You Can't Buy California Sun
Missing out on Yoshinobu Yamamoto doesn't mean the Mets did anything wrong
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 have fond memories of Ike Davis’ breakout rookie season, I’m confident it’s the book for you, and I hope you’ll give it a look.
By now, you’ve heard that Yoshinobu Yamamoto will join Shohei Ohtani and Tyler Glasnow on the Dodgers, a fact that A) is vaguely annoying, and B) would have been really cool if they still played in Brooklyn. The Mets, the story goes, made Yamamoto the same offer the Dodgers did: $325 million over 12 years. Yamamoto chose the Dodgers, because there’s apparently something alluring about California.
From reporting both contemporaneous and subsequent, we’ve been able to gather a fairly clear picture of how the negotiations went: the day Yamamoto signed, the Mets, Yankees, and Dodgers all upped their offers significantly. In the end, it came down to the Yankees and the Dodgers, and Yamamoto made his choice.
The uproar was predictable and uniform: why didn’t the Mets offer more? Surely they knew the Dodgers were the favorite; why didn't they blow them out of the water with a higher offer? When will Steve Cohen finally get serious about spending?
Look: in a vacuum, it’s a fair point. $325 million is a lot of money, but it’s less than 1/3 the value of Cohen’s art collection. I would give it to Yamamoto in a second (unless I was some poor person who really needed it). Maybe I would have given him $375 million. Maybe $400 million. What else am I going to do with it?
But the real world isn’t a vacuum, and in the real world, the Mets didn’t do anything wrong as they worked to woo Yamamoto to Queens. Steve Cohen flew to Japan to meet him, then hosted Yamamoto and Mets coaches at his house. The Mets were among the three finalists, and matched the offer that Yamamoto ended up accepting. They weren’t cheap; they didn’t give up too early; they didn’t fail to put in the work. Yamamoto simply wanted to go somewhere else.
Really, this is hardly even an arguable point. As the New York Post reported (emphasis mine), “the Mets’ offer was among the first received by Yamamoto’s camp and the team was never offered an opportunity to increase the bid.” Reading between the lines, in other words, the Mets came in with a record offer; Yamamoto’s camp asked the Dodgers to match it; the Dodgers agreed; the deal was done.
Exactly where in the process did Cohen and the Mets go wrong? It’s beyond clear that once the Dodgers matched the offer, Yamamoto was completely satisfied, as evidenced by the fact that his team didn’t even come back to the Mets to try for another, higher offer. Would the Mets have offered more if they’d been asked? We have no idea — because they didn’t get the chance. Because Yamamoto wanted to sign with the Dodgers.
An even higher offer from the Mets could never have changed the fact that Yamamoto grew up rooting for the Dodgers. Nor could it have given Yamamoto the chance to play with Shohei Ohtani under the Hollywood sign, in California weather, for a team that’s gone to the playoffs 11 years in a row. We know this because Yamamoto didn’t even ask for a higher offer. He’d gotten all he wanted.
If the Mets had a magic “Sign Yamamoto” button and decided not to press it, that would have been — you can quote me on this — bad. But that button doesn’t exist. It’s certainly upsetting to miss out on a free agent of his level, but just because an outcome is upsetting for the Mets doesn’t mean the Mets did anything wrong.