It’s Nice To Have A Process, But It’s Better To Have Money

Imagine a very orderly person who lives in an apartment with a very large dog. The two can coexist happily, with each providing necessary support to the other, but there is also going to be a tension inherent to that relationship grounded in the fact that one of the parties to it is forever lining things up and optimizing and re-optimizing counter space and the other is a very large dog, and as such will knock things over simply due to being a very large dog. This is not an argument against continuing to line things up just so, of course. It just means that the very orderly person will over time become a very familiar face to the people at The Container Store, to the point where they might remark to each other during their breaks about having seen him, again, purchasing more of those stackable, breakable containers that he's always getting.

This is probably not the best way to understand the interplay between New York Mets President of Baseball Operations David Stearns and team owner Steve Cohen. The relationship is much more prosaic, really, and fairly common to the world of finance, where Cohen became rich enough to buy the Mets; it boils down to that between an impulsive and very rich boss and a high-performing employee whom the impulsive boss trusts but will still sometimes overrule when bored or aggravated or just moved to do so. There is no reason why these two parties can't coexist, and the two both help and need each other in meaningful ways. But there is still going to be a mess every now and then.

It is not quite accurate to say that the MLB offseason had been process-forward until Kyle Tucker signed a four-year, $240 million free agent deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday evening. Different teams have different processes, as well they should, and the few teams that had ponied up for high-end talent were not just doing so because they had pivoted to Very Large Dog mode. When the Mets, who were along with the Toronto Blue Jays reportedly co-runners up for Tucker's services, signed the former Jays shortstop Bo Bichette to an astonishingly player-friendly three-year, $126 million deal on Friday, it was probably somewhat closer to Very Large Dog behavior; the Mets will lose their first-round pick next year as a result of signing a player to what amounts to what amounts to a one-year, $42 million contract to (reportedly) play third base, a position he has never played in the majors. But if this is not something that the patient and process-oriented Stearns would ordinarily do, it is also not happening in a vacuum. It is happening, instead, in the stupid part of baseball's free agency period.