Ryne Nelson looks good. Fuckin umped missed a strike 3 call right down the middle. One of the most absurd missed calls I've seen. Had to strike out Muncy twice.
so why ignore the previous two seasons?
I'm not trying to make the point that Benintendi is good. The point was you don't pay guys for past performance. Or what qualifies as 'wasted money'. The Mets aren't paying Manaea $75mil for last season's performance, they're paying him for this year and the next two.
Salvy Perez by contrast has 36 bWAR vs 19 fWAR.
Famously good defender Derek Jeter has more fWAR than bWAR. I think baseball-reference is the better website but fangraphs's stats are easier (free) to search.
Sox paid Benintendi after 2 consecutive 3 WAR seasons. It's still a waste of money. The Mets also paid Ryne Stankey $4.5mil after he pitched to a 6 ERA with them and now a 5 ERA rather than paying Vasil...$750k or whatever. That's harder to explain.
I wrote that Sean Manaea got DFA'd which was wrong...Manoah did. Tomato, tomahto sort of thing...bad pitcher, baaaad pitcher.
The point being they're paying the guy $75mil to pitch to a 5.59 ERA. That's actual wasted money, $2mil is pretty marginal.