Mets owner Steve Cohen spoke with reporters on Tuesday morning, discussing the organization’s spending outlook after another massive offseason. Cohen admitted that a winter that included a record-breaking Juan Soto contract and the retention of Sean Manaea and Pete Alonso pushed spending beyond his initial expectations.
“It always seems like ballplayers are more expensive than you think,” the owner told reporters (including Newsday’s Tim Healey and Jorge Castillo of ESPN). “Listen, I have the ability to spend if I have to. I want to win. And I want to put the best team I can on the field. But free agency is expensive. … Even this year, I had a thought of where I wanted to be, and I’ve already blown through it. And I really wanted to be there. And just circumstances created, ’all right, I have to adapt my thinking.’”
Landing Soto needed an eye-popping $51MM average annual value, easily shattering previous standard. They effectively waited out Alonso’s market to avoid a long-term commitment, signing him to a two-year contract with an opt-out after the first season. That comes with a premium $27MM AAV and a $30MM number for the subsequent season, so it remains a significant investment in 2025. Manaea agreed to a three-year contract worth $75 million (with deferrals), while Frankie Montas, Clay Holmes, and A.J. Minter all signed multi-year contracts worth eight figures.
RosterResource estimates New York’s raw payroll at $331 million. Their competitive balance-tax projection is significantly lower, at $325 million. Those appear to be within the ballpark, as Cohen told reporters that he expects to finish the season with a payroll in the $340 million range after accounting for in-season pickups (such as waiver claims and trade deadline additions).
This might conceivably involve a Spring Training free agent move. Following the recent discovery that Montas will be sidelined for an extended period of time due to a lat issue, there has been speculation that the Mets may try to add to their rotation. Jose Quintana is perhaps the finest unsigned starting pitcher, but it appears the Mets aren’t returning to the veteran southpaw. According to Mike Puma of The New York Post, while Quintana has stated a desire to return to Queens, the Mets have not pursued him.
The Mets will open the season with the second-highest payroll in Major League Baseball, trailing only the Dodgers. It will be the fourth consecutive season in which they will not only pay the luxury tax but will also be penalized at the highest level. That’s $60MM more than the base threshold. It was included in the 2022 collective bargaining agreement, partly in response to other owners’ concerns that Cohen would outspend the rest of the league. Teams that fall into the top tax bracket and have paid the CBT for three or more consecutive seasons face a 110% tax on spending above that threshold, which is $301MM this year.
While the Mets will be solidly in that category in ’25, Cohen said he hopes to fall below that threshold in subsequent seasons. “I’d like to get below the Cohen Tax,” he remarked, referring to the colloquial term for the top tax bracket. “Are we sure this is about me? “There are many Cohens out there.” To that reason, he dismissed the likelihood of signing another long-term megadeal next offseason. “You really can’t have too many long-term contracts, because then you lose your roster flexibility, so you need to be really careful,” he told me. “But I’ll let my baseball people make that decision.”
This isn’t the first time that Cohen has spoken generically about wanting to reduce back expenditure over the long run. That hasn’t truly happened. They concluded last year with a tax bill of roughly $348 million, so this season is likely to see a little spending drop. RosterResource forecasts that their CBT number for 2026 will be around $206MM. Jesse Winker, Griffin Canning, and Ryne Stanek’s one-year contracts, as well as Starling Marte’s four-year pact, expire at the end of the season. Alonso, Montas, Minter, and Edwin Díaz all have opt-out options.
Of that group, Alonso is the most likely to retest the market. The famous slugger did not receive the long-term attention he expected, which led to the pillow deal. Alonso confessed that it was “a bridge thing just to get to the next contract” (source: Tim Healey of Newsday). He admitted that his previous two seasons were below his best performance, which contributed to a shorter contract. The Mets offered Alonso a three-year contract, but he declined in favor of a more frontloaded two-year guarantee. Over the weekend, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported that the Mets and Blue Jays had both offered proposals in the $85 million range early this winter, including some deferred money.
Alonso also noted that the qualifying offer had a greater impact on his market than he’d anticipated. Any team other than the Mets would have sacrificed a draft choice and/or international bonus pool space to sign him. The Mets just gave up the right to a fourth-round compensatory pick in order to keep their own free agent. Players may only receive the QO once in their careers, therefore Alonso is set to enter the market unrestricted next offseason. He claimed he has no harsh feelings toward the Mets about how this winter played out and that it would be “fantastic” if the two sides could eventually work out a longer-term contract.
