Mets have gotten even better by designating Robinson Canó for assignment. In English, this means that they removed him from their roster and will most likely pay him the rest of the money owed on his contract. There is the possibility of another team picking him up off of waivers, but I doubt anyone will want him based on his awful performance. He is hitting .195 with an OPS+ of 50, meaning that he is hurting the Mets chances of winning whenever he is in the lineup.
The Mets can pay him the remaining amount of his salary because they have the richest owner in professional sports in Steve Cohen, who has a net worth of over 17 BILLION dollars. This is a luxury that only a handful of teams can afford. If Canó was still with the Seattle Mariners, they could never make this same move due to payroll restrictions. Instead, they fleeced the Mets by shipping him off to New York with Edwin Diaz for Jared Kelenic and other prospects.
This is yet another cautionary tale of long-term contracts in Major League Baseball. As far as the players are concerned, it’s great for them. They have immense talent and if they can earn large amounts of money, I am all for it. From the standpoint of the teams and fans, I hate it. I understand the large contracts to players like Wander Franco and Fernando Tatis Jr. because they are young players who will continue to prosper for years to come. But when players like Albert Pujols sign a ten-year contract with the Los Angeles Angels at age 31, you don’t have to be a CFO of a Fortune 500 company to see how this deal doesn’t make any sense.
I was fifteen years old when Pujols signed and even in my immature teenage state I could clearly see that there was no way that Pujols, as good as he had been, would be as productive at 41 as he was at 31, let alone 41! Major League owners seemingly learned nothing as two years later the Mariners signed Robinson Cano to a ten-year deal with the Mariners. Feel free to refer to the paragraphs above if you need a refresher about how well that turned out.
I do not think long-term contracts are going away in baseball, I just hope that owners and front offices across the league are smarter and lock up touted prospects early to a more team-friendly contract. This way when the contract ends, they are not paying a player to sit on the bench for his last years. I am not pro-player or pro-owner in this situation, I am merely an advocate for the health of baseball. I want the sport to thrive and the best way to do that is ensure players are satisfied with salaries and teams can be competitive and not bogged down by financial constraints.
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