With The DFA Of Robinson Cano, The New York Mets Have Finally Become A Meritocracy

Robinson Cano’s play over the first month of the season and the words of Buck Showalter and Dominic Smith following Sunday’s win over the Phillies certainly hinted at the possibility — even the likelihood — that Cano would be the Mets position player to lose his spot on the big league team when rosters shrunk from 28 players to 26 players Monday.

As solid as Smith, J.D. Davis, Luis Guillorme and Travis Jankowski — the four other position players whose roster spots were most imperiled by the impending reduction — are, the possibility of 20-something players with options being sent to the minor leagues or a well-traveled reserve outfielder going through the waivers process again doesn’t usually engender the mournful verbiage used by Showalter and Smith.

“It’s tough. Period,” Showalter said. “It’s going to be painful.”

“I think it’s definitely going to be a very emotional day, no matter who it is,” Smith said. “And tomorrow, it’ll be interesting.”

The most interesting thing is that it actually happened.

Cano’s Mets career almost surely ended just before noon Monday when the team announced he’d been designated for assignment. While Cano could accept an assignment to Triple-A Syracuse or be claimed on waivers — the latter of which would be the most shocking transaction in history, since any team claiming Cano would be responsible for the almost $45 million remaining on the 10-year contract he signed with the Mariners following the 2013 season — the most likely outcome by this time next week is Cano becoming a free agent who can sign with any team willing to pay him a pro-rated portion of the major league minimum.

But Monday’s decision will resonate long beyond the completion of the transaction. For as many statements the Mets have made since the end of last season — from changing the culture by spending more than $250 million on Mark Canha, Eduardo Escobar, Starling Marte and Max Scherzer and hiring Buck Showalter to winning games in April with an edge and a complete competency rarely seen in Queens — the biggest declaration was made Monday.

These are Steve Cohen’s Mets, and the Mets are finally a meritocracy.

Under the Wilpons, the Mets never understood the concept of the sunk cost. They kept highly paid underachieving players on the roster, to the point it almost became punitive.

Of course, the only people the Wilpons ever hurt were everyone else. Bobby Bonilla and his .160 batting average got to stick around and single-handedly undercut Bobby Valentine’s authority during the run to the NL Championship Series in 1999. As you may have read by now, Bonilla’s obstinance was rewarded with a deferred buyout that will yield him a million bucks every July 1 until he’s 72 years old. Bonilla’s card-playing pal, Rickey Henderson, remained with the team heading into the 2000 season but kept stacking insubordinate acts one atop the other until Steve Phillips had no choice but to release the thorn in Valentine’s side.

Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez offered none of the nonsense provided by Bonilla and Henderson, but the 2010 Mets hit the All-Star Break one game out of a wild card spot and finished 12 games back following a second half in which Perez pitched six times and Castillo batted .226 in limited action. The 2012 Mets were a half-game out of the second wild card spot at the All-Star Break and finished 14 games back after a second half in which Jason Bay hit .151 in 119 at-bats.

By the end, the Wilpons were keeping lowly paid underachieving players on the roster, just because they liked them. Jose Reyes wasn’t worth making an offer to as an impending free agent following the 2011 season, when he was 29 and the reigning NL batting champion, but in 2018, he was worth keeping around as a 36-year-old making $2 million even though he was batting under .200 as an unhappy reserve.

Cano’s acquisition was another example of the Wilpons refusing to simply eat a bad contract. Part of the return for Cano in the instantly ill-fated blockbuster with the Mariners— along with top prospect Jarred Kelenic — were struggling veterans Jay Bruce and Anthony Swarzak, who were due a remaining total of $36.5 million on contracts signed following the 2017 season.

Even with Cohen overseeing a new era, the sight of Cano — fresh off a second PED suspension, this one for the entire 2021 season — coming to spring training with the Mets was a reminder of how things would have unfolded if the Wilpons were still in charge. Regardless of how many younger and more versatile players were in need of at-bats, Cano would have been shoehorned into the lineup — especially with the advent of the universal DH — as the Wilpons remained obsessed with making players earn their pay and cynically chasing momentary boosts at the gate and on the back pages.

Despite missing much of the last four seasons to the suspensions and the pandemic, Cano, with two years left on his deal, was still within shouting distance of 3,000 hits. (That’s the thing here really worth mournful adjectives — how Cano, once on a fast track to the Hall of Fame and as safe a bet as anyone to get to 3,000 hits and well beyond, has destroyed his legacy)

If anything, the new regime — which has already traded away or released seven of the 11 players drafted in the first five rounds in 2019 or 2020 by Brodie van Wagenen, Cano’s former agent turned his general manager turned his agent again — was too patient with Cano, who could have justifiably been released the moment he was suspended in November 2020.

But these Mets are also more open-minded and less vindictive than the old Mets, and there was nothing to lose by bringing Cano in and seeing what he had left. It’s possible Cano is not completely finished — Showalter noted numerous times in April how difficult it is to judge veterans players in the cold weather of the early season — but after he hit .195 with one homer, three RBIs and an OPS+ of 50 in 41 at-bats, there was no way to justify keeping him over any of his peers on the bench.

Smith’s four-hit game Sunday was certainly good for the narrative, but his spot should have been secure solely for his youth and the fact he was the Mets’ best hitter during the 2020 season. Davis (right-handed pop), Guillorme (Gold Glove-caliber defense at second, third and short) and Jankowski (30-steal speed and solid defense at all three outfield spots) also offer valuable skills on a team suddenly consumed with doing all the little things.

Cano offered nothing except a bloated salary and a big name no longer commensurate with his game. Back in the day, that would have been enough to keep him on the roster. Not Monday.

“I passed along to him what the recommendations of the baseball group, on-field staff, front office staff — kind of walked him through (it) in some detail with him,” general manager Billy Eppler said of his conversation with Cohen. “And he said ‘Make the baseball decision.’”

Finally.