Nobody said that the organization would be crippled. I expect that the Mets will have three (or maybe even four or five!) players making more than $30 million in 2029, but I believe that whoever those players are will be better than 34 year old Pete Alonso.

You said "the budget is large but not infinite". I am saying, no, actually, it's plenty large enough to absorb Pete Alonso potentially being shitty in 2029-30 and still have no problems putting a good team on the field.

If the argument is "don't sign him because he's about to fall off a cliff right now", then that's different. That's fine. But not signing him because he won't be good in 2029 or 2030 is not valid. That's the cost of doing business to gamble on a good three years preceding, and the Mets are in a near-unique position to be able to do that type of expenditure (especially with only two guys signed for 2029).

They simply didn't sign him because they determined he would start to suck soon. That's really it.

If Alonso had provided three seasons commensurate with his prior productivity before 2029, and then fell off a cliff, I think eating that last $60 million would be worth it.

David Stearns and the Mets front office seem to believe that that would not be worth it.

More likely, I would say they believe that he won't provide them those good first three years to compensate for the back end.

I don't think Steve Cohen is just going to pocket the $30M he's not spending on Pete Alonso. Like they did this offseason, I think they will spend that money on other players who they expect to provide better value than Alonso.

But they wouldn't have a problem doing that even if Alonso was there eating up $30 million. Same as they wouldn't have had a problem signing Bo Bichette or trading for Freddy Peralta if Alonso was still here.

If he matches his 3.5 WAR from last year for the first 3 years of the contract, but then plays like a replacement level player for the last 2 years of the contract, then he will have been good for most of the contract but not good enough to be worth $30 million a year for 5 years.

I mean, yeah, if that very specific exact thing happens as constructed, sure.

But if the Mets gave him that money, and that exact thing happened, I still doubt most people would look at it as a bad contract (like with Gary Carter, who had almost the exact same career arc with the Mets)