MLB Free Agency Is Booming Ahead of the Looming Lockout

Just days before baseball is expected to shut down, the Mets signed Max Scherzer to a record contract and the 102-loss Rangers doled out more than $500 million.

Bargain hunters do not prowl yacht dealerships. Buying one is not for the faint of heart or light of wallet. Mets owner Steve Cohen, the richest owner in baseball, is a buyer of yachts. He paid above sticker to extend shortstop Francisco Lindor in April and now has done the same nine months later to get free agent Max Scherzer, the best pitcher available.

The point, like owning a yacht, is not to brag to your buddies that you finagled a great deal. The point is that you own the yacht.

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Quibble with the terms or Scherzer’s pitching actuarial chart all you want. Scherzer is a Met. Period. He is a Met because Cohen is paying him $43.3 million a year for his age-37, -38 and -39 seasons. That’s a 20% premium on the previous highest average annual value, which went to Gerrit Cole for his prime years just two years ago.

Cohen is a player’s delight: He has a fan’s passion and money to burn. What he is doing is no different than what happened when Guggenheim Baseball Management purchased the Dodgers from Frank McCourt in May 2012. They, too, shopped at yacht dealers. They, too, wanted to win quickly. After trades for Adrían González and Carl Crawford and free-agent deals for Zack Greinke and Hyun Jin Ryu, the Dodgers’ payroll soared from $105 million in 2012 to $217 million in ’13, their first full year of ownership. Jaws dropped among other owners.

For six of the next nine years, the Dodgers carried the highest payroll in baseball, including this year, the season after finally getting their World Series championship. Now they are pulling aside to let the Mets pass them.

Like the Dodgers in their first days under Guggenheim, these Mets are at last tapping their big-market resources to pay big-market prices for big-market talent. Cohen tried to do so last year but (whew!) Trevor Bauer did not take the $105 million he offered him over three years, which became a jumping-off point for Scherzer, the better pitcher. In the past four days, from last season’s roster, the Mets have turned Kevin Pillar into Starling Marte, Jonathan Villar into Eduardo Escobar, Michael Conforto into Mark Canha and Marcus Stroman into Scherzer.

If Jacob deGrom returns as healthy as the Mets believe he will be, the idea of deGrom and Scherzer starting 60 times is a good step toward a postseason berth. The Mets will be paying those two pitchers $79 million next year, more than what 13 teams paid their entire rosters this year (12 of which did not make the postseason).

It is not just the Mets who are letting the money flow. With a lockout looming at the close of Wednesday, owners are paying top dollar early in the winter, a major change from previous offseasons.

Even Scott Boras, the agent who has been a master at slow-playing the market, jumped quickly on deals for clients Scherzer, Marcus Semien, who at age 31 pulled in more money over seven years ($175 million from Texas) than Jose Altuve did at age 27 coming off an MVP season ($163.5 million), and Corey Seager (10 years, $325 million with Texas).

“Have you looked at the signings?” Boras answered when asked whether the looming lockout created a soft deadline. “They are market [value] so players act.”

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Boras had complained at the GM meetings earlier this month that almost half the teams in baseball were not even trying—about 13, he said. Since then, the Rangers, who lost 102 games last season, gave $556 million to Semien, Seager and pitcher Jon Gray. The Mariners, who haven’t made the playoffs since 2001, gave Robbie Ray $115 million over five years after his one breakout season. The Marlins, losers of 95 games last season, gave $53 million to Avisaíl García. The Blue Jays, who haven’t been to the World Series in 28 years, gave Kevin Gausman $110 million. And the Mets, without a playoff berth in five years and without a championship in the 35 years since Cohen turned 30, spent $254.5 million.

The Dodgers and Yankees, meanwhile, the most famed spenders of all, sat idly by while all this spending flooded the market.

Maybe the cumulative effect is a signal from the owners to the players that the system is not so broken that it needs to be overhauled. Players have complained how young players are underpaid and how too many teams are not trying to win. This spasm of spending seems incongruous just hours ahead of the game shutting down.