How the Mets have done stockpiling good players to create a sustainable winner

We hear all of the time from Steve Cohen and David Stearns about building a sustainable winner. But what exactly does that phrase mean? In its simplest form, you could say it means entering the season with expectations of making the playoffs – year after year after year. Yet even if we accept that meaning, the question still remains on what needs to be done to make that happen. You have to stockpile pieces, ones that are going to be meaningful contributors for a number of years.

Not every meaningful piece is going to be around for more than a year or two. It’s hard to argue that Jose Iglesias and Luis Severino weren’t meaningful players on a team that advanced to the NLCS. Yet it looks like it’s one and done for both of those players and the Mets. Still, if you look at a team like the Dodgers – one that’s been to the playoffs in 12 straight seasons – you see a bunch of players who’ve been significant contributors for a number of years, among them Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy and Will Smith. Last year they added Teoscar Hernandez, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and this year it’s Roki Sasaki.

So, how do the Mets enter 2025 in this regard? How many meaningful pieces are here that have been – or will be – multi-year contributors? Let’s take a look at the players who already fit this category, along with ones that should. We’ll break this down by year they earned that status, which works out as follows:

2025 – Juan Soto, Clay Holmes
2024 – Sean Manaea, Mark Vientos, David Peterson, Jose Butto, Dedniel Nunez
2023 – Francisco Alvarez, Kodai Senga
2021 – Francisco Lindor
2019 – Pete Alonso, Edwin Diaz
2018 – Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil

This is certainly a subjective list – many might put Starling Marte here but did he play a significant role the past two years? - and one that might even change with some hindsight. Perhaps this time next year we’ll have Brett Baty, Reed Garrett, Tylor Megill, Sean Reid-Foley and Tyrone Taylor on it. And a few of those players we’d have to backdate before 2025. Or maybe someone comes in out of the blue. No one had Nunez as a multi-year, significant piece this time last year.

The one thing is that you want multiple players joining this list each year, as attrition will certainly hit, whether thru players leaving or just not maintaining their production. If we did this list during 2023 Spring Training, Marte would have been on it, along with Mark Canha and perhaps Eduardo Escobar, too. And the latter two ended the year on different teams.

Because of their payroll, the Mets are able to have nine players on my list above making at least $12.5 million. And that doesn’t count Marte or Frankie Montas, with the latter not exactly a slam dunk to be a meaningful contributor for either the 2025 or the 2027 Mets.

When we break down the list, we see that eight of them came up thru the farm system, four as free agents and two from trades. Without doing this for every team, it’s difficult to know if this is standard or an outlier in some way. What we do know is that if the two that came from trades – Diaz and Lindor – both signed long-term deals with the Mets, although Diaz can opt out after this season.

With four players carrying a contract of at least $20 million for at least the next three years, the hope is that more players from the farm system will become meaningful contributors. And there are certainly realistic options, especially if the high-priced players perform to expectations, lessening the need for young players to come up and be stars.

In a way, this list is helping us to identify the team’s core. From 2018-2021, the offensive core of the Mets was Alonso, Conforto, McNeil and Nimmo. The main issue with that core is that they weren’t all productive in the same season. And the secondary issue was that there wasn’t much in the way of help for our quartet.

Here’s a list of all of the hitters to amass at least a 2.0 fWAR in those four seasons.

2018 – Nimmo (5.0), Conforto (3.4), Asdrubal Cabrera (2.8)
2019 – Alonso (4.7), McNeil (4.7), Conforto (4.2), J.D. Davis (2.5)
2020
2021 – Lindor (3.9), Alonso (3.5), Nimmo (3.3), Jonathan Villar (2.0)

Even in 2020, the main four guys weren’t productive at the same time. While Conforto, McNeil and Nimmo combined for 4.9 fWAR, Alonso contributed just 0.3 fWAR. But while several other hitters performed well in the Covid year, the pitching was another story.

In 2022, Conforto left as a free agent, replaced by Lindor as the fourth member of the core. Here are the hitters to produce at least 2.0 fWAR each year:

2022 – Lindor (6.4), McNeil (5.6), Nimmo (5.4), Alonso (3.8), Marte (3.5), Canha (2.6)
2023 – Lindor (5.5), Nimmo (4.2), Alvarez (3.0), Alonso (2.8), McNeil (2.4)
2024 – Lindor (7.8), Vientos (2.9), Nimmo (2.7), Iglesias (2.5), Alonso (2.1)

It’s little wonder the 2022 squad won 101 games with that offensive production. And much like in 2020, the 2023 squad was done in by the pitching.

Lindor has led the team’s hitters in fWAR every year since he joined the team. We hope that Soto surpasses him this season. The top six hitters combined for 27.3 fWAR in 2022. Can this year’s squad top that mark? A rebound season from McNeil makes that a possibility. Soto, Lindor, Nimmo, Alonso, Vientos, Alvarez and McNeil give the Mets a chance for seven hitters to at least reach a 2.0 fWAR.

We know that five of those seven players will be here for a while. Alonso could leave after 2025 and after 2026 both he and McNeil could be gone. Will the farm system be able to fill out those spots or will the Mets have to turn to free agency? It will be easier – and less expensive – if the answer is the former.