PORT ST. LUCIE — Jacob deGrom will have to deal with the reality the Mets are under no obligation to pay him a dime more than they please.
On Friday, the club announced it had renewed the right-hander’s deal — he will receive $607,000 this year — after deGrom, as a form of protest, declined to sign his contract.
Because deGrom has fewer than three years of MLB service time, the Mets aren’t obligated to pay him more than the major league minimum of $507,500. The contract deGrom received is actually on the high end for players with one-plus year of major league service time. DeGrom, who arrived on the Mets in May 2014, made $556,875 last year.
Brodie Van Wagenen, co-head of CAA Baseball — which represents deGrom — released a statement explaining why the pitcher did not agree to terms with the club.
“We respect the Mets’ right to determine a pre-arbitration player’s salary and their effort to be consistent with their players,” Van Wagenen said. “But given Jacob’s standing as one of the top pitchers in Major League Baseball and his 2015 performance, his worth cannot be properly valued by a formula.
“Like the Mets, he is simply exercising his rights under the CBA. This will not affect Jacob’s relationship with the Mets. Both parties are focused on preparing for the season, and getting the Mets back to the World Series.”
After winning NL Rookie of the Year honors in 2014, the 27-year-old deGrom was selected to last year’s All-Star team and finished 14-8 with a 2.54 ERA.
DeGrom said the situation won’t affect future negotiations with the Mets. The pitcher has indicated he is open to signing a deal with the club that would buy out his arbitration years.
“We haven’t talked about anything yet and I don’t think this will affect that in any way,” deGrom said. “I think we are still open to discussions for long-term things, but nothing is in the works now and I don’t think this will have any effect on that.”
Mets general manager Sandy Alderson said the club has a “straightforward” approach to determining salaries for players with zero to three years of major league service time.
“It is based on a formula predicated on performance,” Alderson said. “You are really talking about marginal differences in salary. But this is the first renewal we’ve had since I’ve been here, and the process has worked well and we respect Jacob’s right to take a renewal if that’s what he feels is best in his interest.”
Alderson said there is no need to reexamine the system the Mets use to determine compensation for their pre-arbitration players.
“Frankly, when you get more subjective in your approach and less objective, it creates more problems than it solves, because everybody can disagree with a system in one way or another,” Alderson said. “The fact we had 24 out of 25 reasonably happy campers suggests we’re doing about the right thing.”
Alderson also said there hasn’t been any momentum toward signing deGrom, Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard or Steven Matz to long-term deals. Of the four, Harvey is the closest to free agency, following the 2018 season.
“There seems to be a fixation on some of our players and their brevity or the length of their time with the Mets,” Alderson said. “In all these cases, they are going to be with us for a while, so from that standpoint is there urgency? From our standpoint, I don’t see any great urgency.
“Right now I am focused on the present. I am going to enjoy these guys. I’m not going to get too uptight about what might happen in 2020 with respect to these players to this point because we have plenty of time to resolve it.”
