The Next Extension?
Mark Vientos could become a source of fascinating insight into the front office
Big news: my book is out! It’s called “Only in Queens: Stories from Life as a New York Mets Fan,” and it’s available on Amazon in paperback and e-book format. If you read this newsletter and enjoy submerging yourself in random Mets seasons, I’m confident it’s the book for you, and I hope you’ll give it a look. Many thanks to Greg Prince for his write-up on Faith And Fear In Flushing (the spiritual forefather of this very newsletter).
Mark Vientos just keeps hitting. He has a 1.070 OPS and five home runs in 59 at-bats this season, and that’s not far from what Statcast says his numbers should be, considering he’s barreling up the ball, routinely hitting it more than hard enough to succeed. The sample size could hardly be smaller, but if Vientos’ strong stretch should continue, he will have found his stroke, and the Mets, their star.
And if Vientos keeps hitting, another question will quickly become relevant: should the Mets start working on getting him signed to an early-career contract extension?
I’m not saying that this will happen, and I’m certainly not saying that it should. It’s far too early to say either. But with David Stearns at the helm and extensions like this in vogue all around baseball — for players like Jackson Chourio, Corbin Carroll, Michael Harris II, Spencer Strider, Colt Keith, Ceddanne Rafaela, and others — it’s something that could quickly become a consideration.
Before we go any farther, a few points.
For one, the importance of these contracts can get fairly overblown. When the Braves extended Strider and Harris and Austin Riley, who joined Ronald Acuña Jr. and Ozzie Albies as players under Atlanta control for several more years than they otherwise could have been, a fairly common reaction was to note that this just made the Braves even scarier. But did it really? All it did was ensure that the Braves will hold the rights to a few players for a few years longer than they ordinarily would; in the present, nothing changed at all.
Sure, the 2029 Braves might be better with Harris and Strider and Riley under team control, and the Braves will have a bit more money to spend in free agency, and maybe the players will be so touched by Atlanta’s generosity that they’ll offer discounts when it comes time for their next deals. But 2029, as they say, is barely even a real year. We’ll worry about 2029 when we get there. In the present, the contracts didn’t change a thing, beyond the so-intangible-as-to-be-potentially-nonexistent “maybe he’ll be reassured by the extension and it will help him stay completely focused on the field” factor. Obviously, potential savings and extra years of control and keeping your team happy often make these contracts worthwhile moves, but if the Mets signed Mark Vientos to a nine-year extension today, the lineup tomorrow wouldn’t change a whit.
Side note to the side note: things look a little different with extensions like the one Fernando Tatis Jr. signed, which runs for 14 years, or the Mariners’ deal for Julio Rodríguez (13 years). But I can’t imagine a deal like that being in play for Vientos, so we’ll pass over the possibility.
So, Vientos. Let’s say on Aug. 1, he’s batting .290 with an .870 OPS and 18 home runs (certainly far from guaranteed). Could the Mets offer him a nine-year, $95 million extension? And would he take it?
On the Mets side, the answer, I think, is maybe, because we really don’t know. It’s a bold move to commit ten million dollars a year to a player for the next nine (or eight or ten or however many) years, based on that small a sample size. But the Mets also have a lot of payroll space opening up over the next two seasons. Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Jose Quintana, and James McCann (can you believe they’re still paying him?) will come off the books by the end of 2025, and Pete Alonso may well join them. The long-term deals for Francisco Lindor, Edwin Díaz, and Brandon Nimmo make up the bulk of what will be left; Kodai Senga and Jeff McNeil will also (likely) still be around, but other than that, as of now, they don’t have any other expensive obligations. Could they choose to use some of that space on a few extra years of Vientos?
Another side note (I apologize): the extension question will very much apply to Francisco Alvarez if he comes back from injury and starts hitting like the superstar he can be.
On the Vientos side, meanwhile, the answer is likewise “we have no idea” — we don’t have a window into his head, or his representation’s. But at the very least, an extension in the high eight figures would be hard to pass up.
Again, I’m not saying that an extension for Vientos will happen, nor that it should. I will direct you to this paragraph if you make a complaint along those lines (if that’s what brought you here, hello!). But there’s a new regime in charge, and Vientos could provide the first look at how the Stearns administration will deal with young players it wants around for the long haul. Will the Mets follow the Braves model and lock up their guys early and often? If Vientos keeps hitting, we may soon find out.