QUEENS, NY — The New York Mets are going to have a significant chunk of money coming off their books this winter — approximately $200 million — and president of baseball operations David Stearns intends to use that to be aggressive on the free-agent market with the backing of owner Steve Cohen.
“We’ve got financial flexibility,” Stearns said. “It means that pretty much the entirety of the player universe is potentially accessible to us. That’s an enormous opportunity. I envision us taking advantage of that opportunity and being aggressive in certain spaces.”
A sizable portion of the freed-up cash is coming from the expiration of retained contracts — most notably Max Scherzer’s $30.8 million, Justin Verlander’s $25 million, and James McCann’s $8 million.
It leaves the Mets with roughly $150 million of current contracts on their books, meaning they have around $90 million to work with for the 2025 season before hitting Major League Baseball’s first competitive balance tax (CBT) threshold of $241 million. The Mets have blown past multiple levels of the CBT to the point where going more than $60 million over is now known as the “Steve Cohen Tax.”
“I keep [each CBT threshold] in my mind,” Stearns said. “They all come with different penalties: Financial, draft pick compensation, international market spending capability. All of that is on my mind and will play a part in how aggressive we are in certain spaces.”
That will not deter Stearns or Cohen from making the moves they deem necessary to build upon an ahead-of-scheduled 2024 season in which the Mets pushed the Los Angeles Dodgers to six games in the NLCS.
“We have a lot of money coming off the books. I would expect us to spend some of that — a good portion of that — to complement our team, to improve our team heading into next year,” Stearns said. “We’re also not going to do anything that hamstrings us in future years and prevents us from continually adding, supplementing to our core group.”
The financial flexibility could not be coming at a more advantageous time. If Stearns and Cohen see fit, not only will they hammer out a new contract for free-agent slugger first baseman Pete Alonso, but they could at least foray into the Juan Soto sweepstakes — the 25-year-old superstar appearing in his second World Series beginning Friday in his first season with the New York Yankees.
The Mets will also have to address their starting rotation once again. Sean Manaea, Luis Severino, and Jose Quintana are free agents, while former Cy Young Award winner and a Stearns product from his days in Milwaukee, Corbin Burnes, is a free agent looking for an eight-year deal.
Stearns has generally avoided the concept of doling out long-term deals for pitchers, but pulling the right strings could reestablish the Mets as a legitimate pitching force in the National League should they start Opening Day with a rotation of, say, Burnes, Kodai Senga, Manaea, David Peterson, and Paul Blackburn.
“In all of these different segments of the player universe, there are no hard and fast rules for me,” Stearns said. “I really do think we have to take each individual decision, looking at the individual player, to determine whether we think a long-term investment is warranted, is wise, is in the best interest of the organization. When you look at the history of long-term investments in pitchers, it is not overwhelmingly a rosy picture. But there are pitchers who have gone into their mid-or late-30s and pitched very well. And so, if we think we can identify that, then there could be exceptions.”
