Rumours are swirling that New York Mets infielder Bo Bichette could opt out of his three-year contract at the end of this season and become a free agent with a weak hitter class expected in the coming off-season.
Those rumours were exacerbated by ESPN’s Jeff Passan, when he posited that it would be “genuinely a coin flip” whether or not Bichette decides to opt out.
Bichette is in the first year of his three-year deal that pays $126 million, one of the biggest contracts by average annual value in the sport.
ESPN’s Buster Olney joined First Up on TSN1050 on Tuesday to discuss Bichette’s potential to opt out and why he thinks it would be “crazy” for Bichette to walk away from his deal with the Mets.
“It’s been interesting because what’s being conveyed in a lot of different news outlets is that it’s 50-50 whether Bo’s going to opt out, and my first thought is ‘Where’s that coming from?’ Because we know it’s not coming from the Mets, right? The Mets don’t really have any insight into it,” Olney said.
“So it’s coming from Bo’s camp and [the idea that it’s a] 50-50 that he’s going to opt out after a season in which his OPS+, which is adjusted to league average - the league average is 100, he’s at 97. He’s below league average. He’s got a .702 OPS, an on-base percentage of .311. He’s had a bad year. He’s not considered to be a good defender.”
Bichette has struggled in his first year in the Big Apple, hitting .261 with 16 home runs and 73 runs batted in. Outside of a disastrous 2024 in which Bichette missed time with leg injuries, Bichette has never finished with a batting average below .290 or an OPS below .800 in any season of his career.
Olney thinks that if Bichette were to opt out of his deal, he may actually be doing the Mets a favour.
“I suspect that if Bo Bichette were to opt out of his contract, Steve Cohen, the Mets owner, would drive over and give him a Lamborghini,” Olney said.
A large part of the uncertainty is surrounding the potential for a lockout in the 2027 season, with the ongoing CBA negotiations progressing slowly between the MLB owners and MLBPA.
“The labour uncertainty ... is a factor both on the player’s side and on the team’s side, because we don’t know what the economic system is going to be on the other end,” Olney said. “Is it going to be a salary cap? Not a salary cap? He’s making $42 million [a year], are you kidding?
“To walk away from that ... I’ve run this past a bunch of club executives and said ‘He’s going to walk away from $42 million, is he crazy?’ and people that I’ve spoken to have echoed that, they can’t see that. So whatever is being dripped out there into the media, I think maybe reassess and look at the numbers here.”
One factor that may push Bichette towards opting out and trying to find a longer deal is the fact that pool of hitters slated to become free agents this coming off-season does not include many stars, as Passan outlined.
“Certainly when you cast him against the free-agent class, the .702 OPS looks a little bit better,” Olney said.
Only one hitter slated to become a free agent (32-year-old Brandon Lowe) has a 30-home-run season under his belt in his career.
“What is absolutely being [noticed] - and I’ve heard this from other teams - is the fact that the Blue Jays basically politely said ‘No thanks’ [to re-signing Bichette to a long-term deal] at the end of last year, that was something that got the attention of folks with other teams.
“Bo has a lot of years ahead of him. From the feedback I’ve been getting, he’d be crazy to walk away from that contract because it seems very unlikely he’d be close to getting that salary.”
Olney expects that this situation will be resolved sooner rather than later.
“After Bo’s season this year, we don’t know what he’s going to be moving forward,” Olney said. “I suspect at some point what we’re going to hear from Bo’s camp is ‘Bo’s decided he’s going to keep the money and he loves New York.’”
