Flush with offseason cash, Steve Cohen and the Mets have the Phillies in a tricky spot

Sometimes, you have to play the cards you are dealt. Other times, you have to play the cards you’ve dealt yourself. The Phillies will likely find themselves in that second category this offseason. Their cards are face up in front of them. Their chip stack is in the middle of the table. As Steve Cohen bids on the aces, John Middleton must hope his jokers turn into kings.

It’s a tortured metaphor. Hopefully you get the picture. Juan Soto probably isn’t walking through that door. Anybody who expects him to — or who faults the Phillies when he doesn’t — needs to know one thing about this year’s market. Cohen and the Mets are going to be setting the price points. Any bidding war that the Phillies end up winning probably would have been better off unwon.

Here’s the reality the Phillies are going to have to deal with. The Mets could pay Yankees star Soto an average annual value of $45 million a year, pay Orioles ace Corbin Burnes $30 million a year, and re-sign Pete Alonso to a $25 million-a-year deal and they’d still have a lower payroll than the one the Phillies already have. Think about that.

» READ MORE: Phillies offseason hinges on a $300 million question: How much more can John Middleton spend?

Don’t get lost in the details. Those AAVs are probably lower than they’ll end up being. But the point stands. The Mets are scary right now. That has nothing to do with them beating the Phillies in the NLDS. They were going to be scary regardless. The fear just happens to be a little more real now that we’ve seen what the Mets were capable of even before they shed $95-plus million in dead money from their payroll.

Truth is, the 2024 Mets weren’t a Cinderella story. They were a trust fund princess on a gap year. The roster that beat the Phillies in the NLDS accounted for only about $240 million of the Mets’ MLB-high $358 million estimated payroll. At the time, the Mets were spending roughly $41 million on players they’d released, plus another $53ish million on players they traded. You could spend an entire day laughing at the various oddities on their balance sheet.

Exhibit A: Between the $7.5 million accounted for by Omar Narváez, released in June, and the $8 million accounted for by James McCann, traded to the Orioles, the Mets were spending more money on catchers not on their roster than the Dodgers were spending on Will Smith, the fourth-highest-paid catcher in baseball.

Exhibit B: The Mets’ official payroll — i.e. the one used to determine luxury tax penalties — included $57.1 million in payments to the Rangers and Astros as part of their 2023 trades of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. That’s $100,000 less than the Mets were paying their entire playoff rotation (Kodai Senga, Sean Manaea, José Quintana, Luis Severino, David Peterson).

» READ MORE: Dave Dombrowski needs to fix his big 2024 mistake and find a left fielder

As of this offseason, all of that dead money is gone. The Mets will enter free agency with a payroll that includes about $117.5 million in guaranteed contracts. They are on the hook for Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, Starling Marte, Edwin Díaz, Jeff McNeil, and Senga. Beyond that, the world is their oyster.

That total doesn’t include a large chunk of their playoff roster — Quintana, Severino, and Manaea are all eligible for free agency, as is Alonso. It also doesn’t include pre-arbitration salaries for playoff contributors Mark Vientos, Francisco Alvarez, Reed Garrett, or Jose Búttó.

But let’s talk apples-for-apples. That $117.5 million figure? It’s $102.5 million less than the Phillies have tied up in guaranteed contracts for 2025. Which means the Mets will enter the offseason with at least $102.5 million more in spending power, assuming both teams are operating with the same upper limit, whatever it may be.

What is that upper limit for the Phillies? It’s a relevant question, to a certain extent. Dave Dombrowski fielded it at his end-of-season news conference, as he does every year.

Do the Phillies have the financial wherewithal to make a play for a free-agent star (like Soto)?

“I don’t think we need to have more star players,” Dombrowski said. “We have as many stars as about anybody in baseball. So I don’t think necessarily that you need to add more. John [Middleton] is very accommodating and giving, but you’re also in a position where you’re still working with a payroll. … Would you be open to it? Yes, but I think you have to be careful because sometimes it’s not only the star players, it’s also sometimes the supporting cast. And when you look at it again, we had eight All-Stars, right? I know they’re not all veteran guys, but that’s more than anybody in baseball.”

» READ MORE: Phillies outfield prospect Justin Crawford is on a track to the majors. Could it be in 2025?

Even if the Phillies can spend more, it may not matter. The real question is whether they can spend more than the other teams who will be bidding on a star like Soto. That answer is self-evident. No, they can’t. There is a bigger whale in the marketplace this year.

Dombrowski is going to have to get creative if he wants to substantively change the complexion of his team. The Phillies can’t count on shopping at the top free-agent market to fill their needs. They need to find value where other teams don’t see it in free agency. Or they need to swap value for value on the trade market. Mostly, they need to hope that the money they’ve already committed does not become as dead as it did for the Mets. Dombrowski and Middleton have written their big checks. Now, the players need to earn them.