![]() The club bought out McNeil’s two remaining arbitration years and committed to at least two more years after that. The parties avoided it by agreeing to an extension, hashing out all the final details by Monday night. McNeil requested $7.75 million and the Mets offered $6.25 million. It helps.Īfter meeting with Eppler, McNeil told Longo something that would matter when it came time to talk about an extension: “I can play for that guy.”įast forward more than a year later to early last week, when McNeil told his agent something else that would prove to be critical: “I can play in New York.”Īt the time, the Mets and McNeil, 30, seemed headed for an arbitration trial. Experience has taught him that whenever a player hears directly from his employer that he is of value, the sentiment carries weight. Longo recalled being pleased with the exchange. Still, Eppler told McNeil that his skill set was “extremely valuable for this organization.” It was a stark dropoff from his previous two campaigns, when he slashed. 251/.319/.360 with seven home runs in 426 plate appearances. Sitting across the table, Eppler outlined the Mets’ expectations for McNeil and emphasized that whatever transpired during his 2021 season did not matter. ![]() ![]() We’ve signed to a four-year contract extension. They met near LAX for dinner, making McNeil the first Mets player that Eppler sat down with as the new GM. Eppler drove up from southern Orange County. So McNeil drove down from just north of Santa Barbara. But because Longo and Eppler already had shared history, the agent made a suggestion to the GM: “Why don’t you just go to dinner with Jeff and you two talk?” The original plan was for all three men to convene in Los Angeles. The two then ventured into planning mode, scrambling to figure out how Eppler could meet with McNeil before the work stoppage was set to begin in just a few weeks. “That would be really cool,” Longo replied. “I want to make the Mets the ‘Dirtbags’ of MLB.” “I love that he’s a Long Beach State Dirtbag,” Longo recalled Eppler saying. But the conversation soon shifted to McNeil, one of Longo’s clients at Paragon Sports International. ![]() So soon after Eppler was named GM of the Mets, Longo reached out to offer his congratulations. The relationship between Longo and Eppler stretches back to the early 2000s when the latter worked in the Rockies’ scouting department.
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