It's Bobby Bonilla Day!
Roger Cormier cannot wait for 2035 to hurry up and get here; Colleen Sullivan messes with Texas
Fuck Bobby Bonilla Day
By Roger Cormier
Bobby Bonilla has been and will be paid $1,193,248.20 every July 1 until 2035. It doesn't matter why. There are thousands of articles explaining why.1 There are some that explain it isn't as bad of a deal as it is made out to be, and not just because it is celebrated as bad business writ large. Not buying out the $5.9 million left on Bonilla's contract back in 2000 allowed the Mets to take on Mike Hampton's salary. When Hampton left in free agency, the Mets got a draft pick, which became David Wright.
Also, it's not like the Mets invented deferrals. Atlanta had a similar deal with Bruce Sutter. The Nationals are paying current Met Max Scherzer through 2028.
But there's no holiday for Bruce Sutter. Just one for Bobby Bo. It's the epitome of LOLMets after all. With Steve Cohen becoming the majority owner of the Mets, there are less opportunities to report on LOLMets. The media needs their LOLMets. It was an evergreen, to use their (our) parlance. And lord knows there is still an audience for it, even amongst Met fans who have been beaten down for so long.
There was some Airbnb promotion involving Bonilla last season, in an attempt by Steve Cohen and the Mets to be in on the joke. The Mets will never be in on the joke, even if they did this:
How about no. How about just pay the rest of what he is owed now. Bonilla would probably take it, considering inflation. And he would get his birthday back.
"People forget my birthday, but no one forgets July 1," Bonilla said last year. "I get more texts and calls that day than any other during the year."
It's February 23.
Behind Enemy (Base)Lines: Texas Rangers
By Colleen Sullivan
Behind Enemy (Base)Lines: Texas Rangers
For some reason, the Texas Rangers are the team I reference when I ask people how the Washington Nationals came to be. Most recently this particular person was Chrystal O’Keefe’s son, after he told me he liked Vladito. I showed my age by saying I remember watching his dad play and that a team he played for isn’t around anymore, because the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals. This leads to the fact that the second iteration of the Washington Senators, the one that replaced the originals in 1961 after they moved to Minnesota, then wound up moving to Texas in 1972 to become the Rangers. I then asked him if he knew who the Senators’ last and Rangers’ first manager was. His completely serious response:
“Tony La Russa.”
Ted Williams but close enough. After all, La Russa does look like a reanimated corpse of something, plus his major league debut came in 1963 for the Kansas City A’s against the Twins, and his final appearance was in 1973 against the Expos, so he’s at least Senators-adjacent.2
The Texas Rangers appear to have some sort of a curse, probably from Williams, because they have yet to win a World Series in the 61 years they’ve been a team. I say it was a curse from Williams because up until 2020, they played home games in Satan’s waiting room (I went to a game there in 2017 and it was 107 at first pitch, at 7 p.m.). The Rangers seem to be in a constant rebuild since Adrian Beltre retired in 2018. I recommend any video of “Adrian Beltre and Elvis Andrus playing baseball” because there are bound to be some funny highlights.
Elvis seems lost without his buddy, having posted a .704 OPS in his career through 2018, and a .656 since Beltre retired.
So how are the Rangers doing this season, you ask? Not great, Bob!
*checks standings*
Wait, what?
So how are the Rangers doing this season, you ask? Not great, Bob! They’re second in the AL West — 11.5 games back from the Houston Trashstros, but still. Texas is two games under .500 at the start of July, a remarkable turnaround from last season’s 102 losses and the equally bad 22-38 record in the covid season. The Rangers haven’t had a winning record since 2016, when they soiled themselves against the Blue Jays for a second straight ALDS, so this amounts to a renaissance.
The Rangers should’ve expected improvement after spending $325 million to add Corey Seager, and the former Dodgers shortstop is tied with Adolis García for the team lead with 15 home runs. The problem is that it’s homers or nothing — they have a team on-base percentage of .298, which ranks 11th in the American League
Last month wasn’t so hot for Texas, as they went 12-14 after a 17-10 May, but they did finish strong by taking two of three in Kansas City. The Rangers also took two of three from Atlanta earlier in the year, so the Mets will want to do better than that and consolidate their division lead through the schedule.
Wayback Machine: 2017 Mets vs. Rangers
It’s been a while since the Mets and Rangers faced off. The last meeting was a pair of games in August 2017, after the Mets had gone down to Texas that June.
The last pitcher to start for Texas in Flushing? Martín Pérez, who starts on Saturday and has a pretty sweet racket going when it comes to getting paid not to do anything. After the 2018 season, the Rangers bought out Pérez’s contract option for $750,000, and he went and signed with the Twins for one year and $3.5 million, with another contract option… which was bought out for $500,000. Pérez then went to Boston for one year and $6 million, after which he collected another half-million when his option wasn’t picked up, only to re-sign with the Red Sox for $4.5 million in 2021.
Guess who had his option declined and got another 500 grand on his way to signing this year’s contract back in Texas? Pérez does not have an option on this contract — and good for him, because at the age of 31, he’s 6-2 with a 2.22 ERA, having a career year that ought to get him paid eight figures next winter.
Pérez held the Mets to one run (a Wilmer Flores homer) on three hits over eight innings when the Rangers visited Queens five years ago. How down bad were the Mets in that moment? They used Seth Lugo as a pinch-hitter in the third inning, but didn’t use him on the mound, and they had zero at-bats with runners in scoring position.
The 2017 Rangers-Mets series in Queens was a split because Chris Flexen, in his first home start after getting roughed up in San Diego and Colorado, gave the Mets 5.2 solid innings, allowing three runs on four hits. Michael Conforto, Yoenis Cespedes and Travis d’Arnaud backed Flexen with homers, and they needed all those runs for a 5-4 win because A.J. Ramos served up a dinger to future forgettable Mets catcher Robinson Chirinos (sorry if those 12 games of below replacement-level catching in 2020 are a cherished memory, we’ll always have that dinger off Patrick Corbin in a meaningless September game).
Lucky for the Mets, they’re home this weekend, with Chris Bassitt on the hill to start, followed by… we’ll see. Unlucky for the Mets’ fans, they’re on Apple TV+ on Friday.
To me, having written one of these stories, the funniest part of the entire Bobby Bonilla Day experience now is that nobody talks about Bret Saberhagen also getting deferred money from the Mets from the exact same offseason. —JS
So long as we’re on the second edition of the Washington Senators, who existed for 11 seasons and are notable almost entirely for Williams having managed them, it’s worth remembering, too, that their manager from 1963-67 was Gil Hodges, who was 321-444 but led Washington to an improved record every year, rising from last in the 10-team American League to sixth in his final season.