CLEVELAND — The negotiations last winter got so deep that Mets officials were discussing small contract details such as a hotel suite on the road that would have put a cherry atop their offer for center fielder Michael Bourn.
But this was no ordinary free-agent pursuit. The Mets were not going to forfeit their top selection in this year’s draft to sign Bourn, and the veteran outfielder wasn’t about to wait for general manager Sandy Alderson to receive an answer from an arbitrator about the possibility of the team signing him without losing the draft pick.
So when the Indians called last February with a four-year offer worth $48 million that contained a fifth-year option, Bourn took it, leaving the Mets outfield in shambles heading into the season.
The Mets finally will get to see Bourn in the outfield — wearing an Indians uniform — during a three-game series that opens Friday night at Progressive Field.
In 110 games this season, the 30-year-old Bourn is batting .262 with five homers and 39 RBIs with 21 stolen bases. In the meantime, Juan Lagares has emerged for the Mets as a premier defensive center fielder and in June the team added Eric Young Jr., whose numbers are similar to Bourn’s.
But are the Mets in better shape because they didn’t get Bourn?
“Where we sit right now, the answer is yeah,” manager Terry Collins said. “But would have Michael Bourn made a difference in April? Come on. Maybe we wouldn’t be sitting where we are right now, so it’s a difficult thing to answer, because he was a good player, and we wanted him.
“We had high hopes. Going into the winter we thought we had a healthy Johan [Santana], we knew Matt Harvey was coming. Who knows? You put [Bourn] at the top of the order with Marlon Byrd and David [Wright] in the lineup, but we didn’t get him.”
The Mets weren’t going to risk losing the 11th overall pick in this year’s draft — which they used to select 18-year-old first baseman Dominic Smith — to sign Bourn. According to the collective bargaining agreement, the top 10 selections are protected, allowing those teams to sign free-agents who didn’t receive a qualifying offer (formerly known as Type-A free agents) without surrendering the draft pick.
The Mets argued they should have had a protected pick because they were bumped to 11th only because the Pirates were slotted ahead of them when they failed to reach agreement with Mark Appel, their top selection in the 2012 draft. Alderson was willing to bring the case before an arbitrator, but Bourn took the Indians’ offer when it became clear the Mets might have to wait weeks for a hearing. A team official involved in the negotiations said there had been discussions with Bourn’s agent, Scott Boras, about a fifth-year option, and believes the Mets would have signed Bourn if not for the draft-pick situation.
“Things happen for a reason and what happen happened, and we wish [Bourn] well and we’ve done fine,” a Mets official said. “I don’t think you can look at it any other way. I don’t think it was a blockbuster either way.”
The rookie Lagares, who is batting .268 with four homers and 29 RBIs in 99 games, has been the biggest beneficiary of the Mets’ not signing Bourn, but there have been others.
“We probably don’t see Young Jr., and I don’t know what would have happened with Byrd,” the official said. “It’s so hypothetical. It ended up being good for the Indians and it ended up being good for us. That’s the only way you can really look at it.”
Collins, too, is willing to see the silver lining.
“As we continue to talk and build toward the future in this organization, we’ve got some bright, young talent in that room,” Collins said. “And by not getting [Bourn] it certainly has allowed us to move forward with a couple of things.”