A record-breaking debut campaign has earned Mets first baseman Pete Alonso a record-breaking salary for his sophomore season. At least, that’s how the team has framed the matter, as Tim Healey of Newsday reports on Twitter.
Alonso will earn $652,521 for the 2020 season — the highest ever for a player coming off his rookie season (excluding those who’ve signed multi-year deals). While it’s unclear how the team arrived at that precise figure — they wisely skipped on a chance to make a hokey reference to Alonso’s rookie-high 53 long balls — it has unquestionably left the young star feeling happy. He says he was “shocked and thrilled” with the offer.
Given his exuberance over the salary terms, Alonso obviously signed onto his contract with the Mets — as did all of the team’s other pre-arbitration players. That’s rather a different situation from last winter, when the club renewed Edwin Diaz at just over $607K. (That sum felt particularly low given that Diaz had only just missed out on qualifying for arbitration as a Super Two, which would’ve drastically increased his total pre-free agency earning power.)
The Mets have kept the good vibes going with Alonso ever since they decided to carry him on the Opening Day roster in 2019 — thus foregoing a chance to extend their control rights by waiting a few weeks to promote him. That decision wasn’t quite as difficult with respect to the 24-year-old first baseman as it would’ve been for a much younger player, but it surely built up some goodwill.
It’s tantalizing to wonder whether and when the Mets will explore a long-term deal with Alonso, who has been a star on and off the field with his big bat and gregarious personality. Just how much impact today’s salary news has on broader talks remains to be seen.
One may surmise that other teams around the game are less than thrilled with the Mets’ decision not only to grant this salary but to broadcast it. Pre-arbitration salaries continue to be an area of great disparity around the game. We’ve seen some nine-figure deals in the past for players on the cusp of arbitration. But players like Juan Soto and Jack Flaherty have recently been renewed for lower amounts than Alonso will receive despite excellent performance track records and greater MLB service time. As I explained in a recent video, this is a situation that really ought to be addressed in some form in the next collective bargaining agreement.
A lot better then most teams!
The METS???
BVW is also a sophomore GM who likes to make headlines. The immediate headline probably has more value to BVW than the implication of the salary raises it’ll cause in the future. He’s never had to build a winning team after all. He showed you how much money he could burn last offseason. Just my two cents on BVW.
Good for Alonso though, he earned it.
Wait!! BVW took a below .500 team and turned them into an 86 win team! He literally build a winning team in his only year.
Quick little recap of what BVW did to “make his team a winner”
Added Jed Lowrie, Edwin Diaz, Robbie Cano, Keon Broxton, JD Davis, Jeurys Familia, and Justin Wilson.
JD Davis was the only truly productive player of that group. The Mets improves because they received a full season of McNeil’s production, the starters were healthy and Polar Bear Pete arrived. None of which BVW was really responsible for.
Could have included McNeil in the Diaz trade. Didn’t.
Alonso could have started the season in the minors to pause the arbitration/free agent clock. Didn’t.
Signed DeGrom to a long term contract.
More to the job than just trading.
And now has two aging overpriced vets while a player becomes a superstar
Oh, he did that!
What? Justin Wilson was a big part of the Mets second half resurgence and it was BVW that decided to put Alonso on the opening day roster instead of keeping him in the minors for 5-6 weeks – a decision that was a huge part of the Mets 2019 season.
And if he had a closer they would have made the playoffs.
Thank you BVW for Jarred Kelenik and Justin Dunn!! All while taking the highly objectionable Robbie Cano off our hands. Hated to see Eddie Diaz go and wish him well. But Met fans are gonna rue this trade in a couple of seasons if they don’t already.
Deserves it
Completely disagree. Alonso deserves to make the MLB minimum as all 2nd year players. He has EARNED his raise based on his performance. There’s a huge difference between deserving and earning.
The words are synonyms, meaning there’s literally no difference between earning something or deserving something besides whatever misconceptions you have in your own vocabulary.
Have to second that.
Oh well thank you for that. Now we know.
ProspectNVS… thanks for the clarification grammar guru…
He deserves it BECAUSE he earned it!!!
Prospect you make no sense
Here comes the parade of Mets haters somehow trying to say how this is “bad” or better yet, “lol mets”.
Some of us are 45+ year Mets fans who laugh rather than cry sometimes…
Reminds me of how the Angels handled Trout’s first few contracts. I would say it worked out for all in the end. Mostly for Trout or the player tho. Just hope the Mets can build a winning team better than my Halos…
Meanwhile the Yankees be like u no get extra million dellin and he like me gotta take subway me no like u anymore
WTF did u say?
Betances went 2 the metz cuz the Yankees fought him and won in his first arb hearing
English please
I speak merican
Flaherty is punching air rn
Lol Mets /s
He’ll hit 21 homers next year with a .223 average
Doubt he falls off that much. Wouldn’t be surprised if he comes back to earth a bit like Judge did. I’m guessing .250 and 35HR, with an OPS+ of around 130, which would still be a pretty good season.
It would be pretty hard for Alonso to have a 130 OPS+ if he only hits 35 HR and bats .250. He’d have to hit about 55 doubles and walk a ton. Assuming he again gets 600 + PA’s of course.
If the league goes bat to a “nonjuiced” ball then a .250/.350/.520 slash would get him close to 130 OPS+. Keep in mind the entire league went home run crazy, so if everyone regresses, his OPS+ could stay the same despite his overall numbers regressing.
A .520 .SLG is still a monster season. For reference Rhys Hoskins in 2018 hit .246/.354/.496 with 34 Hrs and 38 doubles. To get a .520 with 35 Hrs you’d need about 50 doubles.
Bobby Bonilla loaned them the money for this at 23% over 15 years.
Yelich will now be paid for longer than Bonilla, can we drop this old trope now?
why would anyone? its not like it’s not true.
Bobby Bo gets paid through 2035. Pretty sure Yelich’s new deal expires before then.
Yelich gets paid until he’s 50.
Last payment will be in 2042
That’s a good one!
I wonder how Flaherty feels about this. Surely his situation played a part.
Mets
Yeah, but this is the Mets. Expect nothing less than catastrophic failure.
Darn. I guess the Mets won’t win the MLB Front Office Collusion trophy this year? I heard it was going to be a nice looking one with a GM’s boot on the throat of a player as a nod to Twins General Manager Thad Levine’s statements last year.
“That decision wasn’t quite as difficult with respect to the 24-year-old first baseman”
“First baseman”
This would never happen if he was a SS or CF.
1B and DH are very cheap.
Cheap to sign in free agency? Because arbitration uses an archaic system that values guys like Pete Alonso very well. He’ll be costly in arbitration.
Arb moderators don’t care at all about defensive value. Its all homers and RBIs. In fact advanced metrics are dismissed in most Arb cases.
as if this saves face for them for being cheap overall
Pay the Polar Bear!
Does Jack Flaherty have a comment about this? 🙂
Very few players deserve a 2nd-year raise as much as Alonso. And if he slumps at all this year, I’m not worried. He’s going to have to adjust to seeing more pitches out of the zone because after last year, pitchers are not going to be giving him anything to hit, but he’ll overcome that. This guy is legit.
Can anybody guess what “the hokey reference to his 53 long balls…..” would have been?
He gets $652 521 instead of $653 000
Having the number 53 appear in his salary, I’d imagine.
When I first read this, I thought, “What’s the point? If he becomes a FA and another team offers him another year or higher AAV, would he really turn that down because of a small, but unnecessary, increase? I wouldn’t bet on it.” But he might, and that’s exactly what the Mets are doing: betting on it. With a raise of less than $100K, which is nothing to them, they take a chance that he’s one of the few guys who values loyalty over money. If he does go away, they send a message to everyone that they’re treating their players right. If that doesn’t pay dividends, they still have some goodwill with people who believe players in their rookie deals should make more earlier on. Even if none of those pay off (and it’s hard to believe they’ll get no payback), it’s a risk of less than $100K.
Well it is mostly a symbolic raise, 80k more or whatever that is don’t really hurt the mets and is good publicity and showing good will to the player.
Alonso isn’t in a great spot financially since he debuted at age 24 and will be over 30 when he is a FA which isn’t good for a 1b man. Still he won’t starve of course due to the arbitration money and endorsements.
Good for him – I personally think that the MLB should add a year of team control while having to start the Arb process after 365 days of their career.
Players would have a better chance at making the money they have “earned” in return of one more year of team control during their prime.
It would help teams that don’t have a 190 mil plus payroll ….. but I also strongly believe that there should be a base $ that a team should have to spend annually – and if they don’t, they should have draft picks taken away.