Surprisingly shrewd Mets are wild-card contenders again

This offseason has been an interminable slog. Blame it on the collective bargaining agreement. Blame it on this year's particularly uninspired free-agent class. Blame it on Scott Boras. Blame it on collusion. Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol. Whatever.

Surely, though, in this increasingly noncompetitive, anti-labor climate, some team was going to pounce, eventually. At some point, the discounts presented by this market were going to be too tempting, and some opportunistic club was going to gobble up those marginal wins for pennies on the dollar. (That putative $10M/WAR figure, incidentally, will have to be recalibrated, moving forward.)

If you didn't expect that team to be the New York Mets, one of baseball's most consistently inept and dubiously managed clubs, you're forgiven. Credit where it's due, though.

On Monday, having already added Jay Bruce and Anthony Swarzak on more-than-reasonable deals, the Mets reportedly signed Todd Frazier to a two-year, $17-million contract. Cognitive dissonance be damned, it was another astute move by the Mets, who procured two years of service from a top-10 third baseman for less money than Jeff Samardzija will make next summer.

According to our increasingly dated conceptions of the market, it's a steal, and Frazier's willingness to settle for such a modest contract likely illustrates just how desperate many free agents are feeling right now. Frazier, a two-time All-Star, has been worth at least 2.5 WAR in each of the last six seasons, managing a 111 OPS+ while averaging 28 homers per season over that span. Last year, amid a league-wide spike in strikeout rate, Frazier trended in the opposite direction, chasing pitches outside the zone at the lowest rate (25 percent) of his career en route to a career-best 14.4 percent walk rate and .344 on-base percentage.

Now, with Frazier at third, Bruce in right, and Swarzak available for high-leverage innings out of the bullpen, the Mets - who finished fourth in the NL East last year, at 70-92, after making the playoffs in each of the two seasons prior - are projected to be a .500 team in 2018. And if things break right, such as Noah Syndergaard staying off the disabled list, Matt Harvey rediscovering his velocity, or Amed Rosario emerging as an impact player immediately, it's not hard to envision them contending for a wild-card spot.

2018 Projected NL Standings (FanGraphs)

*Division winner

Their roster still isn't great, and the gulf separating them and the Washington Nationals remains insurmountable, but the Mets are projected to finish with nearly a dozen more wins than they did in 2017. For a mere $70 million, the same amount the Colorado Rockies gave Ian Desmond last winter, general manager Sandy Alderson has just about re-positioned the Mets as a playoff contender, propping up a competitive window that appeared to close in 2017. And he should have more money to play with, too.

Projected contract value courtesy of FanGraphs' crowdsourcing series

Last month, in response to his fanbase's growing disillusionment over perceived stinginess with respect to payroll, Jeff Wilpon, the Mets' chief operating officer (whose father, Fred, is the club's principal owner), made it clear that the baseball operations department, for all intents and purposes, sets the budget - not him or his old man.

"I go off what the baseball department wants to do and the plan they have and what they're suggesting. And the last couple years, it's been a good plan and we've obviously signed off on it as ownership," Wilpon said, according to Abbey Mastracco of NJ.com. "I understand the fan base's frustration and we have the same frustration. Not only myself, but the baseball department and the rest of the staff here at the Mets. Certainly, we want to win it."

You're within your rights not to buy Wilpon's schpiel, of course. It's easy to be deferential when you've already signed off on one of the offseason's bigger deals. It's even easier in a climate where dishing out big bucks to post-prime veterans constitutes heresy. Still, if you're going to take Wilpon at his word, Alderson should have the funds to add another player of consequence. Even after signing Frazier, the Mets' payroll for 2018 is still about $9 million short of last year's Opening Day mark.

And in baseball's rapidly changing economy, $9 million is a lot of money. Kudos to Alderson for recognizing that.