00:00Joel Sherman here for 3Up. Today is Monday. It's the first full squad workout pretty much
00:08all around baseball, but certainly here in St. Lucie for the Mets. Steve Cohn's going to address
00:14reporters later today, but why don't we do three things? Starting with, you know, yesterday,
00:22number one, Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto both talked to reporters at a press briefing sitting
00:27in kind of like the space where I am right now. Let's start with number one, that they are the
00:32guys remaining. Let's talk about what's not here. Because Francisco Lindor said he thinks this is a
00:39better team. And you know what? So do I. I know how hard it was for Mets fans to see
00:46popular players
00:47walk away. Alonzo in particular. And I do think the Mets messed up a little bit on Edwin Diaz,
00:54not figuring out how to get out in front of that, show love, and bring them back.
00:58But ultimately, I think the Mets needed to change the core group. The core group had been together
01:06for a long time and had quite frankly not accomplished enough together. And they were
01:13going to get tied up long term with Alonzo. It was going to take at least five years to do
01:17that.
01:18And they were going to have to stick with the five years of Nemo at a point where the good
01:23news was he
01:23figured out how to get on the field a lot. The bad news was by getting on the field a
01:27lot, his body
01:28to me was breaking down and he wasn't the same player on the field that I thought he had been
01:35in
01:35the past. And the Mets would have had to live with that for five years. Marcus Simeon comes and he's
01:41only got three years as opposed to five years left. And he can do something that was really precious
01:46for the Mets as they thought about their team moving forward, which is defend. Whatever else, he remains
01:52an elite second baseman. So I do think they needed to change the page to get to whatever the next
01:59thing is. And while we think Steve Cohen's money is endless, it's probably better that Lindor and Soto
02:06are the cornerstones moving forward who are the big paid guys. And the books are relatively clean
02:12beyond that. You know, they got Minaya for a while, etc. But they have a lot of evergreen money.
02:19We're going to see Tarek Skubal get out in free agency next offseason. I'm assuming even if Nimmo and
02:25Alonzo were here, Steve Cohen would chase that trinket. But it makes it a lot easier. And I think
02:31that to Francisco Lindor's point, the overall group that shows up here, there's some mismatched parts,
02:39but I think the overall group is better than what it is for 2026. And for moving forward that they're
02:46not jammed up with, as great as Alonzo was here, you know, a first baseman who was going to have
02:52to
02:52DH. I think they had agreed with him that it was going to be five out of seven days if
02:56he stayed.
02:58A Nimmo, a corner outfield, and you have him and Soto in the corners, that's not going to age well.
03:03So I think they needed to get out of that. Let's go to number two, that they are building around
03:09these two guys. Look, Soto is one of the greatest hitters in the history of the game through age 26.
03:16Just go look at anything. I think he's like fifth or sixth all-time in homers through that age
03:21category. I think in OPS+, he's either 11th or 12th, and everyone in front of him is a Hall
03:29of
03:29Famer or Albert Pujols, who when he becomes available, eligible in 2028, will be a Hall of Famer.
03:35So, there's that. He's a great player who dedicated himself last year because he had a
03:42great relationship with Antoine Richardson to become the better base runner and ended up stealing 38
03:47bases doing it. He says he is dedicating himself to become a better defender this year. We'll see
03:53if that happens as he switches from right field to left field. Lindor is a little trickier to begin
04:01the year. He was in a soft cast yesterday when he was talking to reporters. He had the ham eight
04:06bone
04:07surgery. He is going to be slowed here in spring training. I assume at some point he'll be able
04:13to stand on the field and at least throw and work with Marcus Simeon on pivots, etc. It is a
04:18new
04:18double play combination. The more concerning thing is hitting for power probably early in the season.
04:24And look, Lindor is now in his early 30s, 32 years old, I believe. And I thought he lost a
04:33little
04:33range-wise at shortstop last year. Things were not quite as easy for him as they had always been in
04:39the past. And it's something the Mets are, because they are into him for another five or six years,
04:44they're going to have to think about how long can he stay on shortstop. But for now, he's still well
04:51above when you do the offense and defense and base running together. This was a 30-30 player last
04:56year. You know, he's a great player. He's on a Hall of Fame track, as obviously Soto is also. And
05:04those
05:04are the two guys the Mets are clearly building around as they move forward here. Which brings us
05:10to number three, which is their relationship. Look, a lot has been made about the clubhouse last year
05:18with the Mets. As we can see when we learn this offseason, Matt Gelb in The Athletic, for example,
05:27wrote a tremendously researched piece about how bad things were in the Phillies clubhouse with Nick
05:32Castellanos last year in particular. And that's why among the reasons Castellanos was released and
05:39then ended up signing with the Padres. No group of people can be around each other for about 230 straight
05:46days and not have problems. And when Lindor was asked about how the clubhouse was, he said,
05:55you know, not everybody loves each other. That's not how it works. But everybody respects each other,
06:02et cetera. I get it. If you think about your workplace, if you bring, you know, 26 highly
06:10competitive people and it will end up being 50 total players by the end of the season and a manager
06:15and
06:15coaches and support staff, like everyone's not going to like each other, right? It's just not the way
06:20it is. You've got to find a, you know, a communal space where people cooperate with each other and,
06:26you know, work together and do that well. The Mets, Carlos Mendoza used the term that it had become a
06:35corporate culture and he thought that guys weren't helping each other enough. It was interesting when
06:41Juan Soto answered the question, he clearly, he, he sat up here yesterday and gave long answers to
06:48everything. But when it came to the clubhouse in 2026, his answers were very brief and he used the
06:54word, uh, uh, like forget about the drama of last year. Nobody used the word drama in a question. He
07:01used it in an answer. You want to play a Freudian game? Maybe it was there. Soto and Lindor are
07:06very,
07:06very different people. And if people think that like a clubhouse problem is guys yelling at each
07:12other, I covered Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. Those guys didn't have great chemistry together.
07:20There was history there, obviously, right? The Esquire piece where, uh, you know, uh, Jeter took
07:26offense to what a rod said about him while a rod was with another team and was, uh, but they
07:32came
07:32together and a cold war is not that they're yelling at each other, but you can feel the tension in
07:39a
07:39room that they're not cooperating well together, that they're apart. I do think there was at least
07:45some of that last year with Soto and Lindor. I don't think it's hatred. I don't think guys are yelling
07:51at each other. I don't think they're saying don't listen to him or do that, but they're way too important
07:57for the present and the future of this organization. This is what the team is about in 2026. They're
08:04building around them. And this is what they're going to build around long-term. Those guys are
08:08going to have to find a peaceful place to work together and be great. Uh, and again, I would say
08:14the model probably is Gary Carter and Keith Hernandez who are very, very different people
08:19and probably never kind of like went for dinner together or had that kind of stuff, but it was good
08:25enough to bring the last championship to this organization. The Mets under Steve Conan with
08:32David Stearns in charge have to be playing for championships. Now that's the ambition. That's the
08:38money being spent. And Lindor and Soto are right now the faces of that. Might it end up being Nolan
08:44McClain and Carson Bench someday? Yep, but not now. This is Lindor and Soto's team. And those guys have to
08:52understand that their work on and off the field is key to what happens to this organization.
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