New York Mets: Great Pitching For An Even Better Price

As teams and players exchange salary figures for the coming year, we are fully entrenched in the arbitration portion of the MLB offseason. This time is crucial for teams that need to stay below the luxury-tax threshold, as well as players that feel they’re being unfairly compensated for their services. One team that shouldn’t be having any problems is the New York Mets.

We got an idea of how dangerous the Mets can be in 2015 when their young, electric pitching staff carried them to the World Series. That was the year we discovered the threat of putting Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, and Steven Matz (and Bartolo Colon) in the same rotation. At that time, the scariest part of this pitching staff was the potential for growth. Two seasons later this group is still young, they haven’t reached their peak, and they’re very affordable.

Headed into 2017 the Mets rotation will look very much the same except for one spot. Bartolo “Big Sexy” Colon agreed to a 1 year/$12.5M deal with the division-rival Braves in November, leaving a hole in the Mets starting rotation. Now more youngsters will have to step up as the team will be looking to one of Zack Wheeler, Seth Lugo or Robert Gsellman to fill that role. Despite his age (43) and upper 80s fastball, Colon was a very productive pitcher in ‘16. Across 191.2 innings he posted a 3.43 ERA (3.99 FIP), which was good for 2.9 fWAR.

Luckily the trio of Wheeler, Lugo and Gsellman are very promising pitchers. Wheeler is the most experienced of the bunch, though he’s also the most fragile. In 285.1 career innings, Wheeler has a 3.50 ERA (3.77 FIP) with 271 strikeouts. He was destined to be the next Mets ace before falling victim to Tommy John surgery in March of 2015. Now it’s been two full seasons since he’s pitched in a regular-season game. Lugo and Gsellman combined for 15 starts in ‘17, and both posted ERAs below 2.70. Assuming they aren’t benefitting from the small sample size, the Mets appear to be set in the rotation yet again.

The Breakdown

Last season, Mets starters ranked first in WAR, FIP (and xFIP), BB/9, and HR/9. That’s crazy good. Especially when you consider that Matt Harvey took a huge step back in ‘16, and Colon was the only member of the opening day rotation to not miss a start. Next year the team will be relying on some combination of Harvey, Syndergaard, deGrom, Matz, Wheeler, Lugo, and Gsellman. The Mets are incredibly lucky to have seven capable starters in-house, but it’s not just that. What’s even more impressive, is what they’ll be paying them.

The Mets had agreed on salaries for their entire rotation by Friday evening, and the total sum is ridiculously team-friendly. Harvey is the highest-paid starter on the team at $5.125M, and next up is deGrom at $4.05M. Every other starting pitcher in Queens will earn less than $1M in 2017. That’s right, the Mets will be paying Bobby Bonilla and Carlos Beltran more money next season than Wheeler, Lugo, or Gsellman (due to deferred payments). All together, the seven starters the Mets will look to next season will make about the same amount  as Bartolo Colon will in Atlanta.

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At roughly $12M next season, the entire Mets rotation (seven players) will earn less than 95 individual players will. This includes the likes of Jeremy Hellickson, Clay Buchholz, Ubaldo Jimenez, and Homer Bailey. Literally, they are collectively earning less than Jay Bruce will take home next year. This is what every team dreams of when they begin the rebuilding process. They dream of a dirt-cheap, controllable and deep pitching staff. What’s most remarkable about all of this is, the Mets didn’t have to rebuild to get here.