“Make the baseball decision.”
In four words, Robinson Cano’s fate was sealed as a New York Met, and in those four words, Mets owner Steve Cohen said game, set, and match to those Yankees fans (and Yankees haters) who have criticized the Bombers’ profit over product approach, or so it seems, in recent years.
The above quote is Cohen’s, uttered after GM Billy Eppler laid out all of the Mets’ options to cut a position player off the active roster when it needed to be reduced from 28 to 26, and explained the financial ramifications of designating Cano for assignment, which was the baseball operations department’s recommendation.
Someone will likely pick Cano up once he clears waivers, and maybe even pick him up for 2023, the final year of the 10-year, $240 million mega-deal he signed with Seattle. Even if so, though, when you subtract the money Seattle is kicking in and the MLB minimum any team who picks him up would have to pay, the Mets are on the hook for at least $37 million in actual money – and just as much, if not more, against the luxury tax spread across two years.
Cohen didn’t care. The best move for the surging Mets was getting rid of an ill-fitting, slumping veteran, and so that’s what they did.
Of the likeliest five options to lose their spot, Travis Jankowski would have had to be DFA’d, as he is out of options, and on the back of his baseball card he’s still Travis Jankowski. Plus, the Mets would have Starling Marte as a backup center fielder. But they chose to keep Jankowski, whose speed and defense profile is bolstered by the fact that he has hit .318 in limited time and excelled when pressed into everyday duty due to COVID losses.
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Luis Guillorme has minor-league options, but would make the Mets’ roster even more ill-fitting because they’d lack a true backup shortstop outside of Eduardo Escobar – who, besides being the starter at third base, hasn’t played short (outside of an emergency mid-game switch there last year) since 2018.
Dom Smith and J.D. Davis both also have minor-league options remaining, and both of them would clear an ill fit just as much as Cano; Smith’s best position is occupied by the team’s best young star, Davis’ is blocked by Escobar, and both are miscast as left fielders – where Mark Canha is the starter and second baseman Jeff McNeil is next best (and would be deployed, ideally, with Cano at second in a pinch).
That’s not to mention their trade value if they produce, or ability to take over at three different spots (plus DH) in case of an injury, even if their 2022 numbers aren’t eye-popping.
And yet, it’s the veteran Cano, who was a surefire Hall of Famer not even five years ago, that is now in limbo awaiting someone to take a chance on the back nine – hell, the 19th hole – of his career.
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Now, it’s easy to say the Wilpons never would’ve allowed their baseball ops department to make this move, because it’s true; chances are, Jankowski would’ve just been DFA because whatever Smith, McNeil, and Davis can play the outfield, or Guillorme would’ve been sent down because whatever Escobar can play short and McNeil, Davis, and Cano can cover second and third in that case.
What’s also easy to say is that the Yankees, at least up until this year, also wouldn’t have made the same move. After all, this is a team that gave up more premium or more quantity in prospect packages to acquire Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo last July; had Jay Bruce start the season at first base (and keep going until he retired) because they were already on the hook for his meager money; and watched Rougned Odor hit .202 over 361 plate appearances because his tax hit was zero.
Oh, yeah, and the same team that reset their luxury tax rate multiple times during the same five-year window of players’ primes, because why would a team spend more than necessary when the highest payroll doesn’t guarantee a World Series, even if the team with the highest payroll in the game won in 2018 and 2020?
Granted, they’ve already committed to going over the luxury tax in 2022, but did so by basically running back the same team they had last year (with a few “upgrades” that haven’t been)…oh, and lowballing their franchise player into an arbitration hearing, without even the courtesy of offering the higher end of their dispute as part of the extension package they put in front of him this spring.
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Say what you want about Yankees mystique, but Steve Cohen has been a success in business following one principle: you have to spend money to make money.
So far, the wonky 2021 COVID return notwithstanding, the Cohen era has shown to be completely different from anything New York has seen since The Boss passed away 12 years ago.
Let’s just hope, Yankees fans, that when 2023 dawns, the fire of ire doesn’t include a log that reads “Mets, 2022 World Champions.”
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
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