After previously reporting that Sean Manaea’s deal with the Mets would include $23.25MM in deferred payments, Will Sammon of The Athletic offered more details on the structure of Manaea’s contract this morning.
Manaea will earn equal $25MM salaries in all three years of the deal, adding up to the reported total guarantee of $75MM. However, $7.75MM of his salary will be deferred without interest each season, adding up to the reported total of $23.25MM in deferrals. As Sammon previously mentioned, the deferrals will be paid out in equal portions over 10 years from 2035-44. Sammon also notes that Manaea can earn standard additional incentives for making an All-Star appearance ($50K), winning a Gold Glove ($50K), winning LCS MVP ($50K), winning World Series MVP ($100K), and finishing top-three in Cy Young voting ($50K for first place, $25K for second place, $10K for third place).
The deferred payments mean that Manaea’s contract isn’t quite worth $75MM in present-day value. Therefore, the luxury tax hit for the Mets won’t be quite as high as his $25MM AAV. Jon Becker of FanGraphs suggests the present-day value of his AAV for luxury tax purposes is just over $22MM. That’s not entirely insignificant to the Mets, who will be paying the luxury tax once again in 2025. It’s also interesting that Manaea’s contract is about $1MM less valuable than the three-year, $67MM deal his former teammate Luis Severino signed with the Athletics. Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported last week that Manaea turned down that same offer from the A’s before they gave it to Severino instead. Of course, it’s not hard to understand why Manaea would rather pitch for the Mets than the A’s, but it’s interesting that he technically took a discount to re-sign with New York.
In another Mets update, Sammon theorizes that “contract length” is currently what’s holding up a deal between the Mets and Pete Alonso. Heyman recently made a similar suggestion, saying “I do think the years are the hang-up right now” (per Jon Heyman’s Insider Notebook on Bleacher Report). Back in December, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported the Mets were still “pushing hard” to reunite with Alonso. From Alonso’s perspective, it’s hard to picture a better fit than the only team he’s ever known. Yet, a deal hasn’t come together. A disagreement over contract length could certainly explain why.
Presumably, Alonso and his agent Scott Boras are still looking to beat the guaranteed money from the seven-year, $158MM extension he reportedly turned down from the Mets in the summer of 2023. To do so, he’d need to sign for at least $137.5MM this winter (he already earned the first $20.5MM in 2024 during his final year of arbitration). It’s hard to imagine Alonso approaching that number on anything shorter than a six-year contract. Meanwhile, it’s not hard to understand why teams would balk at offering a six-year contract to a 30-year-old first baseman coming off two consecutive down years.
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