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When the New York Mets went through their 2023 trade-deadline sell-off, reports surfaced that the 2024 season was going to be a “transitory year.” It was hard to believe that as they were one of the finalists for Japanese starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto before he signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
But since coming up empty-handed in that pursuit, president of baseball operations David Stearns has stayed the course with lower-tier signings. Former front office executive and current MLB insider Jim Bowden didn’t hold back on his opinion of what the Mets have been up to this winter.
During a January 8 appearance on the Foul Territory TV show, Bowden touched on several topics. When asked about the Amazins, Bowden referred to them as “Meet the Mediocre Mets.” Here’s what else he said about the club’s lackluster offseason from the standpoint of spending top dollar on free agents:
“Really disappointed, Scotty, in what these guys have done this offseason. And look, I love that they made the run at Yamamoto. They were the highest bidder for him. Unfortunately, Yamamoto grew up a Dodger fan, so when the Dodgers had a chance to match the offer, they did.
“But besides that, I look at their rotation after [Kodai] Senga, who I think is a number one starter at this point, but you look at the rest of their rotation and you have 35-year-old Quintana, soft-tossing lefty. You bring in Sean Manaea, two years, $28 million, another soft-tossing lefty. You’re sitting there with [Luis] Severino, who’s had shoulder problems and watching him last year, really inconsistent. Not the guy he was at one point. You make the trade for Adrian Houser, who had, what, a 4.40 ERA last year in 117 innings of work.
“So, I look at this rotation and I say to myself, ‘This is a fourth-place team.’ And watch out for Washington because they might actually go past them. This is not a contending team for me. It’s not a Wild Card team. It’s all of a sudden an aging team, and I don’t think they’ve done enough in the starting rotation to be competitive this year.”
You can catch the full clip via Foul Territory’s X account (formerly Twitter) below.
A Rundown of Mets’ Offseason so Far
The transaction log on the Mets’ official website has been busy during Stearns’ first offseason at the helm in Queens.
Some notable subtractions from the roster include Daniel Vogelbach, Luis Guillorme, Adam Ottavino, Jeff Brigham, Sam Coonrod, Trevor Gott, Carlos Carrasco, Tim Locastro and Jonathan Araúz. Meanwhile, some notable additions include Sean Manaea, Harrison Bader, Luis Severino, Joey Wendle, Adrian Houser, Tyrone Taylor, Michael Tonkin, Austin Adams, Jorge López and Trayce Thompson.
New York has spent a total of $57.3 million on big-league free agents so far. The only player who has received a contract longer than one year is Manaea. And even then, the second year of his deal is a player option.
Spending Money Doesn’t Guarantee on-Field Success
New York’s offseason approach might frustrate on-lookers, but it shouldn’t be surprising. During their Yamamoto pursuit, The Athletic’s Will Sammon reported that this would happen.
He said if New York didn’t land the right-hander, they wouldn’t simply turn to the next high-priced free agent. Yamamoto won’t be calling Queens his home for the foreseeable future, and the Mets have since done exactly what Sammon said they were going to do.
Are the Mets an aging fourth-place team that could see the Washington Nationals lap them in the 2024 National League East standings? That’s always a possibility — this is baseball and anything can happen on the diamond. However, let’s not forget that spending lots of money doesn’t guarantee on-field success.
It’s hard to watch the Dodgers drop more than $1 billion on player talent and the Mets not trying to match them with MLB’s richest owner Steve Cohen in New York. Then again, Cohen let former general manager Billy Eppler drop nearly $500 million on big-league free agents during the 2022-23 offseason.
That resulted in a 75-87 record and a trade-deadline sell-off that includes money being sent to multiple teams to pay the salaries of former players in 2024, per Spotrac. These past two winters have been night and day when it comes to approach and execution. But, whether it’s effective or not isn’t determined in January. It will be determined at the end of September.
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