There are risks and there are needless risks. As I mentioned over in the other thread, "risks" may not mean the same to Steve Cohen as they do to you and me and about 29 other owners, so we may be overstating the case for delaying signing Alonso to a long-term contract until after the 2023 season, and yes, we may underappreciating the value of having a DH, but the DH doesn't mitigate a total collapse either on Alonso's part. See Pujols, A., for a handy illustration of the danger of having a gazillion-dollar DH tethered to your team for eleventy more years. Of course, Cohen might just feel "So what? We can sign another long-term DH if Alonso goes south on us and overpay Pete to pinch-hit 75 times a season, or swap him out for a $200M total loss that's just the cost of doing business." So maybe the Mets do sign him up sooner than is absolutely necessary. But "absolutely necessary" comes next November, not this past November. You get a few months of serious negotiations to work things out with his agent exclusively, and you also get all of 2023 up to November for Pete to have a horrible year, or to mangle his body in a career-ending way, or to get arrested for some felony, or anything else that changes the tenor of negotiating in ten months' time. There's very little point in negotiating a baseball season earlier--Pete's going to be mad at you for waiting until November? Maybe, but he doesn't seem the petulant type, and if he is, do you want a petulant superstar? You could sign him now but if he has the greatest year of his career in 2023, you'll be paying more for him? Yeah, but you'll be getting more so that's only fair. The only factor that makes him unsignable is what he wants in terms of contract length. Both sides probably agree roughly on the probable length of his superstardom, and the going annual rate for a superstar--the question is, how much the team is willing to pay superstar rates beyond that probable length. Say there's rough agreement that he's got five years past 2023 that he's worth top dollar. Is Cohen willing to pay him a sixth year at top dollar in order to get him signed? Sure. A seventh year? Why not? But when you get into a tenth year or a fourteenth year, well, there's got to be a limit to the value of resigning him.
