New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is trying to buy a World Championship.
His team’s payroll for 2023 is $345 million and counting. The Mets are already scheduled to pay more in baseball’s “luxury tax” than many teams will spend on their entire payroll.
Trouble is, Philadelphia Phillies owner John Middleton is trying to buy a World Championship too. So is San Diego Padres owner Peter Seidler.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have been in this mode for some time, since a bunch of rich guys got together to rescue the franchise from the goofy McCourts. (The Dodgers did hold back this offseason while fearing that pitcher Trevor Bauer’s contract could be reinstated and stick the franchise with a hefty luxury tax payment.)
But here’s the trouble for the Mets, Phillies, Padres and Dodgers: At least three of them will fall short of their goal each season.
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And many years all four franchises will fail, given their National League competition (still-loaded Atlanta Braves, perennial contending Cardinals) and their formidable American League competition (Houston Astros, Team Steinbrenner, ever-clever Tampa Bay Rays).
Nonetheless, these franchises keep spending to the delight of their frustrated fan bases.
The Phillies and Padres went years and years without sniffing the postseason, the big-budget Dodgers have somehow avoided winning a bunch of World Championships and the Mets fell into utter disrepair before Cohen stepped in as the ultimate fanboy owner with billions to blow.
Obviously, the free agents benefiting from this ownership largesse. Xander Bogaerts was thrilled to get an 11-year, $280 million contract from the Padres to join an all-star lineup playing in America’s most pleasant environment.
“The roster is so stacked, top to bottom, it's unbelievable,” Bogaerts noted after signing. “When they beat the Dodgers here, seeing how amped up the fans were during the playoffs, it was fun to watch on TV.”
Here is what folks are writing about this profligate spending:
Alden Gonzalez, ESPN.com: “A couple of key factors were at play, according to industry sources. One was a new collective bargaining agreement, ratified near the middle of March, that provided certainty about the sport's inner workings for the next half-decade. The other was Disney's $900 million purchase of its remaining equity stake in MLB's BAMTech product, which outfitted each of the 30 teams with an additional $30 million in a year that brought record revenues to the industry. Others also pointed to the 2022 Phillies, who grabbed the final spot in the postseason and made it all the way to the World Series, perhaps pushing midtier teams to turn up their aggression. An assistant GM took note of something else: the remarkable lack of trades. For all the money thrown at free agents this offseason, there have been only 17 completed trades that involved at least one major league player, most of which have been relatively unimpactful. The homogeneity of baseball's front offices, all of which are adept in analytics and use similar projection models, has made it increasingly difficult to gain clear advantages via trade, the executive noted. It has prompted teams to turn to the open market for most of their needs this offseason, creating the fierce competition that has blown the lid off free agency.”
Patrick Dubuque, Baseball Reference: “There are certain times when you have to come to terms with the fact that the world no longer fundamentally operates on the basis it used to. The French at Agincourt, watching the arrows rain down from a distance that was yesterday physically impossible. The battleship of Commodore Perry looming on the horizon outside Tokyo Bay, its hideous guns pointed toward the harbor. The first time a screenwriter realized that a single working cell phone ruins the plot of 90% of all horror movies and screwball comedies. Climate change. Something happens, and the system goes into a kind of shock, until a new set of rules can settle into place, and we can live without thinking again. The competitive balance tax contains four tiers: above $233 million (30% tax), above $253 million (42% tax), above $273 million (75% tax), and above $293 million—the 'Steve Cohen' line (90% tax). After these three signings, the Mets 2023 payroll stands around $345 million. The Yankees, who are second, are currently $75 million behind them, a gap that is larger than the payroll of seven of the league’s 30 teams.”
David Schoenfield, ESPN.com: “It's certainly expensive to build a team via free agents, but the Mets had little choice but to go down this road this offseason if they hoped to contend again in 2023. While the Mets' luxury tax payroll in 2022 ran nearly $288 million, the estimated 2023 luxury tax payroll is at $349.6 million, according to Roster Resource. The Mets are probably done with their big moves -- although I could see them adding one more relief pitcher. At this point, why not? Needless to say, the ‘Steve Cohen Tax’ didn't prevent the owner from spending. The new collective bargaining agreement signed last March included a new tax level that was immediately dubbed the Cohen Tax. ‘It's better than a bridge being named after you,’ the owner quipped at the time. In the past, there had been three levels of tax thresholds. In the new CBA, a fourth level was added, which kicks in at $293 million for 2023 and comes with a 60% surcharge on the overage. So the Mets will be paying $34 in taxes just on the surcharge alone, plus the basic tax for going over the $233 million threshold that will push the total CBT bill to over $76 million. (Thank your owner, Mets fans.)”
Michael Baumann, FanGraphs: “Cohen has staked his reputation as an owner on funding the best baseball team money can reasonably buy. He could not have maintained his credibility in that respect without a week like we just saw, particularly after losing deGrom. So why not run a $320 million payroll, if you’re a team that prints money and serves as a goodwill-generating machine for a man worth more than $10 billion? I can’t think of a reason. A World Series doesn’t count less for a team that paid more to win it. Cohen can’t just up and buy a World Series, obviously; the best he can do is buy a berth in a brutal three-way rock fight with the National League’s two most recent champions (the Braves and Phillies) for the right to face an equally well-equipped Dodgers or Padres team in the playoffs. But he’s bought a damn good baseball team, which is all one can ask an owner to do.”
Patrick Dubuque, Baseball Reference: “It’s easy to be a Padres fan right now. And, in a way, it’s easy to be an Orioles fan, unpleasant as every Mike Elias press conference makes it. These teams are predictable, honest. They know themselves. The Boston Red Sox do not know themselves, which is why they seem continually surprised by the results of their own actions. It should have been a great day for Red Sox fans. Instead, they woke up to a gut punch. Even if the team goes out and patches things up with Dansby Swanson or Carlos Correa, fighting off the Dodgers and Cubs, one does not get the impression of a master plan falling into place. As for the fans, they’ve had it pretty good for a while now, but it’s time for them to remember: that fandom often means playing the role of the opposition party.”
David Roth, The Defector: “Even as the rest of the sport, or at least the handful of baseball teams that are actively trying to win the World Series, have learned how to stop worrying and love comparatively low average annual salaries spread across a decade-or-so, there are teams that are still talking like this. The Cubs have taken a different approach to free agency thus far, for instance, steering clear of bigger and more expensive names in favor of the sort of two- and three-year free agent commitments that might buoy a team towards respectability without, say, adding significant costs to a team whose owners might be interested in putting it up for sale at some point. Bringing in free agents like Carlos Correa or Dansby Swanson to plug the team’s hole at shortstop would make the team a lot better, but would also require the sort of commitment that the team, for reasons of principle or best practices or just the cheesy chiseling of their anhedonic ownership, seems unwilling to make. If you’d prefer a more evocative expression of this, the last week also gave us Red Sox GM Chaim Bloom stammering to himself at an airport gate like a damn Noah Baumach character upon realizing that his best offer to Bogaerts was half-a-decade and more than $100 million short.”
Mike Axisa, CBSSports.com: “Maybe Bloom & Co. have repeatedly misread the market. Maybe ownership isn't all that committed to winning. Maybe free agents have identified Boston as a place they don't want to play. I don't know what's wrong here, exactly, but it feels like something is out of whack. The Red Sox are one of the sport's marquee franchises and they should be a powerhouse. Instead core players are leaving and free agent targets keep going elsewhere. Landing Yoshida and various relievers is good progress for a Red Sox team that lost 84 games and finished in last place in baseball's most competitive division this past season. They still have so much more work ahead of them though. They need at least one more starting pitcher (ideally two) and they also need to replace Bogaerts on the middle infield. The still unsigned Carlos Correa is very close to manager Alex Cora from their time with the Astros, but do we expect the Red Sox to make Correa a winning offer in this market given their offseason to date? Maybe it happens, sure. I'll need to see it to believe. Then there's Rafael Devers, who is a year away from free agency. As of October a large gap existed between his asking price (north of $300 million) and the team's extension offer (around $200 million), according to the New York Post. That gap can be bridged and there's time to bridge it, but Betts is a Dodger and Bogaerts is a Padre. What reason do we have to believe this front office -- this ownership group -- will do what it takes to keep Devers in Boston? They haven't earned the benefit of the doubt. It's sort of remarkable the Red Sox landed Jansen and Yoshida on Wednesday and still managed to have a bad day because their franchise shortstop agreed to a deal with another team. It was only four years ago that the Red Sox won the World Series and had one of the most enviable cores in the sport. Now just about all those core players are wearing other uniforms while Boston tries to climb out of the AL East cellar.”
MEGAPHONE
“You look up and there's few teams that are taking a step back. Almost everybody is looking to advance forward. And that, along with some really quality players, is why it's a very aggressive market.”
Padres general manager A.J. Preller.
