Mets, Yoenis Cespedes agree to amend contract for 2020

The Mets and Yoenis Cespedes have agreed to an amended contract, as first reported by Andy Martino and Jeff Passan. While details are somewhat sparse, what’s known right now is that Cespedes remains under contract for the 2020 season and, according to Passan, the agreement will significantly lower his salary from its original amount of $29.5 million.

Cespedes missed all of the 2019 season after having surgery for heel issues in both of his feet in late 2018. But Cespedes wound up missing even more time than originally anticipated after breaking his ankle on his ranch while he was still recovering from those surgeries. The incidient on his ranch played into the agreement.

Before all of that, Cespedes was the dominant force for the Mets as they rallied from mediocrity in the middle of the 2015 season to win the National League East and the National League pennant fairly easily before falling to the Royals in the World Series. Although he struggled to stay on the field in 2017 and 2018, Cespedes consistently raked when healthy as a Met. In total, he’s made 1,270 plate appearances for the team with a .282/.346/.543 line and a 138 OPS+.

As for whether or not he’ll actually play in 2020, there had been a since-deleted video of him taking batting practice posted to Endy Chavez’s Instagram account a few weeks back. And Brodie Van Wagenen recently acknowledged that Cespedes had begun baseball activities.

Update: According to a report by the Associated Press, Yoenis Cespedes was only paid $14,811,828, rather than the $29 million he was owed in 2019.