In early August, the Mets decided Luis Robert Jr. was worth keeping. In late August, they decided he was worth nothing at all. Same player, same season. The only thing that changed in between is that he got good.
The Mets have placed Robert on outright waivers, according to a report Saturday, giving the other 29 teams a 48-hour window to claim him and take on what's left of his contract. He's still eligible to play for New York while the clock runs, and if nobody claims him, he just stays put like nothing happened. The Mets hadn't confirmed it as of this writing.
The timing tells the story. Players need to be in an organization before September 1 to be postseason-eligible, so any contender who wanted Robert for October had to move now. Fine, that's the logical reason to run him through waivers this weekend. What's not logical is doing it two days after your own deadline reasoning finally paid off.
Go back to August 3. Robert had returned from a lumbar spine disc herniation on July 20, giving the Mets a two-week window to trade him before the deadline. They found no takers. Fair enough. But president of baseball operations David Stearns didn't just shrug and hold him by default, he defended the decision. "I think with Luis, it's the possibility of what he can do for us in the second half," Stearns said, according to SNY.
Then Robert did exactly what Stearns was banking on. He'd been hitting a miserable .197/.290/.320 through deadline day. In August, he slashed .286/.342/.557 with six homers, 11 RBI and 10 runs in 79 plate appearances, pushing his season OPS to .720, his best mark since 2023. The second-half turnaround Stearns predicted showed up right on schedule.
And the reward for it, apparently, is a trip to the waiver wire, not because Robert stopped hitting, but because of the bill. He's got a little more than $5 million guaranteed left, roughly $3 million in remaining 2026 salary plus a $2 million buyout on next year's option, and the Mets are unlikely to pick up his $20 million option for 2027. MLB Trade Rumors flagged the luxury-tax angle too: shedding Robert would save another $5.4 million in taxes on top of the salary. This looks less like a baseball call than a spreadsheet one.
I don't blame a 60-75 team, roughly 20 games back in the NL East as of late August, for chasing savings on a season that's already over. Non-contenders do this every year. The Reds recently ran Eugenio Suárez and TJ Friedl through the same move and both went unclaimed. That mechanism is routine. It's not the problem here.
The problem is the evaluation, and it goes back further than August. The Mets acquired Robert from the White Sox in January for Luisangel Acuña and minor-league right-hander Truman Pauley, taking on his full $20 million salary for the year. The warning signs weren't hidden. Amazin' Avenue's own trade breakdown noted at the time that Robert had hit just .223/.297/.364 the previous season, with a long injury history and only two seasons of topping 100 games in his career. Nobody needed hindsight here. The risk was printed the day of the deal.
Put it together: the Mets paid a premium salary for a player whose flaws were already public. They passed on trading him at the deadline and bet that call on a second-half rebound. He rebounded. Now they're trying to hand him to anyone willing to cover the last few million. That's a chain of bad decisions, each pointing a different direction.
Several outlets expect Robert to clear waivers, since it's unlikely another team pays the roughly $4.9 million he's still owed, and he plays out the year in Queens. That's speculation for now, and the 48-hour clock started Saturday, so this should resolve fast. If he clears, the Mets keep a hot hitter they just told the league they'd give away for free. If he's claimed, they got nothing for the second-half production they said, out loud, was the reason to keep him.
Either way, the front office spent a full season, plus a January trade, trying to figure out what Luis Robert Jr. is worth to them, and the answer keeps changing with the calendar instead of the player. When a front office pays full price for a guy, defends keeping him, watches him deliver, and then tries to give him away, the real miss isn't the waiver move. It's everything that led up to it.
