Mets, Yankees Among World Series Favorites After Huge Free Agent Spending Sprees

Money may not be able to buy championships, but the Mets and Yankees are doing their best to prove that sentiment wrong.

Mostly the Mets.

With shortstop Carlos Correa agreeing this week to a 12-year, $315-million deal, the Mets (7-1) are now the second favorite behind the reigning champion Houston Astros (6-1) to win the World Series, per MLB trader Rick Nash of bookmaker.eu

“The Mets were 9-1 before the Correa signing and are 7-1 now,” Nash said by email. “This significant change is due to the addition of Correa, but also, owner Steve Cohen’s willingness to spend. This transaction puts the Mets in the mix as World Series favorites along with defending champ Houston Astros 6-1, LA Dodgers 8-1, and New York Yankees 8-1.”

As my Forbes colleague Maury Brown wrote, Cohen, on whom the Billions character Bobby Axelrod was based, has now committed $806.2 million to nine players in free agency for the 2022-23 MLB offseason.

The Mets’ projected 2023 payroll stands at $384 million (not including luxury tax which pushes it to nearly a half billion), per spotrac.com. That is the largest payroll in MLB history and nearly $100 million more than Yankees, who are the the next-closest team, per spotrac.

Per CBSSports.com: “The 2023 Mets payroll is projected to be 32 percent higher than the next-closest team in baseball (Yankees). That’s the largest difference between the two highest payrolls in baseball since the 2009 World Series champion Yankees (+35%). It’s also identical to the Yankees gap in an 11-year stretch from 2003-13.”

The Mets’ luxury-tax payments will “exceed $111 million,” which is more than the total payroll of 15 of MLB”s 30 teams.

Woo Jin Ho, a tech analyst at Bloomberg, Tweeted that the Mets total payroll would “rank them 188th in global GDP, ahead of 6 other countries.”

The Yankees, meantime, don’t quite look like the sisters of the poor after re-signing slugger Aaron Judge to a 9-year, $360-million deal — and then making him the franchise’s 16th captain — and also giving left-handed starter Carlos Rodón a 6-year, $162-million deal.

“The brief [postseason] experience I had with the Chicago White Sox — don’t get me wrong, the White Sox organization, a great organization, but it took a while to put a winning product on the field,” Rodón said Wednesday. “That brief taste, I’ve always wanted more. Winning’s been at the top of my list as a player. As we know, it’s the Yankee Way.

The Mets are seeking the franchise’s third World Series title while the Yankees have been looking for No. 28 since winning their last in 2009.

One thing’s for sure, with all this money flowing to high-profile players, it won’t be a boring summer in The Big Apple.

But it’s World Series or bust for both clubs.