HIGH STAKES
Mets offer Lindor 10 years, $325M, but he wants $385M for 12
WITH the clock ticking toward Francisco Lindor’s self-imposed deadline, the Mets stood a vast distance from securing the long-term services of their recently acquired shortstop. New owner Steve Cohen couldn’t hide his uncertainty in two different forums.
An industry source confirmed that the Mets have offered Lindor a 10-year, $325 million extension, as first reported by SNY, with the apparent “best and final” belief that should get it done. However, a source not with the Mets or in the Lindor camp confirmed a Newsday report that Lindor, who can be a free agent after this season, had countered with a 12-year, $385 million ask.
“It takes two people to sign a contract, not one,” Cohen told Mets radiocaster Wayne Randazzo in a conversation that ran online Monday night, though was taped a few days ago.
On Twitter Monday, Cohen engaged with multiple fans and shared a similar sentiment. When one fan tweeted that Lindor would complete the extension on Monday, Cohen replied, “How much you want to bet.” When a second asked whether the impending free agent Lindor would be extended soon, Cohen responded, “Well, we have a deadline [of March] 31, today is the 29th. It either will or won’t in the next two days.” And when a third fan reacted to that with the words, “This is not as funny as I think you think it is,” Cohen replied, “I’m not being funny, it’s the absolute truth. If I knew the answer I would report it.”
The $325 million offer falls short of the $340 million the Padres guaranteed their shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. — the most ever for a shortstop — although the 22-year-old Tatis’ contract, spread over 14 years, carries a far lower annual average value ($24.3 million as opposed to $32.5 million). The $385 million that Lindor, 27, wants would rank as the most “new money” ever guaranteed to a baseball player, topping the $365 million, 12year deal the Dodgers gave Mookie Betts last year. At $32.1 million annually, it would be worth slightly less per year than the Mets’ offer.
Not much optimism exists, Cohen acknowledged, for Lindor’s fellow walk-year Mets Michael Conforto and Noah Syndergaard.
“We’re talking to all of them and it’s hard to know exactly how they’re all going to turn out,” Cohen told Randazzo. “We’re focused on Francisco and Michael. Those are the ones that are sort of immediate ones we have to deal with. Obviously Noah’s important to the club. He’s coming back from a serious injury [Tommy John surgery on his right elbow]. We’re open to conversation. I think that’s going to be a different type of conversation than what we’re going to have with Francisco and Michael.”
In a wide-ranging conversation with Randazzo that lasted about
30 minutes,
Cohen responded to 36 questions from the fans. Among the information he disclosed:
He said that the luxury-tax threshold of $210 million stood as a meaningful barrier, one he didn’t want to exceed by only a couple of million dollars, presumably because of the rules that impose harsher penalties on repeat offenders, although those rules could change as soon as next season with the 2021 expiration of the Basic Agreement. However, Cohen noted that he would’ve blown through that number (the Mets are currently at about $193 million) had Trevor Bauer accepted their three-year, $105 million offer.
“Obviously we wanted to get Bauer and we made a heck of a bid,” Cohen said. “I thought we had him.”
Bauer went to his hometown Dodgers for $102 million over three years.
“I can say with absolute certainty that the black jerseys are coming back,” Cohen said of the Mets’ polarizing uniform iteration that has been out of circulation since 2014 (and not used as a road jersey since 2008). “They’ll come back for a few games this year at some point.”The Mets players, Cohen said, will help pick out the black unis’ design.
Old-Timers’ Day is “probably a ’22 event,” Cohen said, as clubs work their way back to normalcy from the pandemic. Cohen has spoken of his desire to bring this event back to the Mets’ world.