Why Mets, with their giant payroll, won't repeat same mistakes from 30 years ago

Going on the premise that Major League Baseball will indeed play a season in 2022, there’s a good chance the Mets could have the highest payroll in the sport for the first time in 30 years. It could wind up pushing $300 million, compared to $45 million in 1992, which is a rather astonishing commentary on the game’s growth, but that’s not really the point here.

Instead, simply put, for the sake of a championship-starved fan base, let’s hope the money proves to be better spent than it was all those years ago.

Ah, 1992. Who could forget the season the Mets’ brass spent boldly in a desperate attempt to hang onto the fast-fading good vibes from the 1980s only to watch it turn into a disaster that sent the franchise reeling toward irrelevance for much of the 1990s?

Essentially, it turned out to be the end of an era, otherwise known as "The Worst Team Money Could Buy," the title of the book I co-authored with Bob Klapisch, chronicling the downfall of the post-'86 Mets and culminating with that ill-fated '92 season.

I bring it up now mostly to suggest the 2022 team should be much better equipped to handle the huge expectations that come with such a high payroll and avoid the missteps that doomed the ’92 Mets, who bumbled their way to a record of 72-90.

There was a litany of reasons for the epic failure of that team, starting with the overall talent level that was grossly overvalued by the front office (it’s still unfathomable that a year earlier, Frank Cashen, who brilliantly built the ’86 team, lost his mind and signed Vince Coleman, an artificial-turf creation, to replace the departed Darryl Strawberry…but I digress).

Anyway, for comparison purposes, I can boil it down to what should be two crucial differences.

1. The newly-hired managers: Buck Showalter vs. Jeff Torborg

2. The big-ticket free agent signings: Max Scherzer vs. Bobby Bonilla

Let’s start with the players. Mostly because Bonilla had the fortunate timing of being the best position player available in a relatively thin free-agent class, newly-promoted GM Al Harazin signed the former Pirates’ outfielder to a five-year, $29 million deal that made him the highest-paid player in baseball at the time.

And though Bonilla would eventually put up strong-enough numbers to somewhat justify the signing, in ’92 he wilted under the pressure of returning to his hometown and the spotlight that came with the contract.

A slow start produced early-season boos, and from there Bonilla’s sensitivity to criticism created a firestorm, from wearing earplugs as a response to the boos to calling the press box from the dugout during a game _ complaining not about being given an error but that the E-9 on the scoreboard was too big for his liking.

In short, Bonilla was overwhelmed by the whole experience in his first year, not altogether unlike Francisco Lindor in 2021. However, he did bounce back after a sub-par season to hit 34 home runs in ‘93, albeit on a terrible team that no longer had dominant pitching in part because the Mets had traded David Cone rather than pay him as he reached free agency.

Thirty years later, meanwhile, Scherzer arrives carrying the highest annual salary in baseball history at $43.3 million per over three years _ or only two million less than the entire ’92 payroll.

The difference is that the three-time Cy Young Award winner has been there, done that. In January of 2015 he signed a seven-year, $210 million deal with the Washington Nationals, and handled the pressure of a huge contract nicely, putting up a 2.79 ERA that first season before winning Cy Young Awards the next two seasons.

No less significant, where Bonilla clearly didn’t know how to lead, Scherzer has been universally hailed as someone whose work ethic and will to win has had a tangible effect on teammates over the years, and as such should help the Mets build a stronger clubhouse culture.

As for the managers, when it comes to establishing relationships with players, Showalter is as savvy as Torborg was naïve.

Torborg had managed a young Chicago White Sox team to winning records (the Sox let him leave, which in retrospect should have been a warning sign), but he had no idea how to handle the veteran team he inherited with the Mets. The players saw him as someone who thought he was coaching a college team, too much rah-rah and not enough day-to-day perspective for a 162-game season.

As such they thought Torborg overreacted to losses for the sake of appearance and tried to establish authority by imposing his own rules, such as banning alcohol on team flights, which naturally prompted players to sneak their own booze onto the plane. It didn’t help that the players also saw the new guy as a by-the-numbers manager who was always worried about being second-guessed.

All of which made for a distrustful atmosphere that surely contributed in some way to the Mets succumbing to adversity and, in the end, a dreadful season.

To be fair, some key injuries, most notably to two-time Cy Young Award winner Bret Saberhagen, whom the Mets had acquired from the Kansas City Royals, played a significant role in the season going off the rails.

Still, Torborg was in over his head, fired in May of the next season. As such, it’s hard to believe a more respected manager who knew how to relate to players wouldn’t have been able to get those ’92 Mets to dig deep, fight through some of the injuries and prevent the roof from caving in on them.

In other words, someone like Showalter. Especially at age 65 after a career in which he has grown as a communicator over years, willing to give a little to allow players more personal freedom. That in addition to earning the confidence of every team he has managed with his day-to-day preparation and in-game decision-making.

Also, Showalter will make a point of knowing what’s going on in his clubhouse, to the extent where it’s hard to imagine players pulling something like the thumbs-down nonsense of last year without the manager intervening.

Add it up and all of that matters, especially in New York for a team with high expectations.

Yet in the end talent matters most, and those ’92 Mets were largely a product of a front office misjudging its roster. In fact, that team didn’t have a single player, starter or sub, who posted an OPS of .800 or above.

The immortal Chico Walker, a 34-year old utility infielder claimed off waivers from the Cubs in May of that season, came the closest at .792, playing in 107 games as necessitated by injuries to others. 

And when things only got worse in ’93, the Mets essentially admitted their mistake in promoting Harizin to GM from the business side of the organization, forcing him to resign from the job in June, a month after firing Torborg. Harizin never worked in baseball again.

With all of that in mind, it’s hard to fathom such seismic misjudgments for 2022. Yet…if Lindor doesn’t find his game, if Jacob deGrom’s elbow problem reappears, if Dom Smith and Jeff McNeil don’t bounce back, if Carlos Carrasco is in steep decline, well, the Mets did underachieve badly the last two years.

However, with a roster that still needs some finishing touches, and no immediate help coming from the farm system, GM Billy Eppler is likely to spend more of Steve Cohen’s money whenever the lockout ends. He’ll likely secure depth in the starting rotation and bullpen, and perhaps add another impact bat as well after beefing up the position-player mix with the signings of Starling Marte, Eduardo Escobar, and Mark Canha.

The end result, depending what teams like the Yankees and Dodgers do, could finally put the Mets at the top of the MLB payroll mountain again. Such muscle-flexing by the billionaire owner guarantees nothing, obviously, but at least for now it appears that Eppler and Sandy Alderson have spent wisely in ways that should make the Mets legitimate contenders again.

Of course, that was the consensus opinion 30 years ago before it all went wrong. Hey, you never know until they play the games. Yet my sense is that, especially with Scherzer and Showalter in place as guardrails of sort, Mets’ fans should feel confident such ugly history won’t repeat itself.