Shea Bridge Report: Lindor, Keith, Christie
The Mets negotiate, Keith ruminates, Chris Christie bloviates
Good afternoon! Today, we address what Francisco Lindor is worth (whatever he can get), things Keith Hernandez says (whatever he wants), and how Chris Christie disproves the major theory of Twitter’s existence. Enjoy!
Lindor
According to various reports, the Mets and Francisco Lindor have continued their contract negotiations, but aren’t quite there yet. Lindor has said he won’t negotiate past Opening Day, ten days from today, so time is running out, but things aren’t quite desperate yet.
Lindor, the rumors say, is looking for more than $300 million; the Mets have countered with an amount that remains below $300 million so far, but — the rumors say — they’re willing to go up to $300 million, and perhaps a bit higher. What does this add up to? If I had to guess, Lindor winds up signing for — you guessed it — actually I guessed it — about $300 million.
What Lindor is worth is a different question. $300 million, honestly, feels like a little bit of an overpay. He’s not the same kind of hitter as Fernando Tatís Jr. — no shortstop in the world is — but he’s clearly among the best shortstops in the game. For a player with a career .833 OPS, $30 million a year for 10 years seems just a tad high…but then again, he’s a shortstop, and they can’t usually hit; he’s an excellent defender and a solid base-stealer; he’s still only 27.
Plus, there’s the fact that it doesn’t really matter whether $300 million for Lindor would be an overpay or not. Fans sometimes get deeply concerned about whether a player is making more than he’s “worth.” Maybe it’s because they’re deeply concerned with Steve Cohen’s money; maybe they’re just righteously indignant. But really, I can’t repeat the old saying enough: it’s not your money. No one should mind how much money Francisco Lindor makes compared to what his numbers say he should make, unless the amount he makes ends up interfering with the Mets’ ability to pay other players — which, considering Steve Cohen’s vast fortune, it shouldn’t.
That’s not to say that the Mets should overpay just for the sake of spending money, but Lindor, paradoxically, is an overpay who’s worth it. Put it this way: even if $300 million for Lindor is an overpay, how would you reallocate that money to be more valuable than Francisco Lindor? You can’t. It’s not like there’s another Francisco Lindor out there who will be cheaper because no one has noticed him. You can spend less on a shortstop, and you can even spend more “efficiently,” but the end result will just be that you have a worse shortstop.
As Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman said in 2016, “if you’re always rational about every free agent, you will finish third on every free agent.” When you think about it, it’s almost obvious. If baseball was a completely rational market, I wouldn’t pay hundreds of dollars for clothing with Mets logos on it. But if you want to win, sometimes you have to spend the extra dollar to do it. Just like an autographed Mets jersey, Francisco Lindor’s only real “worth” is whatever the highest bidder is willing to pay for him. We can only hope that bidder is the Mets.
Keith
On Friday, as the Mets played the Cardinals, the SNY booth turned to discussing Insomnia Cookies. Honestly, I don’t remember why. Maybe they were talking about “The Cookie Club,” the SNY web series featuring Dom Smith and J.D. Davis. The show, of course, is sponsored by Insomnia Cookies.
“It’s a good name for the cookies,” Keith Hernandez said. “I mean, sugar can keep you up at night.”
Later on, in a completely different conversation, the booth turned to Keith to get his perspective.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’ve got a chocolate egg in my mouth.”
A little bit later, Keith weighed in on how the Cardinals were playing.
“Cardinals’ defense has just been ‘El Stinkowski,’” he said.
I don’t have any reaction, spin, or analysis; I’m just presenting these Keith Hernandez quotes. There’s no reason to write about the Mets if you can’t throw around Keith quotes like “El Stinkowski.”
Christie
Chris Christie has joined the Mets’ board of directors. The Mets announced the news at 5:00 on Friday, which should tell you exactly what kind of reaction they expected.
The most interesting part of the Christie news, actually, isn’t Christie himself. It’s a kind of niche sociological experiment: the ultimate debunking of Twitter as a tool of retweet-powered meritocracy.
Approximately 377,000 people have tweeted the exact same joke: “Uh oh, after Chris Christie joined the Mets they closed the Shea Bridge!” If Twitter were a meritocratic “marketplace of ideas,” all these tweets would gain roughly the same amount of traction. Obviously, that’s not what happened. The ones from people with lots of followers got their likes and retweets; the ones from random accounts with 214 followers just sat there looking sad and lonely.
Of course, you can’t mention the comedians of Mets Twitter without mentioning Richard Staff, whose wife isn’t coming back. He, at least, came up with something original.
“The Mets hiring Chris Christie seems bizarre,” he wrote, “until you remember that he has prior experience with building back after the devastation of Sandy.”