3 morbid Mets offseason scenarios to keep you up tonight

New York Mets fans are excited about this offseason for more reasons than you can fit inside Steve Cohen’s wallet. After such an electrifying year where the Mets didn’t spend a whole lot of money and now are expected to unleash something much closer to a Cohen-led attack in free agency headed by the mind of David Stearns, the excitement is palpable.

We know there will be misses along the way. There are plenty of contenders out there for the big tickets. Not all of them will call Flushing home in 2025.

Even in accepting these, there are certain morbid offseason scenarios frightening enough to keep Mets fans awake.

1) Juan Soto signs with another team despite the Mets making an equal (or better) offer

Only so much of the Juan Soto situation is under the Mets’ control. They can give him the biggest offer. Other teams can reciprocate by going one million more. What if the Mets did make the best offer and another team, let’s call them the Pew Pork Pankees, tells the young star they’ll match or go a little more?

It wouldn’t be the first time the Mets were left holding a paycheck. Far less significant than Soto, they’ve had offers of equal or greater value turned down by Kevin Gausman, Steven Matz, and Andrew McCutchen. More in the same realm as Soto is last year’s chase for Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The Los Angeles Dodgers were always going to win out. It was just a matter of them having a willingness to match or come close to the other best offers he received.

Soto (and his agent Scott Boras) are chasing after every penny. The destination doesn’t matter so much. This is a guy who has played in Washington, San Diego, and New York. He may have some personal preferences, but so far the front runners all seem to include Northeastern ball clubs. Both New York teams, the Boston Red Sox, and Toronto Blue Jays are heavily in the mix. All fine cities, the one advantage the Mets have over everyone is an owner with a reputation to uphold.

If a paycheck so large it crashes ADP doesn’t work, nothing will.

2) The Mets don’t end up with one of the big aces

There are a lot of really good pitchers out there for the Mets to sign. When it comes to the word ace, I’d classify Corbin Burnes, Blake Snell, and Max Fried fitting this description. There are some other good choices as well. Nathan Eovaldi, Jack Flaherty, and trade candidate Garrett Crochet all look satisfying as number one guys.

What if the Mets don’t land any? All they do, instead, is re-sign Sean Manaea to be their number one guy? Look into a crystal ball and you’ll see Mets fans with a “cope” take on how he’s better than a lot of those guys anyway.

The offseason attack on the pitching market won’t so much be about the best pitcher the Mets can land as much as it will focus on the quality of every arm they do sign. If Manaea is paired with someone else with a lot to offer, maybe we can sleep at night even without a $100 million pitcher on the roster.

It’s far more acceptable for the Mets to miss out on one of these top flight pitchers if Soto is wearing orange and blue next year. Compile both of these together and we have a disaster on our hands. This is an offseason where the Mets must come away raising victory flags.