Yesterday, as a symbolic and meaningless protest, Jacob deGrom (as advised by his agent) refused to sign his 2016 contract. His 2016 salary of $607,000 is obviously low relative to other Cy Young contenders, but unfortunately as a player with less than 3 years of service time he has no say in the matter. MLB players in the first 6 years of service are controlled by their current team. The first 3 years of service they receive marginal pre-determined raises. The next 3 years their salary is determined through arbitration and is brought more in line with their current market value. Jacob deGrom does not yet have 2 full years of service time, and therefore he’s part of the overworked and underpaid club. And he can’t change that until he’s a free agent after the 2020 season.

The action of not signing his contract means nothing. It’s something his agent told him to do to help give him leverage in future arbitration hearings. It’s actually inspired me to refuse to e-sign my 2016 tax return. Stick it to the man. That being said, this is a non-event. In fact, deGrom went out of his way to say this is a non-event. He said,  “Absolutely not, I am not pissed, I am not upset at all. I love pitching in this organization, I have a lot of respect for them and I hope to be pitching here a long time. This was a business decision that my agents felt was in my best interest.”

I’m only blogging about this to call out the media fabricated story in the Daily News:

Oh no!!! It looks like our players are unhappy. They all have gripes and are playing hardball! What do we do?

It’s really a joke that newspapers are able to print straight lies. The Yankee controlled Daily News propaganda machine is at it again. All spring training, the only Yankee articles I’ve seen have been about how the league’s most notable cheater Alex Rodriguez has reformed his ways and is an inspiration to all players across the sport. Clearly an objective take on a player that was nearly banned from the game for his regular steroid use. He’s a real role model for future generations.

Anyway, the point is that this season everyone will be against the Mets. Every team in the league will be trying to bring us down. And the New York media will try to bring us down all season long from within. Fabricated problems around Harvey. Fake feuds in our pitching staff. It’s just going to be article after article. And it’s because we represent a change in the narrative. The Mets winning the World Series doesn’t fit the New York baseball script. Last season the media didn’t expect our run. We were in the World Series before they even had time to react. But now they’ve had an entire offseason to plot and scheme about how to take us down. So don’t be surprised when Michael Conforto is hitting .210 over a two week stretch in May and the Daily News is leaking fake stories about how the team wants to demote him to AAA. It’ll be a “Confortunate Downfall”. Then it’ll be how Yoenis Cespedes is Cespe-pissed with Terry Collins’ management style and Curtis Granderson is Grumperson about his playing time. The BS will just go on and on. So all I am saying is be prepared and don’t believe the crap the media spews out. If I can make up name based pun headlines all day, just imagine what the media has in store for us in 2016.