Mets will pay roughly $111M, more than 10 MLB teams' payrolls, in luxury tax penalties after offseason splurge

You can criticize New York Mets owner Steve Cohen's approach. You can bemoan his seemingly unlimited budget and post a thread on Twitter about how this is "bad for the game." But you can't deny one thing: Cohen desperately wants to win.

After signaling in March that he didn't care about the luxury tax, Cohen has backed up that assertion this offseason. With the reported signing of Carlos Correa on Wednesday, the Mets' offseason spending splurge jumped to an unfathomable $806.1 million.

As a result, the Mets are projected to pay roughly $111 million in luxury tax fees in 2023, per ESPN's Jeff Passan. That figure is higher than what 10 MLB teams will pay their entire 26-man rosters next season.

The Arizona Diamondbacks, Baltimore Orioles, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Guardians, Kansas City Royals, Miami Marlins, Oakland Athletics, Pittsburgh Pirates, Tampa Bay Rays and Washington Nationals are set to open the season with payrolls under $111 million, per Cot's Baseball Contracts. Granted, those figures might change over the next few weeks, but as it stands, the Mets will pay more in luxury tax fees than those teams will pay players.

The current iteration of the luxury tax was established as part of the 2002 collective bargaining agreement and has been tweaked multiple times since then. A luxury tax figure is set, and any team that exceeds that figure with its salary must pay a tax, the amount of which depends on how far over the luxury tax threshold they go.

Teams have been cautious about exceeding the luxury tax in recent seasons. Even the previously big-spending New York Yankees cut payroll to avoid paying the luxury tax. But Cohen doesn't care. The luxury tax threshold for the 2023 MLB season was set at $233 million, and the Mets' payroll is now expected to be roughly $384 million next season.

This level of spending is unprecedented in baseball. Cohen is going to run out a team that will cost roughly $100 million more than the previous record for the highest payroll in the sport, per Passan.

The Mets didn't have to go in this hard. The team had holes, sure, but it also won 101 games last season. Two-time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom left in December but was quickly replaced by three-time Cy Young winner Justin Verlander.

Most MLB owners would've been content there. But Cohen was not. Since signing Verlander, Cohen also inked Adam Ottavino, Brandon Nimmo, David Robertson, Jose Quintana, Kodai Senga and Omar Narvaez. Add the $102 million deal for Edwin Díaz in November and the $315 million handed to Correa on Wednesday, and that's how you spend $806.1 million in a single offseason.

To put more context on that figure, the Mets spent more money to sign Correa than the Pirates have spent in free agency since 2010.

OK, but is the Mets' spending spree actually bad for baseball?

If you want the short answer, ask a Mets fan how they feel right now. Mets fans are, deservedly, ecstatic about the team's offseason. The Mets haven't won the World Series in more than 30 years and, while other fan bases have much longer droughts, this team has developed a reputation for consistently embarrassing itself. The Mets have stepped on enough rakes over the past decade or so that fans expect catastrophic failure from the franchise at least once every couple of months.

At the same time, the disparity between the Mets' $384 million payroll and the Athletics' $49.5 million payroll is staggering. How can teams such as the A's and Pirates compete when one owner is willing to go so far to win a championship?

The simple answer is to spend more money. The vast majority of MLB owners are worth at least $1 billion. That said, Cohen, valued at around $16 billion, is the richest of the group, so spending big is, admittedly, easier for him.

Barring a true salary cap, there will always be payroll disparities among MLB teams. But it doesn't have to be this drastic. The Athletics are owned by John Fisher, who is worth $2.2 billion. His team is valued by Forbes at $1.18 billion. Fisher could run out a team with a payroll much higher than $49.5 million, but every move he has made the past four or five offseasons was seemingly done to make Oakland and the fans hate him so much that they let the team relocate.

Pirates owner Bob Nutting, who has a net worth of $1.1 billion, also has no excuse for running out a payroll of $58.2 million in 2023. The Pirates are valued at $1.32 billion, per Forbes. Spending $20 million per year on one player wouldn't suddenly bankrupt the franchise.

If the owners of those teams truly believe they can't compete with those willing to spend, they should consider selling their teams at a massive profit. Nutting bought the Pirates for $92 million in 2007. Forbes believes he could get more than $1 billion for the franchise today. After all, the lowly Miami Marlins sold for $1.2 billion five years ago.

Ultimately, MLB owners brought this on themselves. Cohen was clear about his intentions from day one and adamant that cost wouldn't be a prohibitive factor. He wanted to win. Knowing that, the owners approved the Mets' sale to Cohen.

MLB owners allowed Cohen into their exclusive group, and he responded by immediately making many of them look cheap. But Cohen has not violated any rules in his pursuit of building a baseball juggernaut. He simply wants to win, seemingly more than anyone else.

In a sport in which winning has taken a backseat to financial flexibility for so many teams, Cohen's approach is downright refreshing.