RIP OMG NYC

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After waiting for seemingly forever and a day, Jose Iglesias gave up on the Mets requiting his love and offering him a new contract to come back and play with his friends. He signed up with the San Diego Padres yesterday.

He’ll make $3 million if he makes the big league club, plus potentially up to $1 million more in incentives. This comes two days after José Quintana signed up with the Milwaukee Brewers. With a little over three weeks to go before Opening Day 2025, the book is officially closed on the 2024 New York Mets. 

In a way, I’m relieved. Things were getting awkward with the man who moonlights as the recording artist Candelita. He was referring to the Mets as “we” as recently as two weeks ago and commenting on Mets Instagram posts like he was still employed in Queens. The Mets presumably didn’t even call after his replacement Nick Madrigal suffered a season-ending injury. Iglesias was still a free agent in March after a 3.1 bWAR 85-game season. He held on for as long as he could, and then some. 

Both parties will be fine. The Mets will still be really good without him. Iglesias won’t replicate his impressive 2024, but considering he wasn’t even in the majors in 2023, he’s in a much better place and should adequately produce for his new employers. Even if you cut his bWAR in half for 2025, the Padres will be pleased. And it’s not like San Diego is the town from Footloose. 

If I’m bothered by anything about the whole thing, it’s that the Mets and therefore most of the press are saying that the decision to not bring Iglesias back is a philosophical decision, and not a financial one. I don’t believe that to be true. 

Mets POBO David Stearns has gone on record as saying they much prefer players with roster flexibility when it comes to their bench. They want to be able to freely send someone down if they are struggling in the bigs and/or they feel the player is better off getting more playing time in Triple-A. Jon Heyman repeated this yesterday. Iglesias was out of minor league options and was (rightfully) looking for a major league deal. Madrigal had minor league options, as do Luisangel Acuña, Brett Baty, and Donovan Walton, the current candidates for the 26th spot on the Opening Day roster. But as former MLBer and ESPN analyst Eduardo Pérez pointed out the other day: if Iglesias wasn’t performing up to standards as the backup infielder on the major league squad, and someone claims him when you try to put him through waivers so you can demote him…what do you care? He was stinking up the joint. And if another team claims him, they have to take on his salary. 

If money wasn’t a factor at all, it would be a no-brainer to bring back Iglesias. If Iglesias wasn’t cutting it in 2025, then you could just designate him for assignment, like the Mets did with Joey Wendle in late May when they called up Candelita last season in the first place. If Candelita played well, but he was blocking Acuña and Baty who showed they deserved a role on the big boy club, then you can package one or both of the kiddos in a deal for a frontline starter like Dylan Cease at some point during the season. But employing Iglesias and a Cease is much more expensive than an Acuña or Baty, who each make the league minimum of $760,000. Keep in mind, because they’re over the third luxury tax threshold, Iglesias’ $3 million contract would cost the Mets $6.3 million because of the 110 percent penalty. And Cease’s salary in 2025 is $13.75 million. Even if they waited until the trading deadline to nab the Padres ace, with the tax penalty it’d cost Steve Cohen something like $8-9 million. 

But Steve Cohen has more money than God, you say. Why would he care? Reader, you’re right about Cohen being rich. But in a fun coincidence, the Associated Press reported hours before the Iglesias/Padres signing news came out that the Mets spent the most money out of any team, even the Dodgers, for the third year in a row last season. In fact, since he bought the Mets in November 2020, Cohen spent $1.36 billion in player contracts, which is more than the Marlins, Pirates, and Rays spent since 2004. And Cohen would rather not keep going over the luxury tax threshold and paying the insane overages. It seems that his marching orders to Stearns this past offseason was to at least try to get the competitive balance tax total for 2025 under $301 million, with the huge asterisk of but let’s try to get the 26-year-old generational talent Juan Soto. After nabbing Soto and signing some necessities to keep the team competitive on paper, it became clear that they were probably not going to accomplish their financial goal, making it easier in Cohen’s mind to say “screw it” and end the Pete Alonso free agency detente, costing him more money, but making the correct baseball decision. Still, it appears that Stearns’ job is to, no seriously, not spend more if you can help it. 

Like I said: it’s not a big deal that the Mets didn’t bring Iglesias back. The Mets roster is still looking pretty good as it is. And this isn’t a Wilpons kind of financial squeeze, far from it. I just want the truth. I hear it’ll set you free!

For what it’s worth, the Padres don’t come to Citi Field until September 16th. Who knows where Iglesias will be by then? Who knows where we will be?

The musical void left from the man behind “OMG” employing his services elsewhere has been immediately taken care of by none other than Kodai Senga. Late Tuesday night on his Instagram, Senga teased a new song by Yusuke featuring Alisa titled “Ghost Fork”, with the caption, “I can’t wait to blast this song at Citi Field. LFGM!!” Someone on Reddit yesterday found the song on YouTube, and listener, I am happy to report it is a banger.

It’s cool to see Senga reveal his sense of humor and more of his personality in his now third year in the United States. He’s an underrated character in this collection of personalities. The one problem with “Ghost Fork” is the line “To the K to the K to the K.” What is this, the Los Angeles Times?

Mark Vientos revealed to Jon Heyman that last October, during his great postseason run, that he was “super nervous.” So much so that he woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.  “I was just super anxious, super nervous.” Swaggy V insisted it was a good kind of anxiousness. “I want to have that same feeling. It makes me feel like I’m alive. It makes me feel fulfilled.” Whatever works, Swaggy V. 

It turns out Hurricane Helene late last September significantly messed with Pete Alonso and his wife Haley’s home in Tampa, Florida. Helene brought two feet of flooding upon their house. 

“But you know what will help you keep perspective about baseball?” Alonso asked Mike Lupica. “A hurricane that hit a lot of people harder than it hit us. I told people after Helene that we’d put in a new swimming pool, it just happened to have saltwater in it.” Yeah, that’d do it.

Bryce Harper revealed that he was willing to go back to the outfield if it meant the Phillies could sign Alonso. A shame that didn’t work out!

To combat his annoying habit of poor starts to the season, and to hopefully avoid getting injured like he did late in the regular season last year, Francisco Lindor is “pacing himself” this time around, purposely not putting himself in back-to-back spring training games just yet. 

Would AJ Minter sign an Elsa and Anna ball? Of course he would - the Mets wouldn’t upload a video of him declining to do such a fun thing by saying “Let it go”, would they?

The MLB The Show 25 ratings were released. Juan Soto leads the Mets and is tied with the lead in all of MLB with a 99 overall rating, naturally. (Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge are the other 99ers.) Francisco Lindor’s overall rating is 95, just like Mookie Betts, Bryce Harper, and José Ramírez. 

Twitter user @MetsJr69 reminded Met fans that if they unlocked BOGOs from the Mets Connect program last year, they better redeem those offers soon.

Jose Siri, aka El Rayo, appeared on the Meet at the Apple podcast in what was billed as his first interview conducted in English. He said he doesn’t mind the “Hey Siri” jokes. Phew. I usually don’t comment on things like these, but it was too weird to ignore: there was a weird cut late into the video where the camera stayed on Vito, one of the co-hosts, while Siri was talking, for a solid minute. Vito awkwardly checked his watch more than once, realizing they had to wrap up the interview. There’s a clear window behind Siri and all of the guests on that podcast. I guess someone behind him was doing something lewd? But it was strange that they didn’t cut to the other host of the pod, unless he too was checking his watch? Very strange. 

The new team store, aka the world’s worst kept secret, was officially announced yesterday as the Mets’ “new pop-up experience”. The grand opening of Mets House, located at 1 Union Square West, will be tomorrow at 11am. Mr. and Mrs. Met, Dwight Gooden, and Todd Zeile will be there, and the first 50 fans who show up will get two ticket vouchers for a home game this season. There are plenty of other deets here. It seems fun! Fun is good!

It turns out that Jose Ureña’s deal contains three opt-out dates: March 23rd, May 1st, and June 1st. At any of those times, Ureña can opt out of his contract if he isn’t on the major league roster and thinks he can find a big league job elsewhere. He’s seemingly 7th on the rotation depth chart at the moment. 

Christian Scott will throw on Monday for the first time since his hybrid elbow surgery. “Counting down the hours,” Scott said with a laugh. No matter how it goes, he’ll be missing the 2025 season. 

The Mets had the day off yesterday. Tonight they play the Astros - again - at 6pm on SNY. The starting pitcher will be the intriguing prospect TBD.