The Mets are on one heck of a shopping spree, and owners who long enjoyed their semi-salary cap are quaking in their boots. If Steve Cohen is willing to acknowledge that luxury taxes, by their nature, are small relative costs to those who pay them, will others have to soon do the same? Who let this guy in the room? Why does he want to win so badly?
These fears from other ownership are legitimate. In recent years, MLB owners have enjoyed access to plenty of their own cake, gladly stuffing their faces to their hearts’ content. Reeling in hundreds of millions (billions, for many) via the value of their appreciating assets, they’ve saved themselves dozens of millions through the colluding effort that is the luxury tax—most simply, a payroll threshold above which owners have agreed to not pay for too long, keeping player salaries below their natural market value and giving a handy excuse to fans often more than happy to scoff at those gosh darn greedy athletes. For owners, the fear is large: If Steve Cohen points out the tax’s nudity, does the tax still maintain its throne?
Time will tell if Cohen falls in line, or if others start to grasp at competitive advantages, or if the competitive advantage is even all that real (franchises need a degree of efficiency to turn their expenses into wins, and franchises need a degree of luck to turn their wins into one or more World Series titles). In the meantime, let’s talk about the 2023 MLB season. Because I’m not convinced the Mets are the World Series favorites.
Using FanGraphs’s Depth Charts, with projected rosters updated sometime in the last 24 hours and plenty of free agent talent remaining (69.0 projected WAR of it) but 90% of the top 30 free agents signed (Jean Segura, Nathan Eovaldi, and Elvis Andrus are projected as the best names left on the board), here’s where the playoff picture in each league currently stacks up, using each league’s best projected team as the baseline:
National League
- NYM: 0.0 WAR below pennant (WBP)
- SDP: 1.5 WBP
- STL: 7.3 WBP
- ATL: 3.4 WBP
- LAD: 5.7 WBP
- PHI: 10.3 WBP
American League
- NYY: 0.0 WBP
- HOU: 4.9 WBP
- CLE: 7.7 WBP
- TBR: 3.1 WBP
- TOR: 4.8 WBP
- SEA: 9.4 WBP
What are we looking at here? With current rosters, the Padres project to be 1.5 wins worse than the Mets. With current rosters, the Dodgers project to be 4.2 wins behind the Padres. With current rosters, the Guardians project to be the AL’s 3-seed, as the Central champions, but the Rays and Blue Jays are better teams.
The division gaps are crucial, especially in each league’s East and West, where a division title is likely to be accompanied by a first-round playoff bye thanks to reconfigured schedules making the Cardinals and Guardians (and Brewers and White Sox and Twins) play fewer games against their inept division-mates. Cleveland projects to win the AL Central by 3.3 games. St. Louis projects to win the NL Central by 4.5. Houston projects to win the AL West by 4.5. The Yankees project to win the AL East by 3.1. San Diego and the Mets project to win the NL West and NL East, respectively, by 4.2 and 3.4.
The question we have here is how much that 0.8-game difference between the Mets’ projected margin in the East and the Padres’ projected margin in the West matters in relative probability of bye, and how that probability’s importance compares to the 1.5-game difference between the two in overall quality, should they meet in the playoffs. The Yankees are not World Series favorites: They have two dangerous challengers within their division, while the Mets and Padres each have only one. The Astros are not World Series favorites: They are worse, on paper, than all three possible AL East champions, meaning they’re forecast to wind up on the road as underdogs in whichever ALCS materializes. The Mets have Atlanta on their heels and Philadelphia in the distance. The Padres have the Dodgers to contend with on the home front. It’s possible, given the importance of home-field advantage and how close the teams currently are, that the Padres should be favored over the Mets even with that 1.5-game gap.
A lot can change from here. The Mets and Padres could keep signing players. Los Angeles or Atlanta could accelerate their efforts to catch up. Eventually, games will start, and on-paper will matter less and less as consequential results come in. But at the moment, the Mets are not the clear World Series favorites. In fact, they might not be the favorites at all.
NIL Doesn’t Matter That Much
After Oregon (at least briefly, but possibly permanently) flipped Peyton Bowen from Notre Dame yesterday, alarm bells went off nationwide that the Ducks were in business with this NIL business. The problem with this narrative? Oregon’s got the seventh-best class in the country, per 247’s composite rankings. That is…identical to the ranking of their 2019 class. That is one spot worse than the ranking of their 2021 class. This isn’t Oregon-today vs. Oregon-in-the-Chip-Kelly-era (that Oregon actually didn’t recruit very well, which is a little bit puzzling). This is Oregon-today vs. Oregon two years ago and four years ago. Recent history. Three of the last five Oregon classes were ranked sixth or seventh in the country, and this year’s is only one of them. The Ducks do have a good transfer class coming in—it’s ranked fifth, nationally—but it’s made of only five players so far, with plenty of time after bowl games for others to catch up. Maybe it’ll make noise. Maybe Oregon will continue to make some noise. But NIL hasn’t made the Ducks’ recruiting meaningfully immediately better. Not yet.
NIL Has to Be Sustainable
Texas A&M, one year ago, was on the verge of global domination, pulling in an historic recruiting class in the first year of unbarred pay-to-play. Texas A&M, today, has the 14th-ranked recruiting class in the country, their worst since 2018. Lots of this is not necessarily the Aggie NIL effort falling apart. Lots is, presumably, players not wanting to play for a visibly failing program. But we were told NIL made A&M inevitable. Turns out, you have to keep it up.
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Viewing schedule for the day (mostly night), second screen rotation in italics:
Bowl Game
- 7:30 PM EST: Armed Forces Bowl – Baylor vs. Air Force (ESPN)
College Basketball (of interest)
- 8:00 PM EST: Butler @ Creighton (FS1)
- 9:00 PM EST: Missouri vs. Illinois (SECN)
NFL
- 8:15 PM EST: Jacksonville @ New York Jets (Prime)
NBA (best game)
- 9:00 PM EST: Washington @ Utah (NBA TV)
NHL (best game)
- 7:00 PM EST: Carolina @ Pittsburgh (ESPN+)
