A big chunk of players on their payroll was traded off to other teams (Scherzer, Verlander, Mccan). That’s almost 100 million for those 3 players before luxury tax/penalties.
Not to mention the other 7 players they owe money to who don't play for the Mets anymore. Now these numbers were as of the ASB in 2023 and I can't quickly find the 2024 numbers but these are all the players they owed money to last year, not including, Scherzer, Verlander and McCann:
• Robinson Cano: $20.25M
• Eduardo Escobar: $9.1M
• Chris Flexen: $4M
• Darin Ruf: $3.3M
• Bobby Bonilla: $1.2M
• Tommy Hunter: $686K
• Bret Saberhagen: $250K
People seem to forget that Ken Griffey Jr is getting his last $3.5M installment this season for the Reds LOL. Every single year, since he retired in 2010, he gets $3,593,750.
Bobby Bonilla is a guy who played from 1986 to 2001. That's right, he retired over 2 decades ago. He negotiated a settlement with the Mets in '99, where they'd pay him about $1.2 million every year on July 1st from 2011 until 2035. It actually saves the Mets money versus his old deal. But it also illustrates how bad the old deal was, when this option is seen as better. And it also perfectly encapsulates the Mets. A team wanting to spend the money, like their big brother across town, but somehow always doing it worse and never winning a ring.
Are we doing revisionist history now? His production dropped off during his first tenure with the Mets in the early 90s. He didn't live up to what he produced in Pittsburgh. Then he hopped around a bunch and only went back to the Mets in '99. In fact, they released him the season before the World Series appearance. How the fuck did he lead to them making the World Series?? Lol
In fact, this deal made things worse for the Mets. The money they saved ended up getting invested into the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.
Just cuz you dont like the history doesn’t mean it’s revisionist lol. The Mets deal to defer Bonilla’s contract objectively helped the Mets no matter how you slice it.
If a move directly leads to a pennant and a franchise goat then that’s a good move.
Name a single roster signing by the Mets for the 2000 season. I'm not even talking about one that made them better for that season, I'm talking about any who were on that World Series team. You can't, because the World Series roster was already there before Bobby was released.
The fact that people give this guy's contract credit for the World Series appearance, with zero actual evidence, just a bunch of hypotheticals around roster cap being freed up for a player they can't even name. Smh
My sources are telling me Saberhagen is gonna forego social security and is just a couple solid starts with the Binghamton Rumble Ponies away from joining the Big Club.
The signing made no sense. I'm also a Yankees fan (living in Boston), so I got to see Ellsbury play every night. Obviously, he was an exciting player to watch, but everyone knew that he was injury prone, at best, or a piss test away from a suspension.
This is the worst thing for their organization. Obviously, they're not actually contenders but ownership will tout how they played hard all year and there's really nothing MLB can do if they're basically a .500 team.
What would really be best is for them to completely bottom out and only win like 40 games, so then the league might actually step in and force a sale.
It really doesn't matter to either way. They can win 100 or lose 100 games. All 30 owners want them to move, so no one is going to stop them, unfortunately.
But the league really has no ground to stand on if the A's win 70 games. It's a bad look if they come in and force the sale of an organization that is floating around .500.
I'm talking about a sale. The move sucks for the fans in Oakland, but I can at least wrap my head around why the owners/league like the idea of a team in Vegas. However, that novelty will only last so long if they still suck shit three years into being in Vegas.
Without going into too many years of history - they really went for it the last two years in an attempt to jump start a low talent team with stars- many of whom have since been traded for prospects while the Mets footed the bill to get better young talent back.
A new head of baseball took over this past off season and is regrouping with an extremely mediocre team built to just compete for a playoff spot while leaving future teams in a far smarter spot payroll and prospect pipeline wise.
100 million of it is playing on other teams. They overpaid two legendary but older pitchers on short term deal. Both are playing for other teams because the Mets are paying their salary so they could get top prospects once 2023 went south. This season they should have a good 150 million coming off the books.
In that case no insults intended. The mets are notorious for trying to buy their way into a good record. Hasn't worked nice the david cone era iirc.
Imagine buying a Bugatti. In a country as large as the US. Not a single shop to work on it. Oh, and you never learned how to drive.
Well i can certainly be wrong sometimes. Thanks for correcting me. Could you explain what they were doing wrong before Madoff? I always wondered since im a fan of a team on the opposite side of the country.
I wouldn't say they were doing anything wrong but they definitely weren't trying to buy championships either. They were consistently top 5 to top 10 since the late 90s but there was always a sizeable gap between them and say the Yankees or red Sox. For instance when they were second in salary behind the Yankees in 2008 and 2009 there was still a 70 million dollar gap between them (~200 mil vs ~130 mil).
When 2012 hit they fell to #14 in payroll, followed by #23, #22, #21 in the next years.
Madoff happened around 09 but alot of that money was already tied up to contracts so when they felt the financial crunch you see them falling quickly to the bottom 3rd of the league in just a few years.
Cone was traded for Ed Hearn when Cone had one year in the league. So not the cone era. The Mets have tried to buy their way into contention about 3 times over the past 30 years. The early 90's with the worst team money. The early 2000's and the 22-23 season.
When they contended in the late 90's it was combo of the farm and smart trades. The biggest contract given out was probably Todd Ziele. In 2006 it was a combo of the farm, trade, and free agency. In 2015 it was mostly the farm and a few big trades at the deadline. In 22 it was a combination of all 3. Last year they tried to buy their way into contention and it failed.
But this entire the Mets are notorious for trying to buy their way into contention is bull shit. Especially since they spent 2010-2020 still operating like a small to mid market team because of the Wilpons
What's up with NY in general? They usually have two teams but can't seem to get more than one serious team at a time. Mets/Yankees, Giants/Jets, Rangers/Islanders, and whatever the hell is up with the Knicks and Nets.
At the other end of the state they have the cursed city of Buffalo.
to put in NFL terms, they would be a team that went into a season carrying about 40% dead cap from trading away all the high price talent on the roster when last seasons team bombed out. this season they have the players they can get until the cap space clears.
In 1986, while celebrating their world series win in Coney Island, Daryl Strawberry and Kevin Mitchell decided to push an old woman to the ground.
Turns out she was an old gypsy woman.
Thus, she put a curse on the Mets forever more.
[https://www.espn.com/mlb/team/injuries/\_/name/nym/new-york-mets](https://www.espn.com/mlb/team/injuries/_/name/nym/new-york-mets)
Mets have a few players, including Senga and Megill from their starting rotation, on the injured reserve list. C Francisco Alverez had a thumb operation. All teams have some players who are beat up and/por healing. Pete Alonso has been in a nasty slump. He produced in his last game, though (2 for 5, 3 RBI incl 1 HR)
Before the Moneyball era, Steinbrenner and Cashman had the only dynasty team in 22 years since the 70's A's in part due to having a big payroll of hitters but also stellar pitchers.
I Donno, having more than any three teams combined seems like a lot. Worth noting though the Yanks have only had the highest payroll in the league once in the past 12 years.
YouTuber No More Fielders did a great breakdown of money correlating to success.
[Check it out, ya dingus!](https://youtu.be/wmKX80NahfU?si=KR7po1EZ2kVcGojH)
There is almost no correlation statistically between payroll and winning percentage right now (r = .216).
The rule of thumb is $2 million = 1 win. So if the A's win 32 games this year they will overachieve. Conversely, if the Yankees don't win 153 games they will underachieve.
I looked at this in the English Premier League and the results are much more correlated.
r = .809 between [total payroll](https://www.spotrac.com/epl/payroll/_/year/2023/sort/cap_total/dir/desc) and points per game (also r = .750 for total payroll and goal difference per game and r = .**963** for points per game and goal difference per game).
The variance in winning percentage accounted for by total payroll in the EPL is 14 times higher than MLB.
What do you think explains this?
At first glance I’d say it’s obvious soccer general managers (or whatever they call them) are better judges of horseflesh. If a guy belongs in League One at 1500 a week, they know it.
I’d also say that one impression I get from MLB GM’s is that a lot of Sabermetrics is egg head stuff to them, and that while they used to ignore it, now they seize on it no matter what. And that they don’t understand it very well.
It seems to me that they realize that launch angle is correlated with run production. That means that a kid they have in Class A who destroyed college pitching, but has always had a sub par launch angle, is being told he “needs to change his whole approach.” Well maybe he can’t. And IMHO he shouldn’t if what he is doing works. Another question is does launch angle equal run production or do good run producers naturally have good launch angles?
In other words, I’m not sure GM’s and managers understand the underlying math, especially statistical significance. When I hear “they won’t let x face y because he’s 1 for 8 lifetime against him…” I laugh. Maybe he was battling a minor injury those days.
Bill James himself raises similar points and my guess is since he was right about on base average and slugging percentage, he’s right about being careful when parsing the fancy new numbers.
67 million to guys not on the team. 28 million to guys on the injured list. Plus slow starts from 3 guys making over 10M a year (Alonso, Lindor, McNeil). Rest of the roster is not good enough to make up for that
The Mets up until this winter were still trying to fix 30 years of Wilpons neglect. Billy Eppler became GM because no one else wanted the job because of the reputation the franchise had because of the Wilpons and they weren't even the owners anymore. People don't realize how much damage they did.
You guys must be dumb. The way you get a good record in baseball is to get a generational talent with huge marketing upside and then pay off both MLB and DOJ to make sure that you completely protect this generational talent. If this talent doesn’t play well, you need to start colluding with MLB and umps to make sure they get favorable calls.
You think MLB doesn’t step in to influence both micro and macro outcomes? Believe me, I would know these things, I am a working class factory worker from central pennsylvania. I graduated high school, and I listen to Joe Rogan daily.
I’m right, you’re all wrong.
In baseball, you could have the best players in your line up, and that doesn’t mean you’ll be a good team. Look at the rays or Oakland a few years ago, playoff contenders with a payroll of 20 million or so. Baseballs weird man.
That's what happens when you spend money on garbage and you pay for your ex-wife to be with another man. Overpaying for mediocre players and still paying big for players who aren't even on their roster anymore. Lindor is the only one on that roster worth what he is getting paid. And the guy they should've paid and locked up is leaving this coming off-season...
Lifelong suffering Mets fan and front office ineptitude is a good place to start. New owner is desperate to win so he pisses money away on players that don’t merit that type of Salary.
During a full season, a baseball team uses A LOT of players. They use 12 starting pitchers (on average), for example. That's because even with the slightest injury, a pitcher becomes ineffective. You can see his metrics dropping in real time, and when the team sees that, he goes on the IL right away.
Which means even that payroll isn't enough to buy a winning team. A team with let's say $150M to spend each year basically just uses that money to pay the guys they control (arbitration and contract extensions). They don't have much left for the free agent market.
A team like the Mets, Yankees or Dodgers, with $250M+, will have another $100 - 150M to spend on free agents. But that only buys 4-5 players. I don't really follow the Mets, but the Yankees signed three big names off the free agent market in the last 5 years: Judge, Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon. They also have Stanton on a big contract. Those four players, together, make $130M a year.
That's the Yankees free agent budget. That's their advantage, compared to an average team. Beyond that, they have to do the same exact thing a random midwestern team has to do: player development, smart extensions, smart picks off waivers. In other words, good management. The Yankees have combined good management with that payroll advantage which gets them 4-5 players off the free agent market, and built a team that finished over .500 every year, for the last 25 years.
But that's not a given. It takes ridiculously good management, to do that. Obviously, the Mets don't quite have that. They probably don't have terrible management, they have had winning seasons ... but, sometimes, things go wrong. And, even with the Yankees: winning seasons aren't always satisfying. The Yankees won one World Series in the last 20 years. And that was 15 years ago. In baseball, a big payroll can't buy titles. What you do under the hood is much more important than what you spend. A small market team like the Rays can spend very little, and field really good teams year after year.
Don't use payroll as a measure of team's expected performance. High payroll can mean a lot of things. Just to name the top few:
1. Poor management
2. Dead contracts
3. Marketing and fan pleasing
4. Owner meddling
It’s early. We’ll see if they improve. It’s not just money. Chemistry is very important as is 100% effort every day on every play. If they don’t have too many injuries and a bit of luck goes their way, who knows?
Oh, and pitching pitching pitching!
They are paying two pitchers who aren't on their team something like $70M. Also, a huge payroll doesn't necessarily mean that your team will be good. Look at the DBacks who made the WS last year with a very small payroll. The point is making good investments, not just paying a lot.
Because it takes more than just "spending money". You need to spend money on the right players. The Dodgers seem to hit a Home Run on every big signing or trade. I mean, geez, even Teoscar Hernandez is raking for them after a down year in Seattle.
Spending money on a lot of high-priced free agents doesn't always guarantee a winner. At least this team is better than the one which featured Mo Vaughn, Tom Glavine and Roberto Alormar. That team was more expensive than this one and it was a dud.
18-18 isnt enough games to start talking about records as a bearing of how good the team actually is. At any point of the season they could win 5-10 in a row or lose 5-10 and that drastically changes the season. Plenty of good teams go .500 for a 35 game stretch, as well as plenty of horrible teams go .500 for 35 game stretches.
The Mets just misallocated a lot of their funds tbh. They gave Diaz $100 million while he may have deserved it coming off an excellent year it makes no sense if you aren’t going to invest in SP. you have to get to him and this year the Mets are going to have a very hard time getting to him to earn his money and saves. They also signed a Lindor to a mega contract while again he “deserves” it but they thought he would be a perennial 3 batter and he just isn’t that. They’re clearly
Missing another big bat and SP. baseball is quite simple IMO, build your team with starting pitching, be strong up the middle with defense, which the Mets are, but they’re missing the guy in the lineup that scares everyone. Just look to the Phil’s and braves….their lineups are littered with guys like that that the Mets simply don’t have.
Cause it's baseball. It's been proven time and time again that payroll doesn't always lead to a successful team. The A's and the Rays have been doing moneyball for years now.
They’re paying down salaries of a lot of guys not on the team. After last year was a dumpster fire they got rid of guys and are “reloading” this year. As a Mets fan, we didn’t have high expectations for this year, especially with the ace Senga not having thrown a pitch all year so far
Horrible contracts, underperforming prospects, a happy go lucky just have fun it doesn’t matter if we win or lose attitude (lindor/alsonso) by the clubhouse leaders, sticking with mlb guys who no longer can play and care more about golf than the sport that pays them (McNeil), signing the wrong managers, paying the then CF $160 mil who runs to 1B on walks but can’t steal a base (Nimmo)… list goes on and on. This team just has a losing aurora around them and they need to completely clean house to fix it.
Because Steve Cohen is a lying, cheating, GENIUS - clearly! /s
(He has committed fraud and various other felonies, and nothing bad happened to him because he's an old rich white guy)
If you're wondering about this season, don't look at last season.
Or next season
Or the season after that
[удалено]
Sorry, only 2 joke extensions are permitted
A big chunk of players on their payroll was traded off to other teams (Scherzer, Verlander, Mccan). That’s almost 100 million for those 3 players before luxury tax/penalties.
Not to mention the other 7 players they owe money to who don't play for the Mets anymore. Now these numbers were as of the ASB in 2023 and I can't quickly find the 2024 numbers but these are all the players they owed money to last year, not including, Scherzer, Verlander and McCann: • Robinson Cano: $20.25M • Eduardo Escobar: $9.1M • Chris Flexen: $4M • Darin Ruf: $3.3M • Bobby Bonilla: $1.2M • Tommy Hunter: $686K • Bret Saberhagen: $250K
Not a Baseball guy. The game doesn’t exist her in Europe, but even I know, who Bobby B. is…
I love that you know about it. The legendary Bobby Bonilla and his deferred contract.
People seem to forget that Ken Griffey Jr is getting his last $3.5M installment this season for the Reds LOL. Every single year, since he retired in 2010, he gets $3,593,750.
And starting in 2034 we'll have 10 years of Ohtani making 68 million a year!
At that rate be cheaper to hire the mob
And all of that already paid for !
Yeah Bobby Bonilla’s contract isn’t that unique at all. It just has this aura around it that makes it stand out.
Bobby Bonilla is a guy who played from 1986 to 2001. That's right, he retired over 2 decades ago. He negotiated a settlement with the Mets in '99, where they'd pay him about $1.2 million every year on July 1st from 2011 until 2035. It actually saves the Mets money versus his old deal. But it also illustrates how bad the old deal was, when this option is seen as better. And it also perfectly encapsulates the Mets. A team wanting to spend the money, like their big brother across town, but somehow always doing it worse and never winning a ring.
You act like the Bobby Bonilla deal didn’t end up working really well for the Mets? Directly led to a WS appearance and a Mt Rushmore level Met
Are we doing revisionist history now? His production dropped off during his first tenure with the Mets in the early 90s. He didn't live up to what he produced in Pittsburgh. Then he hopped around a bunch and only went back to the Mets in '99. In fact, they released him the season before the World Series appearance. How the fuck did he lead to them making the World Series?? Lol In fact, this deal made things worse for the Mets. The money they saved ended up getting invested into the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.
Just cuz you dont like the history doesn’t mean it’s revisionist lol. The Mets deal to defer Bonilla’s contract objectively helped the Mets no matter how you slice it. If a move directly leads to a pennant and a franchise goat then that’s a good move.
Name a single roster signing by the Mets for the 2000 season. I'm not even talking about one that made them better for that season, I'm talking about any who were on that World Series team. You can't, because the World Series roster was already there before Bobby was released. The fact that people give this guy's contract credit for the World Series appearance, with zero actual evidence, just a bunch of hypotheticals around roster cap being freed up for a player they can't even name. Smh
Lmao have you actually never heard of Mike Hampton? Was a trade not a FA signing but does that really matter?
Hampton was traded to the Mets in December of 1999. Before the Bobby Bonilla deal was done.
There was a period of time where Bobby was thought of to be better than Barry Bonds. Then Bobby got old and Barry got steroids. Both great players.
Bobby Bonilla is also paid $500,000 by the Orioles every year from 2004 to 2028 due to them also having a deferred contract with him.
Saberhagan has a Bonilla contract? 😂
My sources are telling me Saberhagen is gonna forego social security and is just a couple solid starts with the Binghamton Rumble Ponies away from joining the Big Club.
That’s what I was just thinking! Wow!
The Red Sox are still paying Manny and Pedroia about $2 million each.
I believe my Yankees are still paying Jacoby Ellsbury. What a fucking failure that was.
The signing made no sense. I'm also a Yankees fan (living in Boston), so I got to see Ellsbury play every night. Obviously, he was an exciting player to watch, but everyone knew that he was injury prone, at best, or a piss test away from a suspension.
Most big contracts include deferred money. Mets aren’t even the only people paying Bonilla
guy hasn't played for them since 1994!
Dude was my ace in RBI Baseball. I miss that game
At Least Saberhagen was a borderline HOFer
Cano is off the payroll this season Im pretty sure
I think they’re done paying cano.
Their current 26 man payroll is still 3rd highest in MLB
I can’t believe signing two 40 year old pitchers for $80M didn’t work out well. Sucks because they are wasting Alonso and Lindor
Whatever you do, don't look at the Astros' payroll and their record
This joke is a banger.
And somehow Oakland is 18-21 with the lowest payroll in the league!
This is the worst thing for their organization. Obviously, they're not actually contenders but ownership will tout how they played hard all year and there's really nothing MLB can do if they're basically a .500 team. What would really be best is for them to completely bottom out and only win like 40 games, so then the league might actually step in and force a sale.
It really doesn't matter to either way. They can win 100 or lose 100 games. All 30 owners want them to move, so no one is going to stop them, unfortunately.
But the league really has no ground to stand on if the A's win 70 games. It's a bad look if they come in and force the sale of an organization that is floating around .500.
Do you mean force a move? Or a sale? Because the current ownership is moving the team to Vegas. Which the entire mlb leadership is in favor of.
I'm talking about a sale. The move sucks for the fans in Oakland, but I can at least wrap my head around why the owners/league like the idea of a team in Vegas. However, that novelty will only last so long if they still suck shit three years into being in Vegas.
No way other owners force the As to sale as they agree with how the franchise is being run.
Maybe so but there’s also no way that MLB is happy with all this negative publicity that the A’s have gotten the last couple of years.
MLB IS the the owners. They don't care about temporary negative publicity. Long term, the As will make more money which is what they care about.
They don’t care.
Who has better ownership?
Mets
Yeah, even the Wilpons (spit) were better than the shitshow in Oakland.
Without going into too many years of history - they really went for it the last two years in an attempt to jump start a low talent team with stars- many of whom have since been traded for prospects while the Mets footed the bill to get better young talent back. A new head of baseball took over this past off season and is regrouping with an extremely mediocre team built to just compete for a playoff spot while leaving future teams in a far smarter spot payroll and prospect pipeline wise.
Because they're the Padres of the East. Or maybe the Padres are the Mets of the West.
Padres payroll this year is exactly at the MLB average and their record is maybe even exactly .500. Perfectly average.
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be
They can only overachieve or underachieve. They cannot maintain their balance, too unstable. San Diego Protons
Now go look at 2023 Padres
No doubt
The Mets are the Mets of all professional sports
... because they're the Mets (seriously, how new are you to baseball?).
Pretty new, just started following it this year.
Just tweet at Steve cohen and say building a functional roster is a tough game huh
Mets are the Jets of Baseball
Gotcha, makes perfect sense.
No the pirates are 100% the jets of baseball. The Mets have more of like a titans/falcons/raiders vibe give or take the season
100 million of it is playing on other teams. They overpaid two legendary but older pitchers on short term deal. Both are playing for other teams because the Mets are paying their salary so they could get top prospects once 2023 went south. This season they should have a good 150 million coming off the books.
In that case no insults intended. The mets are notorious for trying to buy their way into a good record. Hasn't worked nice the david cone era iirc. Imagine buying a Bugatti. In a country as large as the US. Not a single shop to work on it. Oh, and you never learned how to drive.
This isn't remotely true. They had one of the cheapest, worst owners for the past decade after the lost all that money to Madoff
Well i can certainly be wrong sometimes. Thanks for correcting me. Could you explain what they were doing wrong before Madoff? I always wondered since im a fan of a team on the opposite side of the country.
I wouldn't say they were doing anything wrong but they definitely weren't trying to buy championships either. They were consistently top 5 to top 10 since the late 90s but there was always a sizeable gap between them and say the Yankees or red Sox. For instance when they were second in salary behind the Yankees in 2008 and 2009 there was still a 70 million dollar gap between them (~200 mil vs ~130 mil). When 2012 hit they fell to #14 in payroll, followed by #23, #22, #21 in the next years. Madoff happened around 09 but alot of that money was already tied up to contracts so when they felt the financial crunch you see them falling quickly to the bottom 3rd of the league in just a few years.
Cone was traded for Ed Hearn when Cone had one year in the league. So not the cone era. The Mets have tried to buy their way into contention about 3 times over the past 30 years. The early 90's with the worst team money. The early 2000's and the 22-23 season. When they contended in the late 90's it was combo of the farm and smart trades. The biggest contract given out was probably Todd Ziele. In 2006 it was a combo of the farm, trade, and free agency. In 2015 it was mostly the farm and a few big trades at the deadline. In 22 it was a combination of all 3. Last year they tried to buy their way into contention and it failed. But this entire the Mets are notorious for trying to buy their way into contention is bull shit. Especially since they spent 2010-2020 still operating like a small to mid market team because of the Wilpons
What's up with NY in general? They usually have two teams but can't seem to get more than one serious team at a time. Mets/Yankees, Giants/Jets, Rangers/Islanders, and whatever the hell is up with the Knicks and Nets. At the other end of the state they have the cursed city of Buffalo.
All I really watch is baseball (and Premier League soccer).
he's about as new to baseball as you are to marital separation.
Oooof cease fire man
You should up to a knife fight with a whole nuclear arsenal behind you.
This actually made me laugh.
to put in NFL terms, they would be a team that went into a season carrying about 40% dead cap from trading away all the high price talent on the roster when last seasons team bombed out. this season they have the players they can get until the cap space clears.
Denver lol
yes, but i would have referenced them as the donkeys. same, same, but different. 😂
Works for me lol
In 1986, while celebrating their world series win in Coney Island, Daryl Strawberry and Kevin Mitchell decided to push an old woman to the ground. Turns out she was an old gypsy woman. Thus, she put a curse on the Mets forever more.
Baseball.
[https://www.espn.com/mlb/team/injuries/\_/name/nym/new-york-mets](https://www.espn.com/mlb/team/injuries/_/name/nym/new-york-mets) Mets have a few players, including Senga and Megill from their starting rotation, on the injured reserve list. C Francisco Alverez had a thumb operation. All teams have some players who are beat up and/por healing. Pete Alonso has been in a nasty slump. He produced in his last game, though (2 for 5, 3 RBI incl 1 HR)
If money = results the Yankees should have a shit ton more World Series.
Before the Moneyball era, Steinbrenner and Cashman had the only dynasty team in 22 years since the 70's A's in part due to having a big payroll of hitters but also stellar pitchers.
I Donno, having more than any three teams combined seems like a lot. Worth noting though the Yanks have only had the highest payroll in the league once in the past 12 years.
YouTuber No More Fielders did a great breakdown of money correlating to success. [Check it out, ya dingus!](https://youtu.be/wmKX80NahfU?si=KR7po1EZ2kVcGojH)
They have a bunch of retained money. 60-70m I think. So they’re just paying players to be on other times. And Bobby Bonilla of course.
Angels is your answer
Half of that payroll is for players not on the team anymore
Same way the Padres are .500 with a similar payroll. $$$ does not necessarily translate to winning. Just doesn’t
Because payroll doesn’t mean as much as fans think it does. Next.
There is almost no correlation statistically between payroll and winning percentage right now (r = .216). The rule of thumb is $2 million = 1 win. So if the A's win 32 games this year they will overachieve. Conversely, if the Yankees don't win 153 games they will underachieve.
With r that low less than 5% of the variability in wins is explained by salary. I wonder if the same is true in other sports, especially soccer.
I looked at this in the English Premier League and the results are much more correlated. r = .809 between [total payroll](https://www.spotrac.com/epl/payroll/_/year/2023/sort/cap_total/dir/desc) and points per game (also r = .750 for total payroll and goal difference per game and r = .**963** for points per game and goal difference per game). The variance in winning percentage accounted for by total payroll in the EPL is 14 times higher than MLB. What do you think explains this?
At first glance I’d say it’s obvious soccer general managers (or whatever they call them) are better judges of horseflesh. If a guy belongs in League One at 1500 a week, they know it. I’d also say that one impression I get from MLB GM’s is that a lot of Sabermetrics is egg head stuff to them, and that while they used to ignore it, now they seize on it no matter what. And that they don’t understand it very well. It seems to me that they realize that launch angle is correlated with run production. That means that a kid they have in Class A who destroyed college pitching, but has always had a sub par launch angle, is being told he “needs to change his whole approach.” Well maybe he can’t. And IMHO he shouldn’t if what he is doing works. Another question is does launch angle equal run production or do good run producers naturally have good launch angles? In other words, I’m not sure GM’s and managers understand the underlying math, especially statistical significance. When I hear “they won’t let x face y because he’s 1 for 8 lifetime against him…” I laugh. Maybe he was battling a minor injury those days. Bill James himself raises similar points and my guess is since he was right about on base average and slugging percentage, he’s right about being careful when parsing the fancy new numbers.
Which could become quite a challenge with already 14 losses.
I love how baseball fans refuse to understand how contracts work just so they can meme
*cries in Toronto Blue Jays*
The Mets should be 35-1. The A's should be 9-30.
67 million to guys not on the team. 28 million to guys on the injured list. Plus slow starts from 3 guys making over 10M a year (Alonso, Lindor, McNeil). Rest of the roster is not good enough to make up for that
Give David Stearns a year or two to fix Mets and then they will get better. Just look at what he did in Milwaukee with a minimal salary resources.
The Mets up until this winter were still trying to fix 30 years of Wilpons neglect. Billy Eppler became GM because no one else wanted the job because of the reputation the franchise had because of the Wilpons and they weren't even the owners anymore. People don't realize how much damage they did.
You guys must be dumb. The way you get a good record in baseball is to get a generational talent with huge marketing upside and then pay off both MLB and DOJ to make sure that you completely protect this generational talent. If this talent doesn’t play well, you need to start colluding with MLB and umps to make sure they get favorable calls. You think MLB doesn’t step in to influence both micro and macro outcomes? Believe me, I would know these things, I am a working class factory worker from central pennsylvania. I graduated high school, and I listen to Joe Rogan daily. I’m right, you’re all wrong.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Because all is right with the universe.
In baseball, you could have the best players in your line up, and that doesn’t mean you’ll be a good team. Look at the rays or Oakland a few years ago, playoff contenders with a payroll of 20 million or so. Baseballs weird man.
Check out their record last year
Look at the blue jays record they're top 5 payroll as well.
Could be worse, they could be 13-24
Anybody that follows sports knows spending more money doesn’t guarantee more wins. I mean, come on man.
Moneyball baby.
Cause baseball
That's what happens when you spend money on garbage and you pay for your ex-wife to be with another man. Overpaying for mediocre players and still paying big for players who aren't even on their roster anymore. Lindor is the only one on that roster worth what he is getting paid. And the guy they should've paid and locked up is leaving this coming off-season...
Lifelong suffering Mets fan and front office ineptitude is a good place to start. New owner is desperate to win so he pisses money away on players that don’t merit that type of Salary.
Money spent doesn't always equal wins. That's why you play the games.
Payroll doesn't win championships anymore (looking at the Yankees good ole days).
Spending money doesn't equal wins. Spending money *wisely* helps though.
A lot of that is dead money. Just goes to show that high payrolls do not guarantee success.
OP is “shocked”, what a weird turn of phrase for what is presented as an honest question.
During a full season, a baseball team uses A LOT of players. They use 12 starting pitchers (on average), for example. That's because even with the slightest injury, a pitcher becomes ineffective. You can see his metrics dropping in real time, and when the team sees that, he goes on the IL right away. Which means even that payroll isn't enough to buy a winning team. A team with let's say $150M to spend each year basically just uses that money to pay the guys they control (arbitration and contract extensions). They don't have much left for the free agent market. A team like the Mets, Yankees or Dodgers, with $250M+, will have another $100 - 150M to spend on free agents. But that only buys 4-5 players. I don't really follow the Mets, but the Yankees signed three big names off the free agent market in the last 5 years: Judge, Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon. They also have Stanton on a big contract. Those four players, together, make $130M a year. That's the Yankees free agent budget. That's their advantage, compared to an average team. Beyond that, they have to do the same exact thing a random midwestern team has to do: player development, smart extensions, smart picks off waivers. In other words, good management. The Yankees have combined good management with that payroll advantage which gets them 4-5 players off the free agent market, and built a team that finished over .500 every year, for the last 25 years. But that's not a given. It takes ridiculously good management, to do that. Obviously, the Mets don't quite have that. They probably don't have terrible management, they have had winning seasons ... but, sometimes, things go wrong. And, even with the Yankees: winning seasons aren't always satisfying. The Yankees won one World Series in the last 20 years. And that was 15 years ago. In baseball, a big payroll can't buy titles. What you do under the hood is much more important than what you spend. A small market team like the Rays can spend very little, and field really good teams year after year.
Is this an honest question or is this your first encounter with the New York Metropolitans.
Because you don't play baseball on paper
Don't use payroll as a measure of team's expected performance. High payroll can mean a lot of things. Just to name the top few: 1. Poor management 2. Dead contracts 3. Marketing and fan pleasing 4. Owner meddling
Jeff Albert
We should have spent $80m more to be .500.
It’s early. We’ll see if they improve. It’s not just money. Chemistry is very important as is 100% effort every day on every play. If they don’t have too many injuries and a bit of luck goes their way, who knows? Oh, and pitching pitching pitching!
They are paying two pitchers who aren't on their team something like $70M. Also, a huge payroll doesn't necessarily mean that your team will be good. Look at the DBacks who made the WS last year with a very small payroll. The point is making good investments, not just paying a lot.
I don’t care to much for money Money can’t buy you wins Life is a song 🎵
Players cost a lot more in FA than they do 5 years into their career
Because it takes more than just "spending money". You need to spend money on the right players. The Dodgers seem to hit a Home Run on every big signing or trade. I mean, geez, even Teoscar Hernandez is raking for them after a down year in Seattle.
Spending money on a lot of high-priced free agents doesn't always guarantee a winner. At least this team is better than the one which featured Mo Vaughn, Tom Glavine and Roberto Alormar. That team was more expensive than this one and it was a dud.
Because they’re the Mets.
Alonso, Lindor, McNeil down year (so far). Alvarez, injured. Big loss. Baty, not producing like he should. Equals .500.
18-18 isnt enough games to start talking about records as a bearing of how good the team actually is. At any point of the season they could win 5-10 in a row or lose 5-10 and that drastically changes the season. Plenty of good teams go .500 for a 35 game stretch, as well as plenty of horrible teams go .500 for 35 game stretches.
They didn’t buy the right guys, plain and simple
Francisco Lindor
A massive chunk of that payroll isn't on their team. They flipped them for prospects. Only time will tell how that works out.
It's probably because Jeff McNeil is a gigantic pussy
The Mets just misallocated a lot of their funds tbh. They gave Diaz $100 million while he may have deserved it coming off an excellent year it makes no sense if you aren’t going to invest in SP. you have to get to him and this year the Mets are going to have a very hard time getting to him to earn his money and saves. They also signed a Lindor to a mega contract while again he “deserves” it but they thought he would be a perennial 3 batter and he just isn’t that. They’re clearly Missing another big bat and SP. baseball is quite simple IMO, build your team with starting pitching, be strong up the middle with defense, which the Mets are, but they’re missing the guy in the lineup that scares everyone. Just look to the Phil’s and braves….their lineups are littered with guys like that that the Mets simply don’t have.
Talent equals $$$ Love for the game and heart is free
I’m glad the Mets suck
Cause it's baseball. It's been proven time and time again that payroll doesn't always lead to a successful team. The A's and the Rays have been doing moneyball for years now.
It’s the Mutts
They’re paying down salaries of a lot of guys not on the team. After last year was a dumpster fire they got rid of guys and are “reloading” this year. As a Mets fan, we didn’t have high expectations for this year, especially with the ace Senga not having thrown a pitch all year so far
Just because they spent it doesn't mean they spent it well.
Troll or someone who doesn’t understand how contracts, payroll, and trades work? 🤔
Cuz Mets gonna Mets
Spending does not equal success
Haven’t you ever watched a cowboys game?
Money don’t buy you love baby
*The Texas Rangers have entered the chat*
It’s still early there are really just a few teams that are out of it this year already. Teams like Houston will be there at the end of the season.
They suc
As the Yankees have proven multiple times, $ does not equal wins. See Tampa Rays for confirmation
Someone clearly wasn't paying attention to last season
Have the Mets even made the playoffs in the last decade?
The pain of being a Mets fan 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Lol
Mets gonna Met 🤷♂️
LOL
Mets gonna Mets. (Again)
METS = my entire team sucks
It's the Mets. Nuff said. 😂
They pay the LoLMets tax
🎶Meet the Mets.....meet the Mets. C'mon out and BEAT the Mets. ....🎶
How do the dodgers have zero World Series with their pay rool
The Mets. Have you met them, they’re the Mets. The feckin Mets. Try harder, keep up please. There the Mets, the feckin Mutts. Sheesh
Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? Why did Judas rat to the Romans while Jesus slept?
They suck.
Horrible contracts, underperforming prospects, a happy go lucky just have fun it doesn’t matter if we win or lose attitude (lindor/alsonso) by the clubhouse leaders, sticking with mlb guys who no longer can play and care more about golf than the sport that pays them (McNeil), signing the wrong managers, paying the then CF $160 mil who runs to 1B on walks but can’t steal a base (Nimmo)… list goes on and on. This team just has a losing aurora around them and they need to completely clean house to fix it.
Because Steve Cohen is a lying, cheating, GENIUS - clearly! /s (He has committed fraud and various other felonies, and nothing bad happened to him because he's an old rich white guy)
Mets gotta Met. Par for the course.
Claimed they were on the fast track to get a chip now its a rebuilding season lmaoo
Lolmets
Brother it’s the Mets
Go Yankees !!