Checking 2020 Mets Payroll After Winter Meetings
Let’s take a look at the growing 2020 Mets payroll following some surprising moves at the Winter Meetings. Even more surprising was the deal struck with Yoenis Cespedes to restructure his deal to lower his base pay and make the rest of it incentive-based. It is not clear how much they will be paying him, so for our purposes I will leave his salary at the original figure (some reports say the Mets will pay him less than $10 million of his $29 million owed) and just add an asterisk. Man, he must have really violated his contract when he hurt himself!
Jacob deGrom: $25,500,000 (actual)
Noah Syndergaard: $9,000,000 (est)
Steven Matz: $4,000,000 (est)
Marcus Stroman: $9,000,000 (est)
Michael Wacha: $3,000,000 (actual)
Rick Porcello: $10,000,000 (actual)
Jeurys Familia: $11,666,667 (actual)
Justin Wilson: $5,000,000 (actual)
Robert Gsellman: $2,000,000 (est)
Seth Lugo: $2,000,000 (est)
Edwin Diaz: $4,000,000 (est)
Brad Brach: $825,000 (actual)
Reliever: $600,000 (est)
Wilson Ramos: $9.250,000 (actual)
Tomas Nido: $600,000 (est)
David Wright: $12,000,000 (actual)
Robinson Cano: $20,250,000 (actual)
Jed Lowrie: $11,500,000 (actual)
Amed Rosario: $600,000 (est)
Pete Alonso: $600,000 (est)
J.D. Davis: $600,000 (est)
Yoenis Cespedes: *$29,500,000 (actual)
Michael Conforto: $7,000,000 (est)
Brandon Nimmo: $2,000,000 (est)
Jeff McNeil: $600,000 (est)
Dominic Smith: $600,000 (est)
Jake Marisnek: $3,000,000 (est)
The committed payroll for 2020 is $138,491,667. The arbitration estimate is $42,000,000 and the tab for players at or near the minimum comes out to $4,200,000. The grand total is $184,691,667. That would be by far the highest Mets payroll ever.
And they still need another reliever (I slotted one at the minimum, but hopefully the Mets will go out and get a costly, quality arm). And they could still use a starting outfielder. The Cespdes savings will help a lot here.
There is talk of dumping Jed Lowrie’s contract on some unsuspecting team, which would be very nice. But the Mets should not count on that happening. Either way, the 2020 Mets payroll will be large, probably out of the Wilpons’s comfort zone. But hey, it will soon be Steve Cohen’s problem (God willing!).