The Truth about the Mets' 2010 Budget

with regard to the value of FA marginal wins. The fangraphs figures I cited of arond $3.5 per win apply specifically and ONLY to free agent signings. Several posters use inexpensive contracts such as Angel Pagan’s, project wins coming from him, and go “See! We’re getting the appropriate bang for the buck!”

The problem, of course, is that Pagan is not a free agent. The Mets offered him arbitration. He’s much cheaper than he would be were he a FA.

The deicision to pay John Maine $3.3 million was entirely discretionary on the part of the Mets front office. You can argue that it was the right move, or you can argue that it was a terrible move, but what you can’t argue is that the Mets, without increasing their offseason budget one l dime, couldn’t have simply nontendered Maine and spent that $3.3 towards other players—or, alternatively, spent it on taking the entire extended Wilpon family to Pago Pago for a year. It was cash in the budget. They chose to spend it on John Maine.

What does the increase Maine got have to do with the $3.3 million decision to put him on the 25-man roster of the 2010 New York Mets?

So everyone is basically saying that the real problems with the off-season are the contracts that were signed with Cora, Frenchy and Matthews Jr. All of the other moves, if taken alone, weren’t really that bad. So we’re really talking about $8m of poorly spent money.

Let’s look at that $8m a little more closely…
We all knew at the beginning of the off-season that Frenchy was coming back to be the Mets RF and he was in his 2nd year of arbitration eligibility. The only real question really was, was he going to be signed to the 3 year contract that he was angling for, or were the Mets simply going to go through the arbitration process? Personally, I’m pretty happy that no 3-year contract was signed and that Francoeur essentially became a 1-year placeholder for F!. The $5m contract isn’t really outrageous when you take into account the fact that we all knew he was going to be our RF anyway. What were you realistically expecting him to get through the arbitration process? Less than the $3.375m he made in 2009? Look at it this way, if the Mets didn’t settle on $5m, they (i) had a real risk of owing him more than that this year, and (ii) if F! performs well this year and they want to trade away Frenchy (if he has some trade value at some point in time), the Mets might have a problem if the salary were any higher and they had just been arguing to an arbritrator about what a horrible player the guy is (not to mention the NY media having a field day with this). So, $5m of the $8m should not really be a shock to anyone.

That leave $3m in bad contracts, to a backup Middle Infielder and a 5th outfielder. These 2 roster spots probably should have cost $1m in total for replacement level production, right? So, we’re saying that the Mets unexpectedly wasted $2m this off-season. Count me in the camp of saying that I’m not too upset about that.

OK – so the team is only projecting out at mid-80s win level and probably won’t be in the playoffs this year without some luck or additional moves between now and August. I can take that, since we have a good core of talent, there is still a chance over the next 6 months that some positives moves might be made and the team might over-achieve and make the playoffs in 2010. Heck, what if Felipe Lopez is signed to a 1-year, $2m contract tomorrow? You never know.

The really bright side of this off-season is the future: (i) our minor league talent was kept intact, (ii) the Buffalo team was bolstered with a lot of talent, which probably will (a) allow the Mets to keep their player development contract with their AAA team of choice, and (b) slow down the organization’s penchant for rushing prospects through the system, and (iii) the Mets may actually have been smart to save their money this off-season, in the hopes of landing a top of the rotation starting pitcher in next year’s FA market (optimistic thinking, I know).

I suppose that the above rationale is why I don’t understand posts like this. I think that the MSM articles are starting to get to people. Either that, or we’re just all overly critical fans that are looking for things that are bad with the team.

for around the money they are choosing to pay Igarishi, Escobar, and Maine. None of these guys are at all sure things. That, to me, in the context of the failure to add a starter to the team’s weakest area makes those contracts poor ones.

Or just take Igarishi and Escobar. For $3m the Mets could have gotten a decent bullpen arm. Instead, one a roster beset with question marks, they unaccountably added two more.

drops it down by $11 million to $32 million spent this offseason on this season’s payroll.

Question is, what happened to that $11 million?

You can think, if you like, that the $5m offered to Molina would have been money wonderfully well spent. You can even argue the Mets are deranged enough to think that the only catcher in the world for them (a romantic notion, I suppose) was Mr. Bengie Molina. What you can’t argue is that, having offered Molina the grand sum of five million dollars, that that money was available to him and only him, and to no other player. The Mets chose not to offer that money elsewhere, but they clearly had it. That money was clearly in the budget unless the Mets were planning to pay Molina in counterfeit bills.

If you want to argue the semantics of “well spent”, then I guess I could be persuaded to vote “No”, but then its easy to say that the poll question is an extremely loaded question and should not have even been asked.

YOU WROTE: “You are complaining the Mets should have added 12 wins,..”

I WROTE: “Going by those figures the Mets, for their $42.225 million, should have added 12 wins to the roster. *We must, however, add to that number given the many players the Mets simply renewed or, because of arbitration, were able to get far more cheaply than they otherwise would have through free agency.”*

HIS PROJECTION DOES NOT COUNT TOWARDS THE AVERAGE VALUE OF FREE AGENT WINS.

Did you even read what I wrote?

If you are counting the money, count the wins. That’s $12.4M of those salaries.

And if you are going to count them, then include Pagan.

And all you said upthread was that CHONE was flawed because it uses Total zone rather than UZR. But, there is little difference. Using career data (which is all that matters for defensive stats) UZR actually likes Bay’s defense a bit better than Total Zone. The simple fact is, whichever one CHONE uses, it is going to end up being regressed heavily, because neither one is very reliable. Using UZR wouldn’t change the projection much.

If you want to argue Bay is even worse than I’m saying, fine. But I’m arguing that even with a somewhat optimistic projection, that is a $20M overpay. If he’s worse than that, it’s even more an overpay. And that clearly dwarfs all of these other moves which all add up to little difference one way or the other.