Just before his first game as the Mets’ shortstop, Francisco Lindor set an franchise record late Wednesday night: He turned into the highest-paid player in team history.
Lindor and the Mets agreed to a 10-year, $341 million contract extension that begins in 2022, as per an individual with direct knowledge on the agreement. The individual was granted anonymity because the team had not formally made the declaration.
Lindor, 27, joined the Mets from Cleveland in a six-player trade on Jan. 7. His new deal, coupled with his $22.3 million compensation for 2021, means that the new Mets’ owner, Steven A. Cohen, has submitted $363.3 million to Lindor, breaking the past record for a Mets player: an eight-year, $138 million contract with the former third baseman David Wright.
An stylish switch-hitter with charisma that appears to be made for New York, Lindor is a vocation .285 hitter who hit 32 grand slams in 2019. He midpoints around 20 takes for every season and has made four All-Star teams, won two Gold Gloves and assisted Cleveland with arriving the playoffs four times.
Just two players have richer contracts than Lindor: the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout (12 years, $426.5 million) and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Mookie Betts (12 years, $365 million). Like Lindor, Betts marked not long prior to first day of the season a year ago subsequent to going to his new group in an trade.
The Mets might dare to dream that their union with Lindor works just as the Dodgers’ with Betts, who had starred for the Boston Red Sox. In Betts’ debut season in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won their first World Series title since 1988. The Mets have a considerably longer dry spell; their last title was in 1986.
For Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire who is supposed to be the richest owner in baseball, the deal caps a busy first off-season. Beforehand a minority owner of the Mets — the team he has loved since childhood — Cohen spent a record $2.475 billion to purchase the franchise from the Wilpon family, encouraging to spend considerably more aggressively, yet in addition carefully.
With that in mind, he installed a seasoned as team president: Sandy Alderson, the head supervisor of the Mets’ last flag champ, in 2015. Cohen put money behind Alderson’s determined, rational approach; notwithstanding their newly discovered abundance, the Mets didn’t just outbid the field for each appealing free agent.
They bolstered the roster throughout, signing catcher James McCann, reliever Trevor May, starter Taijuan Walker and others. In any case, the exchange for Lindor and starter Carlos Carrasco was the genuine upset, and reaching a long-term deal, not long before Lindor’s purposeful first day of the season cutoff time, gives the Mets a star foundation through 2031.
McCann and Walker seemed especially excited about the deal on Twitter late Wednesday, with McCann composing that he was unable to sleep, citing the extension and opening day.