MLB Insider Provides MAJOR Tarik Skubal Update...

The New York Mets are the favorite to land the best pitcher on the free agent market. That's the word from Jon Heyman on Tarik Skubal, and it came with about three weeks left before Skubal is expected to pick a team. This is a Mets team that went 74-88 and finished 5th in its own division. Now? The Mets are at the front of the line for the best pitcher on the market. That same day, Shahadev Sharma reported that the Chicago Cubs, who reportedly wanted him badly, are not expected to join the bidding. That leaves the Mets staring at the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team that traded for Skubal in August, and wants to keep him. So the question becomes, will Mets owner Steve Cohen be able to sway Skubal away from the team that he won and went to the playoffs with? And which, if any, Mets players will have to be traded to pay for this contract. Later that day, Heyman added that the Mets have two big things going for them. The need and the wherewithal. He did say it's early, and he mentioned many teams, but he singled out the Mets. The need is that the Mets have a rotation that needs a veteran star. And the wherewithal is the Mets have an owner in Steve Cohen who's shown time and time again that he is willing to dish out the big bucks. Now, just five days earlier, Heyman had the Mets and Dodgers side-by-side and the Mets not necessarily in front. On November 4th, he wrote that the Mets are very interested, but that the salary cap threat and the incumbent Dodgers loom as real hurdles. The night before, he had also written that Skubal could go pretty quick and that the Mets and Dodgers could be in a big bucks battle again. With the Cubs reportedly out, only one of those hurdles wears a uniform, and it's Dodger Blue. The Dodgers and the Mets were already the two most obvious suitors in Jeff Passan's reporting at ESPN. Blake Snell, Skubal's teammate in Los Angeles, says the Dodgers have a good shot at re-signing him. Now that's a player talking about his own teammate in his own clubhouse, so we gotta take it with a grain of salt, but it shows that the Dodgers and their players aren't just going to let Tarik Skubal go quietly. And you can see why both teams want him so badly. Skubal finished this season with a 2.72 ERA, split between Detroit and Los Angeles. He struck out 186 batters, and that's after missing about 6 weeks to have a loose body taken out of his left elbow. He walked just 27 hitters in a 158 2/3 inning, a 4.4% walk rate, so hitters had to earn their way on. He was worth 4.6 wins by Baseball Reference even with that time missed. His FIP, the number that takes the defense behind him out of it, was even better than his ERA at 2.51. That's why the Dodgers gave up three prospects to get him at the deadline. They rented him for a run that ended in the NLCS against Milwaukee, and now they have to pay the full price to keep him. The sense in Los Angeles, per ESPN's Alden Gonzalez, is that Skubal would love to go back, and that it's going to come down to price. The clock on all of this is December 1st, when the league's labor deal runs out and a lockout can start. Passan expects Skubal to sign before that happens, so this could all be over before the calendar flips to December. If it indeed really all comes down to price, then the Mets simply cannot afford to lose out on this opportunity in the same way that the Dodgers can. Despite some encouraging young arms, the Mets rotation was largely one of the big reasons why the team watched the playoffs from home this year. Kodai Senga finished the year with a ridiculously bad 0-9 record and 7.34 ERA in 61.1 innings. And it wasn't just bad luck, his FIP was 5.82 and he walked 14.5% of the hitters he faced. He was worth minus 1.7, wins by replacement courtesy of Baseball Reference, so a replacement from AAA would have done a heck of a lot better. Now, Christian Scott is a guy that can miss bats too, with 134 strikeouts and 110 innings. But Scott walked 47 batters across those 110 innings, and he did finish with a respectable 3-8-5 ERA. The run differential was minus 32, which says this team should have won about four more games than it did, but let's be honest, the Mets won 74 games. If they won 78 games, it's not like we'd be throwing a parade or anything like that. They have a lot of work to do. Nolan McLean was the arm that held up in the rotation, with 179 and two-thirds innings, the most on the staff, and a really impressive 3.16 ERA. He was worth three wins and struck out 194 batters, which is what a front-of-the-rotation arm looks like. Now, there's a clear need for a top-tier starting pitcher, as ESPN's Jorge Castillo put it. Line Senga up next to Skubal, and it's a 7.34 ERA against a 2.72, more than four and a half runs per nine innings apart. Skubal at the top moves McLean to number two and pushes Senga and Scott down a spot or or off the staff entirely, and frankly, I don't think that Senga's going to be pitching in the starting rotation anytime soon as he found a home in the bullpen. A short playoff series that opens with Skubal and then Nolan McLean following him is absolutely nasty to think about, and it's also going to make it easier on everybody else in the rotation. Think of Zach Thornton. Think again of Christian Scott, potentially Jonah Tong. Takes way less pressure off of them. So the need for a frontline ace for this staff is not the question. The bill is. The price per Jeff Passan is well in excess of $300 million, potentially in the $400 million plus range. The Dodgers are reportedly willing to offer him a deal built like the one they gave Kyle Tucker. Juan Soto already takes up $51 million a year of the Mets payroll. The bigger problem for the Mets here is the tax line, the part nobody in Queens wants to talk about. And every dollar over that line that gets taxed and the rate. ...climbs the longer a team stays over it. So, the Mets already have about $235 million signed for 2027, and that's before arbitration raises and benefits. Spotrac projects their tax payroll near $307 million, about $60 million over the tax line before a single dollar goes to Skubal. Haymon keeps pointing to the threat of a salary cap in the next labor deal, and he wrote that it could deter either team. Now, we're looking at an owner in Steve Cohen here who has already paid the tax multiple times without blinking, but the split may actually be inside the building. You see, Cohen will push for a long-term deal, according to SNY's Chelsea Janes, while history says David Stearns would rather avoid one. The owner is who Castillo is betting on. Ultimately, Steve Cohen... is going to be the one to make the major push for Tarik Skubal. He even compared this to Soto's free agency in 2024, saying that if Cohen and the Mets want Skubal, they'll get him. And Cohen has already won one of these when he pried Juan Soto away from the Yankees. And guys, if you're interested in more videos like this, we're currently at 8,175 subscribers on the channel, so please subscribe for more daily Mets updates from Mets Digest. And by the way, even for Cohen, a $300 million arm lands on a payroll that's already over the tax line. Four Mets are on SNY's list of players who could be moved this winter. Senga, Mark Vientos, Marcus Simeon, and Francisco Alvarez. Senga is the obvious one. He's owed $15 million in 2027, the last guaranteed year of his deal. The strange part is, the stuff is there. He struck out 11 per 9 innings. A team that thinks they can fix Senga, much like a team like the Rays thought and ultimately did fix Freddy Peralta, can get a one-year bet on him and his contract will be over at the season's end. And that's where the Mets can get his full salary off the books. However, Marcus Simeon is the hard one here. He's owed $26 million in 2027 and $20 million in 2028. And he gave the Mets a paltry .620 OPS this season. Nobody's going to take on that Marcus Simeon contract without sending a bad one back, so a Simeon deal seems far less likely, and it saves less than it would honestly look on the surface. And moving him would also open up second base, and the Mets can fill him for a fraction of the cost. Vientos, by the way... ...has been on the block the longest. The Mets were telling teams he was available as far back as last December, per ESPN's Jorge Castillo. Since then, his OPS has dropped from .702 to .652. His 2027 salary is estimated at $3.9 million in arbitration, so moving him is about the roster spot, not really the money. The non-tender line is November 20th, so the call on him comes before Skubal's does. Alvarez, as the name SNY says, there's little reason to move unless another team makes a compelling offer. His barrel rate was 15.4%, and the top 5% of hitters, even with the strikeout rate, over 30%. He's estimated at $5.2 million for 2027, which is cheap for that kind of power. Now, trading him to save money would be the one move on this list that makes no sense because, again, Alvarez has that power. It's a very, very rough catching landscape in terms of offense in the MLB, and even though Alvarez has been somewhat disappointing, again, he's not making a lot of money here, and it really wouldn't be worth moving. Now, if Senga and Simeon both went out with no money coming back, That would clear about $39 million off the 2027 tax payroll. And on Spotrac's numbers, it still leaves them over the line. Any Senga or Simeon trade would free up a lot of money for a Skubal bid. And if the Dodgers win this, it would suck, but the Mets would still need an arm. And plan B gets harder. Real fast. The Mets may lean on trades anyway. From the GM meetings in Las Vegas, SNY's Chelsea Jaynes said she believes they'll look for starting pitching help largely through trades rather than mainly through free agency. The trade market for starters, though, isn't really moving yet, much like the market for anybody in this offseason so far. Pitchers with one year left of control, like Joe Ryan and Logan Gilbert, are unlikely to be traded for prospects this month, per MLB Network's Jeff Passan. Joe Ryan was a target for the Mets last winter, and the Twins were believed to have liked Jonah Tong. Waiting for January could mean paying a higher price in prospects for a guy who isn't Tarek Skubal. And any deal for an arm other than Skubal would have to be paid out for from the farm system. That's why the next three weeks are really everything. Because we do not want to be in a situation as Mets fans Hoping and praying, above all else, that they can find someone who is a fraction of the pitcher for Tarek Skubal at a time when the Mets would be even more desperate to find that type of pitcher. Here's the call. Skubal's a Met by December 1st. Steve Cohen's going to get his way. The Mets will offer a tangible amount of money more than Los Angeles, and despite the uncertainty of the Mets winning and building a consistent winner, he will choose to go to New York. Why? Well, we know that the Chicago Cubs are already out, and that takes a huge hurdle out of the equation. And we know that when Steve Cohen wants something, he generally does receive it, just like he did when he got Juan Soto away from the Bronx. Now, the doubt is Stearns. He's never done this before. He's never offered a pitcher a huge nine-figure deal. Also, there's the tax line. And yeah, Steve Cohen, even he has a budget just like everybody else. And there is a very real reason that there's many players being talked about as being moved potentially in order to manipulate the salary and the prospect of the impending salary cap. And then there's also the fact that Tarek Skubal just loved being a Dodgers from everything that we have heard him say and from the teammates who really want him to stay. So what we need to watch out for is Senga or Simeon being moved before November 20th. And if they do, well, then that'll be further proof that for Tarik Skubal and the Mets, it's on. Look, guys, this Mets team spent the past two Octobers at home. And according to Jon Heyman, It walks into this winter as the probable favorite for its biggest, biggest prize. Now, if the Dodgers keep him, Senga and Simeon could still be on the move just to pay for a smaller name, but November 20th is going to tell you who's leaving because December 1st is the ultimate end of the time frame, and that's telling you if it was worth it. So tell me in the comments, does Skubal sign with the Mets? Or does he go back to the Dodgers? Comment below, let me know. And as always, guys, let's go Mets.