The Mets have more than enough competition for the services of Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
While they boast the allure of being the highest bidder thanks to Steve Cohen’s riches, the crosstown-rival Yankees have the defending AL Cy Young Award winner in Gerrit Cole and a newly-formed two-headed monster within the top-third of their lineup with Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, who was acquired last week from the San Diego Padres.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, however, appear to be unstoppable. They made historic deferments to Shohei Ohtani’s 10-year, $700 million contract — paying him just $2 million per year through 2023 — to ensure there was enough cap space to make other marquee signings.
Sure, Cohen and David Stearns flew to Japan to meet with the 25-year-old right-handed ace two weeks ago and the Yankees had a roundtable with the three-time Sawamura Award winner on Monday. But the Dodgers rolled out Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman in their pitch for the three-time Nippon Professional Baseball MVP on Tuesday, according to The Athletic.
That’s a hard lineup to beat.
Should Yamamoto choose anywhere but Queens, though, where do the Mets go?
They still need a top-of-the-rotation arm to support Kodai Senga and bolster a staff that is still plenty thin. Besides Yamamoto’s compatriot in Senga, the Mets have Jose Quintana as a mid-rotation option while signing Luis Severino as a reclamation project. David Peterson, Tylor Megill, and Joey Lucchesi stand as bottom-of-the-rotation options for what could very well be a six-man group.
New York’s best avenue of finding that is on the free-agent market considering trading for an ace like Tyler Glasnow would mean subtracting from a suddenly robust farm system that they’ve made a priority in keeping intact.
That makes Blake Snell the most logical target if Stearns and Cohen miss out on Yamamoto.
The 31-year-old southpaw is the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner after going 14-9 with a 2.25 ERA and 234 strikeouts in 180 innings pitched with the Padres. The NL West club’s need to cut its payroll by 20% makes it impossible to retain the free agent, though, which is why they also were forced to trade Soto to the Yankees and why star closer Josh Hader will walk in free agency this winter, too.
While Snell’s stuff is top-notch, there are obvious concerns. He led the league with 99 walks in 2023 to inflate his WHIP to a pedestrian 1.189. He’s also rarely assumed the workload of a legitimate ace as he’s only hit the 180-innings-pitched mark twice in his eight-year MLB career. Those two years saw him win the Cy Young (2018 with the Tampa Bay Rays, 2023 with San Diego), but the next-highest innings-pitched total in his career is just 129.1 in 2017.
The Mets going to a six-man rotation, though, would ensure that they don’t have to rely on Snell to reach that magic 180 innings plateau. Granted, they would need to make at least one more signing and they’ve been linked with another Japanese arm in southpaw Shota Imanaga.
