The Mets’ offseason plans may not be the only thing on pause this December. With Major League Baseball and the Players Association still far apart on a new collective bargaining agreement, the league’s push for a salary cap could end up reshaping the financial rules of the sport.
For New York, that possibility cuts both ways. The Mets have already spent at a level that would make plenty of clubs blush, but a cap would introduce a new kind of pressure - one that could force every team to fit under a hard ceiling and, in theory, keep the lowest-spending clubs from falling too far below a floor. The projected numbers are just over $245 million for the cap and just over $171 million for the floor.
That floor probably won’t be the problem in Queens. Steve Cohen owns the Mets, after all. The ceiling is where things get interesting.
If baseball suddenly tried to make everyone compliant right away, the Mets would be in trouble. According to Cots Contracts, nine teams finished 2026 above the projected cap, while 12 landed below the floor.
New York, meanwhile, has already locked in more than $255 million in salary for nine players. That figure includes Bo Bichette opting into his current deal, but it does not include arbitration raises or any outside additions such as Tarik Skubal.
Still, a hard cap landing overnight is not the most likely path. The more realistic setup would be a gradual transition, giving clubs time to clean up their books.
If that’s the route baseball takes and the cap is fully in place by the 2028-29 offseason, the Mets would be sitting in a strong position. Their only long-term contracts beyond 2028 belong to Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor.
That’s part of why moving on from Brandon Nimmo’s contract made sense. It helped clear the deck for a future that could include either a salary cap or a more restrictive luxury tax system.
Cohen has already said he does not plan to keep spending into the tax forever, and David Stearns made the club’s thinking pretty clear in his end-of-season press conference. New York sees its best path as building around a farm system that supplies the core, then adding carefully chosen free agents around it.
There’s still a long way to go before anyone knows what the next labor deal will look like. But if the sport does move toward a new financial system, the Mets appear well-positioned to absorb it, thanks to a roster that doesn’t carry many long-term deals that could become a burden later.
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The game itself was replayed the next day and did not count in the standings, but Gardners individual numbers from that day still do. More than six decades later, his 15-inning outing remains the Mets record, untouched by every starter and reliever who has followed. [Read more 🡒]
Mets History Has One No-Hit Pattern Fans Will Want To Argue Over
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Jim Bunnings perfect game in 1964 and Max Scherzers no-hitter in 2015 sit near the top of that list for very different reasons, and the outcomes around those games were not always the same from one side of a twin bill to the next. Some of those Mets doubleheader no-hit games ended in losses, others in wins, which is part of what makes the pattern worth arguing about. It is not just a trivia quirk, either - it is a reminder that with this team, even the most brutal history often comes with a twist. [Read more 🡒]