When Steve Cohen holds his inaugural press conference as owner of Mets on Nov. 10, he names the Dodgers as the team he wants his franchise to emulate.
Cohen and the Mets saw the gap between the franchises on Friday when Trevor Bauer selected the Dodgers.
The gap is the physical one the Mets could do nothing about – the 2,805 miles that separate Citi Field from Dodger Stadium. Bauer, from the Los Angeles area, has to go home.
But Bauer accepts a few million dollars less as a Dodger rather than a Met for more specific reasons than the Pacific. The Dodgers are everything the Mets (and almost every team) want to be.
They are the most confident contender for MLB, having won eight NL titles on the right and last year’s World Series. The Mets have won the playoffs twice in 14 seasons. The Dodgers are at the forefront of modernity; very important for Bauer, who may have done more than any active player to use the latest tools to maximize performance. The Mets are trying to play fast in this arena. The Dodgers are blessed with the kind of mature clubhouse that a polarizing player can absorb. The Mets are still trying to prove that the malfunction in their store was not caused by Wipon.
The Dodgers also offer a mega-stadium stage for Bauer, who has ambitions to have a powerful personal brand. The city of New York can also deliver it. Plus, under Cohen, the Mets could be financially competitive compared to the Fred Wilpon version, which has always tried to recapture the Dodgers – the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The Mets offered three years at $ 105 million with $ 40 million in each of the first two years and the chance to choose from each – the annual value would be $ 35 million, just below Gerrit Cole’s record of $ 36 million. The Dodger agreement is $ 102 million for 102 years. It pays Bauer $ 40 million in Year 1 and $ 45 million in Year 2 and he can choose after that.
The power of the current Dodgers is that they have created such a monster or financial flexibility, a productive farming system and an attractive environment to push into almost every market to see if they can land differential manufacturers. Their advantage is knowing that they will still be great without the player. For example, last year they tried hard on Cole, offered less than the other team in New York and did not get him. They lost Kenta Maeda and Hyun-jin Ryu, who finished second and third in the AL Cy Young race, respectively. And David Price chose the season. Yet they won it all in part because they still started ptiching a lot.
This season, they did not offer as much as a New York team and still achieved the 2020 Cy Cy Young award winner. They tried this kind of short-term-high annual value effort with Bryce Harper a few years ago and it does not work. It has done so now, while the Dodgers are blowing far beyond the $ 210 million luxury tax threshold, capitalizing on it as other major market clubs like the Yankees treat it as a demilitarized zone to never approach.
Bauer is likely to be in the country for at least two years before he (with health) skips the $ 17 million paid in the final season of 2023. The Dodgers have about $ 87 million available after this year, namely with Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Jansen and Corey Seager. They will have to retain or replace Kershaw and Seager. But by the time they have to decide on Cody Bellinger and Walker Buehler, Bauer and his big pay days are unlikely to be out of the books anymore.
The move also stands against the Dodgers’ strongest pursuers from the West West, the Padres, who strengthened their rotation in the off-season with Yu Darvish, Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove. Bauer joins Buehler, Kershaw, Price, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May and Julio Urias. This quality / quantity attacks a season when teams worry about covering 162 innings, after pitchers had only 60 games last year (and no minors).
On top of that, the Dodgers did keep Bauer from the Mets, who with an ideal version of the judge would have become a stronger NL obstacle. It’s a loss that way. But I keep believing that it was the wrong man at the wrong time for the Mets as they are trying to promote a culture and foundation that any type of player can absorb.
The Mets still have ways to take a strong shot in 2021 without disrupting the future by improving in the middle with a Jackie Bradley or a Lorenzo Cain, making an upward play on James Paxton or putting them ahead of all things – the Dodgers are done and Sandy Alderson is trying to reunite with Justin Turner.
But that’s about 2021. By failing Bauer, the Mets retain their second round in June and $ 500,000 international pool money (which would have been compensation for Bauer’s signing). They must use it wisely. There are many miles to reach Cohen’s ambition to be the East Coast Dodgers. On Friday, they encountered firsthand what they would like.