The wham-bang contract agreements forged by Kyle Tucker with the Los Angeles Dodgers and brand new New York Met Bo Bichette in the span of roughly 15 hours suddenly swept the board clean of franchise players younger than 30 – and curtailed the destinations of a few players still out there.
Bichette’s three-year, $126 million agreement resets the perception of the offseason for multiple teams, players and fan bases. With that, let’s take a look at the winners and losers from Bichette’s Citi Field foray:
Winners
Bo Bichette
Nah, it wasn’t the $300 million deal one might have envisioned for Bichette both earlier in his career and as he put together an outstanding platform season in lifting the Blue Jays to the AL East title. But lest we forget, Bichette produced a .225/.277.322 line over 81 games just one year ago, worth -0.1 WAR. He finished this regular season with an injured knee, but a gallant World Series return reminded the world how impactful a player he can be.
At second base. Yeah, Bichette had to swallow some pride and will now likely be a second or third baseman the rest of his career, his defensive metrics being what they are. Yet with all that, he will command a $42 million salary – and be able to opt out next winter, when he’s just 28.
Pete Alonso and Alex Bregman showed how swimmingly that can work out. And Bichette is both younger and more positionally diverse than both of them. He may yet near a $300 million total guarantee once he signs his next deal.
New York Mets
Had ’em all the way, eh, David Stearns?
The Mets’ unflappable president, empowered by bottomless-pocketed owner Steve Cohen’s megabucks, nearly fumbled it all away this winter – letting Alonso walk without so much as a courtesy offer, declaring he’d pass on the elite starting pitching market, losing peerless closer Edwin Diaz by just a few bucks, the eh acquisitions of infielder Jorge Polanco, second baseman Marcus Semien and closer Devin Williams.
Bichette does not cure all. There’s still a gaping hole in left field where Brandon Nimmo once stood, and there’s tons of ambiguity surrounding how much trust and how many plate appearances the Mets will invest in several young players.
Still, Cody Bellinger remains on the market if they want to go big in left, and tweak the Yankees at the same time. Stearns’ notion of going economy on the rotation looks wise – a glut of fairly trusty veteran starters remain on the market.
And Bichette’s ability to ‘flat-out hit,’ as they say – he’s twice led the AL in hits and is in the 86th percentile in K rate – will create a suffocating 1-2-3 atop the lineup with Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto.
Still not ideal. But far from the cataclysmic winter hyperventilating Mets observers envisioned.
The AL East
Whew.
For a minute there, the Blue Jays and their Rogers Communications arsenal were starting to look like George Steinbrenner North. They struck quickly for ace Dylan Cease, and the notion of adding Tucker and retaining Bichette didn’t seem so farfetched at the outset of the season.
Under those circumstances, would the Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles and Rays be playing for second? Not quite, eh, but it would have been far less optimal.
Yet 2026 will bring no Tucker and no Bichette to the Blue Jays – or anyone else in the AL. The competitive balance of both division and league suddenly got a lot flatter.
J.T. Realmuto
The venerable Phillies catcher had been locked in a staring contest with his club, which just so happened to schedule a Zoom call with Bichette four days ago. Signing Bichette would have required moving several pieces around – and moving on from Realmuto.
Yet just hours after Bichette’s Mets agreement, team and club found common ground on a three-year, $45 million deal, ensuring their ironman backstop who turns 35 in March is back in the fold.
Losers
Toronto Blue Jays
You just hate to see it.
Sure, the re-signing of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to a $500 million extension seemed certain to break up the organization’s power couple: Bo and Vladdy, together for a decade, legacy players and beloved in all of Canada.
Yet Bichette’s subpar 2024 dampened his value. His 2025 comeback did not totally send it into the stratosphere. Maybe the de facto brothers would be together forever.
Alas, it will be Vladdy going it alone, and suddenly the Jays’ $60 million signing of Japanese infielder Kazuma Okamoto looks all the more critical. His early performance will be watched warily, as Japanese hitters often need a greater adjustment time than pitchers.
So, too, will the Blue Jays’ many playoff heroes. Ernie Clement and Addison Barger and Andrés Giménez are now far more primary, rather than complementary pieces.
Sure, the Jays may yet forge a mini-dynasty in the AL. But it just got a lot tougher.
Cody Bellinger
For a minute there, it looked like he had the Yankees over a barrel. Maybe he still does.
But as he and the Yankees squabble over number of years on a contract, two of his alternatives – the Dodgers and Mets – spent big for Tucker and Bichette. Not to say the Mets won’t get back in the Bellinger game, and perhaps the Blue Jays will jump in, with money to burn and an upgrade over Nathan Lukes readily available.
We still believe the Yankees and Belli will find common ground somewhere between five and seven years. But it feels like the Yankees wield a little more clout in the power exchange now.
Mets corner infielders
Maybe someday, Mark Vientos and Brett Baty will get an unadulterated crack at a full-time job.
Unfortunately, they are developing players on a club that will be in perpetual win-now mode for the foreseeable future. And thus, Baty’s 3.1 WAR accrued in a 121-game 2025 campaign gets nudged to the side. Vientos’s backslide in 2025 after a second-half surge in 2024 might have slammed the door on any chance at a full-time gig going forward.
For now, the two third basemen are DH partners on paper, but with four projected regulars in their 30s, it’s not hard to imagine many of those at-bats will be gobbled up by veterans needing a day out of the field.
Perhaps a trade and a fresh start will be in the offing for one of them. For now, winter remains the time their playing time dreams evaporate.
Atlanta Braves
It’s getting increasingly difficult for one of the game’s best-run organizations to keep up with the Northeast behemoths.
The Braves were considered a solid candidate for Bichette’s services at the start of the winter. They opted to retain shortstop Ha-Seong Kim. Totally fine. Really good player.
Yet it will be hard to match the Mets’ and Phillies’ firepower, especially since Atlanta’s 2026 calculus likely bakes in bounceback seasons from the likes of Austin Riley and Jurickson Profar. Their margin for error is looking pretty thin.
It’s not like the Braves are paupers; listen to any old Liberty Media earnings call and you realize the Braves and The Battery are, as public equity bros might say, just printing. Still, they remain hesitant for big free agent splashes that upset the formula of retaining their own players.
From 2018 to 2023, when they ruled the NL East, that was fine. But it seems to get harder every year.