Now that the New York Mets have mostly finished their offseason overhaul, there aren’t a lot of issues left for the New York media to play up. That’s a group that needs to be busy stirring up controversy to be happy, so there is a small downside to Mets GM David Stearns having nearly finished the job.
The subject of a possible extension for new ace Freddy Peralta is the logical place for a lot of that attention to go, and Tim Britton and Will Sammon did some speculation about what that extension might look like. It’s a valid topic, so let’s take a look at what they came up with and see if it might play in the real world when the time comes to extend Peralta.
The projection Britton and Sammon chose was based on four more years of team control, which is a reasonably assumption based on Stearns' ongoing aversion to long-term deals. Bumping it to an AAV of $28 million feels light, though, especially if Peralta comes anywhere close to duplicating his numbers in with the Milwaukee Brewers last season.
Their comps are off, too. The names Britton and Sammon used included pitchers like Luis Castillo, Joe Musgrove, Tyler Glasgow, Dylan Cease and Ranger Suarez. They’re all good pitchers, but right now Peralta is a cut above. Cease’s deal with the Toronto Blue Jays took him past his age-34 season, and it was for $210 million, but Cease’s deal contained a considerable amount of deferred money.
These projections also ignore an obvious factor—namely, that the market for starting pitchers will continue to go up. Peralta’s agency, ACES, has been open to extensions before, and it’s probably a good thing for the Mets that they did an eight-year extension with third baseman and fan favorite David Wright back in 2012.
As Britton and Sammon pointed out, there’s no reason to rush into this level of extension. We also don’t know the level to which Peralta believes in and is willing to bet on himself, which is a huge factor for many players. We also still don’t know how well he’ll adapt to pitching in New York given that he’s just arrived.
Given Peralta’s track record and the level of consistency he’s shown, there’s no reason for him to take an extension with an AAV of less that $35 million, and even that number might be a little light. Given the numbers the Mets were willing to throw around for free agent outfielder Kyle Tucker before the Dodgers swooped in and stole him away, an AAV of $40 million for 4-5 years feels like the starting point for this particular conversation.