What can we learn from our previous grades as we look to 2025?
Since 2019, I’ve written up grades for every Met offseason move and arrived at a final assessment (2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024) for the offseason (excluding the pandemic year in 2020). The team’s circumstances have varied wildly over that time, with an ownership change and at least four distinct management groups in charge at various points.
As we enter a new contention window in 2025 and beyond, now is as good a time as any to look back and see what lessons can be learned from previous grades. What mistakes did we make? What lessons did we learn? And how does the change in team circumstance—chiefly, having a top-end executive in charge of operations—alter the way we view transactions going forward?
Edwin Diaz and the relief market
Prior to the 2023 season, the Mets signed Edwin Diaz to the largest reliever contract in major league history , a 5-year, $102M deal. At the time, I marked that move as an A, noting both the obvious narrative reasons for bringing back a fan favorite as well as an overall shift across baseball towards larger contracts for top-end relievers.
Diaz, of course, immediately got hurt and missed the 2023 season, then returned looking much more like the inconsistent 2021 version of himself rather than the all-timer he was in 2022. Even without the injury, however, I think this grade sticks out as far too rosy in retrospect. The level of risk inherent in guaranteeing roughly $20M per year to a volatile reliever as he enters his thirties is far past the level of tolerance one should be willing to accept based on sentimental reasons. We should’ve acknowledged what this was; a silly move made for fun, something we can enjoy as fans but also one we should’ve looked on with clear eyes as a B or even a C-level transaction.
This leads nicely into a discussion about the relief market more broadly. OG sabermetricians were adamant on not paying relievers, but that thinking has become somewhat outdated in recent years. Pitching staffs have evolved to put more pressure, more importance on relievers than ever before. High-end arms such as Diaz, Josh Hader, and Raisel Iglesias have signed deals worth more than $50M in the last five years, while the going rate for a solid setup man is something like $10M per year.
But the Mets have David Stearns. Stearns excels at many aspects of roster management, but arguably his greatest skill with the Brewers was producing consistently elite bullpens out of thin air. The actual formula was one of solid internal development coupled with shrewd pickups of poorly optimized veteran castoffs, something we already saw as he remade the bullpen at midseason in 2024. Realistically, when you can produce elite, cheap bullpens through churn, signing relievers to significant money with guarantees of playing time is not only unnecessary but arguably a hindrance to the cycling that the Brewers model relies on. With that in mind, we’ll be taking a less favorable view on these sorts of contracts (e.g., Adam Ottavino, Trevor May, Jeurys Familia) going forward.
Starling Marte and the term problem
When the Mets signed Starling Marte to a 4-year, $78M deal ahead of the 2022 season, I marked that deal as an A+. Marte was coming off a career year (5.5 wins) and had been one of the better outfielders in baseball over the previous half decade. He was also a 33-year-old athleticism-based player who derived a huge chunk of his value from speed and defense, arguably the worst-aging skill set you could think up.
At the same time, the Mets were in a spot where they needed to make some sub-optimal moves if they wanted to contend. Recall that this was the first phase of Cohen’s ownership, a period where his financial advantage was supposed to paper over holes on the major league side while baseball ops and the organizational development apparatus were revamped behind the scenes. Of course, the Mets didn’t actually bring in the proper architect of that change until last offseason, but the thought process was clear and thoroughly justifiable.
A more sober assessment of the Marte signing at the time would put greater emphasis on the clear downside risk but still recognize his place in the overall strategy, making it something like a B move. However, if the Mets were to make a similar signing today, it’d earn at best a D. Giving significant money and term to mid-tier, aging free agents is a sure-fire way to wind up in cap hell, and it’s something to be avoided if you’re trying to build the sustainable winner the Mets should be.
Several other deals fit into this oeuvre; James McCann is a fairly direct comparison, and giving two-years to Omar Narvaez is the same sort of problem on a smaller scale. Most of these guys are gone now thankfully, but one does remain; Brandon Nimmo. To be clear, this is not a 1-to-1 comparison, as Nimmo was five-years younger when he signed his deal, is a significantly better player, and has the added benefit of being a long-time Met. Nevertheless, his deal guarantees ~$20M to a very-good-but-not-star level player, and that’s something you – in general – want to avoid.
I rated the Nimmo re-signing as an A+, both because Nimmo is a long time personal favorite and because, similar to Marte, the Mets had a clear need, no capacity to replace him internally, and a lot of money. A more fair assessment would’ve marked this as a B+ at the time, and perhaps a straight B or B- if made in the current team context.
Francisco Lindor and star hunting
Ah, now here’s one we got right. The 2021 trade for Francisco Lindor received an A+, then simply referred to the extension as Good. Yet in the three year since, I’ve seriously questioned those grades. Andres Gimenez blossomed into a very good player himself. Meanwhile, something about watching Lindor just never felt worth it even as he accrued more than enough fWAR / bWAR / WARP to more than justify his salary.
Then 2024 happens and we’re reminded that going above and beyond for true star-level talents is basically always worth it. Maybe the Mets gave up too much in trade (they really didn’t) or overpaid with Lindor’s extension (they did, but not horrifically so). You do these things and live with the slight inefficiencies because there is only one Francisco Lindor. Put simply, when you have a chance to get a star, you pull out all the stops to do it.
Key takeaways
We can distill our lessons here into three main points:
- In general, don’t pay relievers – big RP contracts carry immense risk and gum up the works for what should be an eternally productive internal pipeline of good bullpens
- Avoid over-extending for non-elite players – mid-tier free agents typically carry the most risk while also being the most replaceable; the Mets are beyond the stage where they should be frequently signing these deals to bridge gaps in their major league roster
- Be aggressive when hunting stars – these are the guys that aren’t replaceable, that you can’t rely on your internal processes to develop; when Francisco Lindor or Mookie Betts or Shohei Ohtani or Juan Soto is available, go the extra mile
Hardly groundbreaking. Perhaps it’s a sign of real learning that all of this seems obvious in retrospect. These will be core tenets of both our grades going forward and, I suspect, the front office’s philosophy. Hopefully that means more good grades—and better rosters—going forward.