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‘Are you in it to win it?’ How Mets got Cespedes deal done

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The Mets explain how the Yoenis Cespedes deal went done on a Wednesday conference call.Kathy Willens/AP

The Mets explain how the Yoenis Cespedes deal went done on a Wednesday conference call.

The moment Sandy Alderson really felt like Yoenis Cespedes could return to the Mets came when he had this exchange last week with Cespedes’ agent:

“I asked Brodie (Van Wagenen), ‘Does Yoenis want to come back to New York?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes,’” Alderson recalled Wednesday on a conference call with reporters.

“Brodie asked me, ‘Are you in it to win it?’ I recall that as the exact phraseology. I said yes. As we began to circle around the issues and get more direct, it was getting to a point last week where it was a real possibility.”

And so Cespedes is again a Met after signing a three-year deal worth $75 million, which was agreed to last Friday. He left bigger deals on the table elsewhere, but came away from this one with an opt-out clause after the first year, in which he’ll make $27.5 million. Cespedes can choose to return to free agency next winter or perhaps try to work out a new deal with the Mets.

Alderson, Van Wagenen of CAA, and Mets COO Jeff Wilpon were on the call to discuss the deal, but Cespedes was not. He had a prior commitment in Florida, the team said. There could be a formal press conference next week to introduce the man even Alderson admitted injected some “sizzle” into the Met off-season.

The Mets stayed in touch with Van Wagenen throughout the winter, Alderson said. Not on a day-to-day basis, but enough to get a sense of Cespedes’ free agency. When the Mets portrayed doubt about a potential “La Potencia” return at various times during the winter, it was genuine, not a negotiating tactic, Alderson said.

“You always like to underpromise and over produce,” Alderson said. “I think we had to be realistic. It was hard to read into the market, hard to predict the shifts. I think those statements sort of accurately portrayed where we thought we were. But from our standpoint, we understood the magnitude of this issue with the media and our fans and we didn’t want to sort of overproject what we thought might happen.”

Yoenis Cespedes and the Mets find they are a good match.Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images

Yoenis Cespedes and the Mets find they are a good match.

With teams such as the Nationals and, reportedly, the Orioles, hovering around with longer-term deals, the Mets and Cespedes “got serious” late in the day last Friday, Wilpon said.

“Sandy asked me to get on the phone with them and it moved quickly from there,” Wilpon said.

For fans hoping Cespedes is in Flushing longer than one season, Van Wagenen offered this: “He (Cespedes) doesn’t view this as a short-term contract. While the opt-out is out there, Yoenis sees this opportunity as one to win the World Series in 2016 and he hopes it’ll be a bridge to a longer-term partnership going forward.

“While the opt-out is there, there’s certainly an eye to making this more.”

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