-year deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
🔗 Texas lands the highest upside pitcher in baseball, by Dan Szymborski, FanGraphs: “If ZiPS is right and the Rangers are an 80-82 team right now, as long as they don’t fall behind the Astros and Mariners over the rest of the offseason, a reasonably healthy deGrom season leaves them somewhere in the 84-85 win range. In a league with three Wild Card teams, those wins are extremely valuable, and I doubt the Rangers are done.”
🔗 Jacob deGrom megadeal shows that even the mistakes are bigger in Texas, by Jon Heyman, NY Post: “I’m here to remind him that this isn’t Tom Seaver leaving town. This is a guy whose abilities far exceeded his accomplishments and who, at least in the final couple years, seemed very unhappy — presumably either unhappy to be in New York, or unhappy to have signed a contract he detested. It’s hard to know for sure, but one Mets executive said he doesn’t think deGrom is about money but merely preferred to be out of New York, even if a few teammates incorrectly suggested they believed he preferred to return.”
🔗 By signing Jacob deGrom, Rangers continue to fulfill promises. Next up: Contention? by Levi Weaver, The Athletic ($): “The signing is technically not the first domino to fall for the Rangers this offseason — in fact, it’s about the fourth, after the hiring of Bruce Bochy, the trade for Jake Odorizzi and the re-signing of Martín Pérez via qualifying offer — but it might be the biggest. After a season when the Rangers’ starting pitching ranked near the bottom in most statistical categories, the addition of deGrom is massive.”
🔗 Rangers strike gold with Jacob deGrom. Is it the fool’s variety? by Keith Law, The Athletic ($): “I might put the over/under at starts he’ll make over the next five seasons, which happen to cover his ages 35-39 years, at 60, given those ages and his history of injuries, which includes a stress reaction in his shoulder in 2022, and an elbow injury that may or may not have included a partial UCL tear and that ended his 2021 season in early July. Pitchers who throw very hard do seem to get hurt more often, although the relationship is more complicated than that, but deGrom is a guy who throws hard and has a history of arm injuries.”
And we close this one out with a photo originally posted by Adam Rubin six years ago (and since updated)…
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Very sentimental piece ! When DeGrom was his absolute best in 2018 and 19 the Mets had crappy owners and gave him no support. The Mets get the best owner in MLB and he gets injured. Then we find out he didnt want to be in NY. He was 'playing' everyone all long to drive up his price. This is not a Piazza, a Hernandez, a Seaver to name a few. The Mets made a great offer and he still didnt want to stay. What his ego was bruised cause Scherzer came, he didnt want to get vaccinated, he wants a wram weather city, whatever - I for one won't miss him knowing all this. Lets Go Mets !
Jeff, I’m not having any widespread panic, but I am listening to The Grateful Dead and Goose today.