Mike's Mets - On Extending Lindor and Sustaining Success

 

By Mike Steffanos January 11, 2021 

Now that the Mets have Francisco Lindor on their roster, the next big question is how they go about trying to keep him past this season. I think we can assume that it's a given that they at least make a big effort at extending him. I've seen some in the media postulate that the Mets may want to wait until they've had a chance to see how Lindor reacts to playing in New York, which would obviously mean that negotiations wouldn't even start before the season got underway. I could understand the rationale for that thinking. Not every player thrives in this city. I might even feel the same way myself if Lindor was under contract for a couple of years. That's not the case, however, so if the Mets decided to go that route they would need to ask themselves how long they would be willing to wait to begin negotiations, and if Lindor would even be willing to negotiate during the season. At his press conference today he indicated fairly strongly that he wouldn't do that.

I think back to the Mets signing of Carlos Beltran back in January, 2005. Despite some injury issues at the end of his time in New York, signing Carlos Beltran was one of the best free agent acquisitions in Mets history. He's inarguably one of the top position players who ever played in New York, and as complete of a ballplayer as I've ever watched in a Mets uniform. But his first season in Queens was just plain awful. He was good but not great in CF, and struggled pretty much all season at the plate. But he bounced back to be a terrific player after that season. It's too bad the Mets clubs he played for were deeply flawed, and the way his injuries were handled go down as a huge black mark against the follies of the Wilpon era. But the fact remains that he was a great New York Met, and proof that sometimes you just have to give a player some time to settle into a new situation.

Francisco Lindor will need to get used to competing with a new team, in a new city, and in a new League. If he doesn't set the world on fire right away, that doesn't mean he can't play in New York. If the Mets really want to extend him, they shouldn't waste the time between now and the start of the season to see if they can get it done, even if Lindor could be convinced to negotiate with the season underway. Also, trying to extend Lindor should give them some clarity on where they stand financially as they consider what they will do with Michael Conforto, Noah Syndergaard, Marcus Stroman, and even Steven Matz. It seems quite certain that they will not keep all of those players and Francisco Lindor, but they're not going to let them all walk away.

For a team attempting to follow the path of clubs like the Dodgers, Yankees and Red Sox, maintaining competitiveness year after year without going into full rebuild mode, the decisions on which players to keep and build around going forward are pretty critical. We're going to learn pretty quickly about the Mets priorities this offseason as we watch how they decide to handle the upcoming free agency of Lindor, Michael Conforto and Noah Syndergaard. My guess right now would be that serious attempts are made to sign the first two, while Syndergaard probably makes it to free agency. Since it really seems unlikely that the Mets could keep all three long-term, I could only see a Syndergaard extension happening at all if the Mets strike out with one of the other two.

With the Mets finally in a position to run a big-boy payroll, they're going to be faced with more difficult choices, too. If a club overcommits to older, more expensive players, they have less room to bring in new talent or hold onto home-grown players in future years. It doesn't take too many large contracts before even a large payroll can get really top-heavy. Make the wrong decisions, and the Mets could wind up in a position where the Yankees are in now, where commitments to Gerrit Cole and Giancarlo Stanton have made it difficult for the club to bring back DJ LeMahieu and replace the starting pitching they've lost. The trade for Stanton never made sense to me. That contract, the propensity for getting hurt and the reality that he is becoming more of a full-time DH when he is healthy just don't add up, at least in my mind. It takes a lot of discipline on the part of teams in win-always mode not to paint themselves into a difficult corner like the team in the Bronx did.

I think the majority opinion in the matter is that the Mets will sign Lindor long-term as long as the contract he is seeking makes sense. I agree with that, and would expect it to happen some time fairly early in spring training.

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