On the night of Nov. 5 and just as the Astros were celebrating a World Series title, an enrapturing three-way phone call jump-started a pivotal Mets offseason because it sounded the trumpet for a record contract.
After a high number of calls between the two parties over the preceding couple weeks, Mets general manager Billy Eppler phoned Joel Wolfe, the Wasserman agent who represents star closer Edwin Díaz, and said something along the lines of, “OK, this is it.” By the time the Astros were posing for pictures at Minute Maid Park, the Mets and Díaz’s representation had reached the stage of hashing out the final details of an agreement. But Wolfe’s response to Eppler was, “OK, hang on one second …”
Um, what? For a moment the line went silent. Unbeknownst to Eppler, Wolfe was adding Díaz to the call. Throughout the negotiations process, Díaz had been waiting to tell Eppler, in his own words, how he felt as things were nearing the finish line.
“All right, Billy, let’s do this,” Díaz said over the phone upon joining the call from Puerto Rico. “Let’s roll. Let’s go win a World Series now.”
In New York, Eppler was fired up. Before the call ended, Díaz thanked Eppler for all his time, work and communication. Just before Díaz was set to reach the open market, the parties reached an agreement on a five-year, $102 million deal. It was everything both sides wanted.
The deal came with a $12 million signing bonus, full no-trade clause and a team option for a sixth year which could take the total value of the deal to $122 million. Díaz, 28, will also have the ability to opt out of the contract after the third season, when he’ll be approaching his age-32 season. Helpful to the Mets for potential luxury tax purposes, $26.5 million will be deferred with $5.5 million deferred per year for the first three seasons and then $5 million deferred per year for the last two. Even with the deferred payment dropping his CBT number to $18.6 million, it is still a record figure for a reliever.
The deal set a new standard as the biggest contract given to a relief pitcher in terms of both total value and average annual value. The previous benchmark for total value was Aroldis Chapman’s five-year, $86 million contract. The previous high for annual average value was Liam Hendriks’ $18 million.
One longtime agent from a different company said that while arguments can be made from a baseball perspective on whether it’s sound to invest so much in a reliever, the contract between Díaz and the Mets was fair and made sense for both sides.
