Analyzing The Value Of Current Mets Contracts

Defining how valuable a player is and how much any player is worth in terms of a dollar amount is a tricky proposition teams have every offseason. The ultimate goal in building a roster is, of course, to find talent, but also, importantly, get that talent at a rate that makes sense and won’t harm the team in the long run. This is exactly the battle the New York Mets are currently having with Pete Alonso‘s representatives.

Well, what defines a “good contract?” Back in 2021, Fangraphs did a study defining how much one win above replacement (WAR) is worth in terms of a contract. In their study, they only took the 2.0-plus WAR players that signed deals then found the average, per million, per WAR. That table is below:

• 2018: $9.3 million per WAR
• 2019: $7.8 million per WAR
• 2020: $9.5 million per WAR
• 2021: $5.5 million per WAR
• 2022: $8.5 million per WAR

An article by the Paraball Notes continued this trend for the 2023 and 2024 offseason, finding the average, per million, per WAR to be the following:

• 2023: $4.6 million per WAR
• 2024: $6.7 million per WAR

If you averaged all these figures out, you would get a figure of $7.41 million per WAR. With this figure in mind, how do some of the current contracts the Mets have grade out?

Below organized are some of the Mets top performers last year sorted by Fangraph’s WAR metric. This WAR figure was multiplied by the $7.41 million figure above which should, in essence, give what each of those individuals “worth” is based on the market average over the last seven season.

Note, following Fangraphs, we are only examining players who posted at least 2.0 fWAR.

• Francisco Lindor: 7.8 fWAR x $7.41 million = $55.38 million per season
• Sean Manaea: 2.8 fWAR x $7.41 million = $20.75 million per season
• Brandon Nimmo: 2.7 fWAR x $7.41 million = $20.01 million per season

When comparing those above figures to what each player is set to make in 2025, by this imperfect methodology, based solely off last year’s performances, below shows what each player’s surplus value projects to be:

• Francisco Lindor: +$21.28 million
• Sean Manaea: +$0.54 million
• Nimmo: -$0.49 million

If we continued this exercise with some former Mets or current Mets free agents, this is what it would look like:

• Jose Iglesias: 2.5 fWAR x $7.41 million = $18.53 million
• Luis Severino: 2.1 fWAR x $7.41 million = $15.56 million
• Pete Alonso: 2.1 fWAR x $7.41 million = $15.56 million

Of those, only Severino has signed a contract, a three-year deal that averaged $22.333 million per season. So, based off that deal, if he replicates his 2024 performances, he would technically be a negative value based off his contact (-$6.773 million).

Final Thoughts

Again, this is not a perfect way to do things. A better picture would be to calculate a running average of each players WAR, over say a three-year period, then compare that way. Not to mention, there are several factors that would go into if each said player would receive a deal that expensive on the open market (age, etc.). Prime examples are the Alonso and Iglesias calculations above. No way is a 35-year-old going to net a deal worth around $18.53 million next season. On the flip side of that, given Alonso’s age, and offensive ability, he is going to net a deal much higher than his “$15.56 million value.”

Regardless, this is an interesting exercise to conduct and can at least signify some deals that are certainly providing strong value to your team.

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