The Mets tried to get clever with Christian Cairo, but the Dodgers weren’t interested in playing along.
After New York signed Cairo to a major league split contract and then waived him, Los Angeles stepped in and claimed him off waivers. Cairo had been a late-season pickup for the Mets after they grabbed him from the Philadelphia Phillies, and the idea behind the split deal was simple: make him less appealing to other clubs by attaching a higher minor league salary. It didn’t work.
That kind of maneuver has become familiar for the David Stearns-led Mets, who have already used multiple split contracts this offseason. Cairo is just the latest example of how those deals can be used to try to keep depth pieces in the organization. But as the Dodgers just showed, another team can still decide the player is worth the price.
The Mets did manage to sneak Kyren Paris through waivers. Paris is out of options, but unlike Cairo, he has not yet appeared in a big league game, and for now he stays in the organization.
This isn’t a one-off tactic for New York, either. The club used the same approach with Richard Lovelady last year, only for the Washington Nationals to claim him. In that case, Washington was willing to absorb the minor league salary and see what Lovelady could do at the major league level.
The timing of all this fits the season. Cairo, Paris and the rest of the roster churn are part of the usual early-November shuffle, with three weeks left before the MLB lockout. It’s the kind of housekeeping that feels a little like dusting off the bookshelf before the whole house gets torn down.
Robert Stock is another Mets player on a split contract, and the expectation is that he’ll eventually be DFA’d before the team tries to slip him through waivers as well. His situation lines up more with Paris than Cairo, since any club that claims him would have to keep him on the active major league roster because he lacks options. The Mets’ goal there is obvious: keep him around as minor league depth.
The Dodgers won’t be the last team to complicate these plans, either. Split contracts usually pay less than a million dollars on the minor league side and between $1-2 million on the major league side, and it’s that minor league salary that can scare teams off. This time, though, Los Angeles wasn’t bothered.
For the Mets, Cairo is now gone, and with him goes one depth arm they were clearly hoping to keep close. The Dodgers won’t need to waive him to hold onto him, so there’s a real chance he stays put and New York never gets another shot at bringing him back.
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