The Mets’ free-agent approach and Pete Alonso plan is exactly what David Stearns said it would be

Whether you like the plan or not, David Stearns has stuck to his word on what strategy he was following this offseason.

Namely, that unless it was to sign 25-year-old Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Mets would not be tying up long-term future payroll.

Instead, they would try to assemble a 2024 contender by improving the depth and defense around returning stars Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor and Kodai Senga, while counting on the return to health of Edwin Diaz and Starling Marte and a step forward from Francisco Alvarez.

I believe Stearns is attempting to construct a roster that he could approach in multiple ways: 1) If the Mets are contenders, he could augment before the July 30 trade deadline using a more attractive depth of prospects than the Mets have had in recent years. 2) If they are not contenders, he could further build on that farm base by being sellers in July with an eye on going for it in 2025 when most (and potentially all) of the voluminous dead money is off their books while 3) leaving space for young players to prove or disprove they belong as the season transpires because — again — the goal is to have a clearer picture, in terms of talent and finances, of where the team is at the end of this season.

To this last end, I am not positive the Mets are going to bring in a veteran designated hitter this offseason. They might, but:

1. The Mets want to gain a better idea of what they have in Brett Baty, DJ Stewart and Mark Vientos. That is easier done if there are DH at-bats available rather than tied up with a J.D. Martinez or Justin Turner.

If the Mets were prioritizing winning in 2024 above the big picture, they definitely would get a veteran bat. And they might go for one of those more proven hitters even with their current strategy. But those proven, one-dimensional bats are the easiest thing to find at the deadline if the Mets decide they need it. Plus …

2. I do not believe Steve Cohen has the payroll on full speed ahead like he did last season. The Mets still are going to have MLB’s largest payroll for luxury-tax purposes — and not by a little. The agreement with Sean Manaea takes the projection to around $320 million.

If Cohen has put a lid at, say, $337 million (or $100 million more than the first threshold), then is there enough remaining for at least one and possibly two relievers plus the veteran bat? Perhaps that is why the Mets are open to trading Omar Naravez (who counts $7.5 million in 2024 for luxury tax purposes).

Remember that the Mets have roughly $70 million in dead money that counts toward the 2024 payroll via trades of James McCann, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. The Mets will not say it out loud, but they are going to be huge fans of Verlander staying under 140 innings for the Astros in the coming season. That is because if Verlander does fail to reach 140 innings then the veteran righty’s $35 million option for 2025 does not trigger and thus neither does the Mets’ $17.5 million obligation to offset that amount. That would eliminate all the dead money for the 2025 payroll (at least for now — let’s see how they feel about Marte in a few months).

And let’s appreciate what being $100 million over the tax would mean in 2024. As Ron Blum of the Associated Press reported, the Mets had a $374.7 million payroll for luxury-tax purposes last year, $83.6 million more than ever had been assessed. On that, Cohen paid a luxury tax of $100,781,932, or $57.2 million more than any team ever had.

At, say, a $337 million payroll in 2024, the tax bill would be $85.4 million, including $44 million of tax on the $40 million by which the Mets would be exceeding the top threshold of $297 million — this is the “Steve Cohen Tax” where as a repeat offender at the highest level, he would be charged 110 percent for the amount spent over $297 million.

Look, Cohen might turn out to be a bad owner. That remains to be seen. But the calls that he is cheap seem insane when you consider the bill he paid last year and what he is projected to pay this year, even if there is a cutback in payroll, not to mention how much has been invested behind the scenes, for example to try to modernize the Mets’ operations.

The only greater hysteria currently among Mets fans involves Alonso’s future.

Once more, I would say Stearns is (to date) being proven honorable to his public word. He said he expected Alonso to be the first baseman when the season began. And that seems pretty certain.

Beyond that, I see Alonso and the Mets in quite a similar situation as the Yankees and Aaron Judge faced going into Judge’s walk season after 2022. The sides had very different opinions of what Judge’s value was. Judge then went out and had a historic season and forced the Yankees to go way beyond their comfort zone to retain the elite power hitter.

The differences I see between Alonso and Judge are:

1. Judge was represented by Page Odle and Alonso is repped by Scott Boras. So the Yankees saw the potential to maybe get a long-term deal done in spring training that the Mets might not because Boras’ policy generally is to take his best players to free agency and let the market dictate their worth.

2. I could not imagine the Yankees trading Judge during the season, though if they were non-contenders in 2022, who knows? But if the Mets are non-contenders, I can see them at least listening on Alonso in July.

For now, though, there is a lot of hysteria surrounding Alonso and how he must be signed and that it is a mandate on Cohen’s ownership. But that is when we don’t know what kind of year Alonso or the Mets are about to have, and with the knowledge that if Alonso really wants to stay and has the kind of year that forces Cohen’s hand — a Judge-level walk year — that no one is going to outbid Cohen.

We also still don’t know whether Cohen is ready to spend a lot more than I am speculating in 2024. Maybe he and Stearns are still hatching something bigger before the season. If the Mets are contenders, I would think Cohen would take on money in July. For now, though, I think the only certain item remaining on Stearns’ offseason Bingo card is to add a reliever, preferably a lefty. It doesn’t mean the Mets won’t add two relievers or that veteran bat or try to find another depth starter.

I just know they are very much in the lefty relief market that does not include the best of the group: closer Josh Hader. The southpaw perhaps lined up to get the next-highest salary is Matt Moore, which might take him out of consideration for the Mets.

They have been more associated with Wandy Peralta and Brent Suter, who actually fared far better against righties last season while with the Rockies. Stearns knows Suter well from his Brewers days.

And the Mets already have signed Harrison Bader and Luis Severino, two ex-Yankees whom Mets manager Caros Mendoza knows well from his Yankees days. So Mendoza would know, for example, what a good teammate Peralta was with the Yankees.

If the Mets try for a righty reliever, they have many choices, but one name to keep an eye upon is John Brebbia.

Got my attention

The Dodgers cut payroll last season and lost each member of their projected starting rotation — Tony Gonsolin, Clayton Kershaw, Dustin May, Noah Syndergaard and Julio Urias — for a significant period of time. They were expecting they might take a step back last season to break in younger players, clean up their payroll and set themselves up moving forward for another sustained run.

They won 100 regular-season games and ran away with the NL West. They did this without a starter coming close to qualifying for the ERA title — Kershaw’s 131 ⅔ innings were the team high. It was the 11th straight year the Dodgers made the playoffs, the 10th time in that period they won the division and the fourth time in a row in a 162-game season in which they won triple-digit games.

That is the organization that has invested $1 billion-plus this offseason to secure Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Teoscar Hernandez.

It has made the Dodgers the Goliath of the sport, the No. 1 team everyone will be gunning to take down.

But if the Dodgers really didn’t take a step backward last year, why would this refurbished club not, at minimum, romp to the postseason?

The answer is they probably will coast in the NL West. The Diamondbacks are good, but that is good enough to perhaps get to 90 wins after their surprising run to the NL pennant in 2023. The Padres have taken a few steps backward without Juan Soto and have lots of rotation questions. The Giants are having another offseason in which they are having trouble getting stars to take their money. And the Rockies will be in the competition for the worst team in the majors.

But if you are looking for one area where the Dodgers can be exposed: How much quantity they can get from a rotation that seems more set up for the kind of high-end stuff craved in the postseason than to log big innings from April through September?

The current projected group of Yamamoto, Glasnow, Walker Buehler, Bobby Miller and Emmet Sheehan combined to throw 304 ⅔ major league innings in 2024. Now, of course, that is a bit of a parlor trick because Buehler spent the year rehabbing after Tommy John surgery and Yamamoto threw 171 regular-season innings in Japan.

But the Dodgers will have to baby Buehler back to full usage. Will they have to work in a sixth starter to help Yamamoto’s transition from pitching once a week for the Orix Buffaloes? Glasnow threw 120 innings last season, a career high. And Miller and Sheehan are coming off of their rookie seasons.

Gonsolin (Tommy John surgery) almost certainly will not pitch in 2024, and May (flexor tendon surgery) is iffy. Like Ohtani, they are more factors for 2025 than the coming season.

But the Dodgers’ farm production has been terrific, and in Michael Grove, Gavin Stone, Nick Frasso and Landon Knack, they have well-regarded arms who should play a factor in 2024.

The Dodgers have been frustrated by winning so often in the regular season over the past decade and capturing just one title in the 2020 pandemic season. They were swept in three games by the Diamondbacks last October as their starters — Kershaw, Miller and Lance Lynn — combined to yield 13 runs in 4 ⅔ innings.

In theory, the high-end stuff possessed by Yamamoto, Buehler, Glasnow and Miller should make Los Angeles more bulletproof come the postseason.

And it seems as if the Dodgers sure are all-in this year, so if they need to add further to their starting pitching group, they have the motivation and farm system to do what is necessary.

For now, though, any competitor looking for the soft underbelly of Goliath should look to just how many innings the Dodgers rotation can provide in 2024.

Roster stuff maybe only I notice

In our weekly countdown of which organizations would have the best 26-man rosters if they had to rely on just players who signed their first pro contracts with the franchise, we will do two more this week, beginning with No. 15 Boston.

In actuality, the way I have been doing this, the Red Sox should have been in the bottom five because it is not just about talent accumulation, it is about forming a representative roster, which — among other items — means having not just a starting catcher but a backup, too. And the only original Red Sox who has caught in the majors in each of the past two seasons is Christian Vazquez.

The Red Sox’s kingdom for a Ryan Lavarnway.

The Red Sox also went from having 52 of their originals play in the majors in 2022 to 41 last season, which was sixth-fewest, as longtime major leaguers such as Jose Iglesias, Jed Lowrie, Anibal Sanchez, Travis Shaw and Hunter Strickland did not play in the majors in 2023.

The Red Sox’s strength is high-end position players such as Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers. Their team (which does not include Frankie Montas because he pitched in just one game last season):

C: Vazquez
1B: Anthony Rizzo
2B: Mauricio Dubon
SS: Bogaerts
3B: Devers
LF: Andrew Benintendi
CF: Jarren Duran
RF: Betts
DH: Triston Casas
Bench: Santiago Espinal, Manny Margot, Yoan Moncada, Masataka Yoshida
Rotation: Jalen Beeks, Brayan Bello, Kutter Crawford, Tanner Houck, Michael Kopech
Closer: Ryan Pressly
Bullpen: Daniel Bard, Chris Martin, Chris Murphy, Gregory Santos, Gabe Speier, Brandon Walter, Jordan Weems

At No. 14 is Arizona.

The Diamondbacks’ strength? Among other items, they had four originals play at least 300 innings in center field: Corbin Carroll, Jazz Chisholm, Alek Thomas and Daulton Varsho. Thomas played so well in the postseason, in particular, that he is the pick for center on the roster:

C: Jose Herrera
1B: Paul Goldschmidt
2B: Jose Caballero
SS: Dansby Swanson
3B: Geraldo Perdomo
LF: Carroll
CF: Thomas
RF: Chisholm
DH: Dominic Fletcher
Bench: Varsho, Jake McCarthy, Michael Perez, Pavin Smith
Rotation: Tommy Henry, Wade Miley, Ryne Nelson, Brandon Pfaadt, Max Scherzer
Closer: Jhoan Duran
Bullpen: Andrew Chafin, Taylor Clarke, Kevin Ginkel, Tyler Holton, Colin Poche, Andrew Saalfrank, Alex Young

Last licks

If you read my column on the pros and cons involved in signing Blake Snell, first of all thanks. Second, I noted how he performed against the seven teams who averaged five runs or better and how he performed on the road.

It is not a make-or-break item. But I do like to use it as part of the picture when I am deciding on the Cy Young Award and what I think about free agents.

I want to see if a pitcher is feasting on bad offenses or using a good pitcher’s park to spruce up his results. Snell performed very well against the best offenses and on the road.

In doing the research, I also found some other items that I found interesting and I hope you do as well.

There were 125 pitchers who faced at least 100 batters against those seven highest-scoring offenses. The best ERA was the 0.65 of Mike Clevinger, who is still a free agent. Others include Steven Matz (third at 1.55), Michael King (fourth at 1.76) and Domingo German (fifth at 1.93 — and that does not include his perfect game against the A’s, the lowest-scoring team in the majors).

The worst?

That was Luis Severino at 11.25.

Among pitchers who threw at least 50 innings on the road, Snell’s 1.82 ERA was the best. King, who will try to help the Padres overcome the loss of the Cy Young-winning Snell, was second at 2.31 and AL Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole was third at 2.34.

The worst?

The Mets’ David Peterson at 7.47.