The New York Mets are coming off quite a disappointing season this year. After putting together a great offseason, they whiffed on the postseason and are set to lose a few key players in free agency.
Pete Alonso and Edwin Diaz are both free agents, and the Mets should be doing everything in their power to retain this pair of stars. Alonso could garner some attention from a handful of teams, but Diaz is likely going to have interest from more than six or seven teams.
Ryan Finkelstein of Just Baseball recently predicted the Mets would re-sign Diaz on a solid four-year, $80 million deal in free agency.
“Diaz’s last contract was a five-year, $102 million deal. Deferrals in the contract took the AAV for luxury tax purposes down to around $18.6 million per season,” Finkelstein wrote. “That was three years ago, so Diaz may not get a five-year deal this time around, but he should still command close $20 million per season on a three or four-year pact.”
Diaz should be one of the Mets’ top priorities this offseason. He’s one of the best closers in baseball, while some could make a good argument that he’s the most dominant of them all. As a result, the Mets need to make sure he spends the rest of his prime years in Queens.
It would also be a crushing blow to lose Diaz to another contender, specifically one in the National League. This would make the Mets’ path to the postseason much harder than it is right now.
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