This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo’s Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
NEW YORK — November is supposed to be a slow month on the baseball calendar, and in many ways it is. Top free agents rarely sign in November, preferring to let their markets take shape over the course of weeks. Only minor trades tend to occur.
Yet plenty of news does happen in the month following the World Series, as the Mets proved during a busy first week of the offseason. I’d like to use this newsletter space to highlight three of the more notable news items to come out of this week, putting my spin on what they mean.
Pete Alonso, Edwin Díaz opt out
This was inevitable, procedural, whatever you want to call it. Whenever a player’s expected market exceeds the value of his contract option, he’s going to decline that option — even if his intention is not to leave.
While Alonso and Díaz have both stated desires to stick around Flushing long-term, it’s entirely possible one or both do depart. Díaz in particular just entered what appears to be a relatively shallow market for relief pitchers, in which he’ll be the top prize. Expect lots of teams to bid on him. The great unknown here is whether Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns will be among those to bid with abandon, or if he’ll stick to his career-long policy of not investing heavily in relievers. His choice will likely make the difference between Díaz staying or going.
The problem for the Mets is that no obviously great alternatives exist at first base or closer. And yet even if they re-sign both Alonso and Díaz, they will be no better than the team that just missed the playoffs. They’ll need to do more. All these factors make this offseason so fascinating for Stearns, who’s under tons of pressure to make the right choices.
By the way, of all the Mets’ contract decisions, the no-brainer of the year was exercising Brooks Raley’s $4.75 million team option. He was nails for the club after returning from Tommy John surgery. Even though Raley will be 38 next season, he shows no signs of slowing down.
The rest of the way, Soto slashed .285/.418/.596 with 35 homers and 31 steals in 105 games — numbers that outstripped even those of Shohei Ohtani. For the final four months of the season, Soto was either the league’s best hitter or a very close runner-up.
It’s impossible to say what caused his two-month slump to start the year, but if it had anything to do with an adjustment period after signing with a new team, that’s a promising thought heading into next season. Now fully acclimated and smack in the middle of his physical prime, Soto has a chance to produce an all-time campaign at age 27. He won’t win the MVP this year, but he’ll be among the favorites to do so in 2026.
Antoan Richardson, Jeremy Hefner bolt for Braves
More than a few eyebrows shot up around the baseball industry on Wednesday, when the Braves announced they had hired both Richardson as first-base coach and Hefner as pitching coach. The Hefner news wasn’t shocking, considering he’s a bright young coach who drew plenty of interest after the Mets decided not to retain him. The Richardson hiring was.
This season, Richardson drew consistent praise for improving the performance of Soto and other Mets on the basepaths. Unlike Hefner, the team invited Richardson back. The fact that Richardson left over a money dispute may seem illogical for one of the richest teams in the league, but New York clearly doesn’t place premium value on base coaches.
Only time will tell whether that and other coaching decisions come back to haunt the Mets. For now, this one is just a head-scratcher.
