Paul Articulates – How much is Chris Bassitt worth?

The New York Mets front office did an admirable job of negotiating contract updates on all of their arbitration-eligible players except one – newly acquired starting pitcher Chris Bassitt.

For the most part the team took good care of their players.  Notable amongst those who signed this year and avoided arbitration are:

• Closer Edwin Diaz – signed for $10.2M for the 2022 season, his third year of signing before the arbitration deadline.
• Slugger Pete Alonso – signed for $7.4M for the 2022 season, a nice $6.7M raise for one of the only players that didn’t underperform in 2021.
• Brandon Nimmo – signed for $7M for the 2022 season in his last arbitration year – hopefully his $2.3M raise builds some loyalty to the Mets when he becomes a free agent next year.
• Dom Smith – signed for $3.95M for the 2022 season, and he is already earning his $1.4M raise by pounding the ball in spring training.
• Trevor Williams – signed for $3.9M for the 2022 season.  He hasn’t earned the $1.4M raise yet.
• JD Davis – signed for $2.76M for the 2022 season.  That’s a $600k raise for his potential to slug now that he is beyond an injury-filled 2021 season.

Here are a few curious ones:

• Seth Lugo – signed for $3.925M for the 2022 season – same salary as last year.
•  Jeff McNeil – signed for $3M for the 2022 season – that’s not much for a guy with a .299 lifetime batting average, but it says a lot about what a down year can do in negotiations.

The Mets also signed Castro, Lucchesi, Nido, and Drew Smith during the pre-arbitration deadline spending spree.

But now back to the subject of Mr. Bassitt.  The lanky right-hander is coming off his best season with the Oakland Athletics, where he threw 157 innings and compiled a 3.15 ERA, 1.055 WHIP, and an all-star berth.  Chris has been in the top 10 in AL Cy Young balloting in the last two years and earned 2.3 and 4.0 WAR in those seasons.  These credentials were worth two hot Mets prospects, J.T. Ginn and Adam Oller in the trade that brought Chris here.

Since he has been here, Chris Bassitt has shined.  In spring training so far, he has thrown 4-2/3 innings giving up 4 hits, 0 runs, with 3 strike-outs and no walks.  Statistically, his ERA is 0.00, his WHIP is 0.86, and his Batting Average Against (BAA) is 0.222.   And he is just warming up!

Billy Eppler has his work cut out for him to win in arbitration.  The Mets offered $8.3M and Bassitt asked for $9.0M.  The consensus on the Mets rotation for the upcoming season has him slotted in the third position, and there is very little disagreement there.  The rotation is very well paid, as seen from this table below.  Personally I think that Chris will get his fair share and hopefully continue to build upon his great start throughout the upcoming season.  

Either way, it doesn’t seem that being the only Met in arbitration this year has affected Bassitt, who was quoted this week saying, “My entire outlook is I care about baseball, I don’t give a [bleep] about my contract.  That’s why I pay my agent. My agent gets to fight with the front office and that’s it. I don’t care, I care about winning and having fun with these guys.”

So now in the court of public opinion, what do you think?  Should he get the $8.3M offered by the Mets, or the $9.0M that Chris and his agent requested?