PORT ST. LUCIE — One huge financial settlement later, the Mets are still projected to finish last in the NL East, but for how long?
As far as many of the team’s fans are concerned, the settlement yesterday between Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz and the trustee for the victims in the Bernie Madoff scam represented a huge defeat: An unpopular ownership group is almost guaranteed to remain in place. But sentiment around the game also suggested Mets fans should be relieved.
Wilpon and Katz settled for $162 million, but won’t have to pay anything for at least three years. Even then, the payout could be drastically reduced as the Mets owners try to recover $178 million in losses in a separate clawback attempt.
A person with ties to the Wilpons indicated the new relative financial certainty of the situation — Wilpon and Katz could have been on the hook for as much as $386 million before the settlement — might lead to the owners opening their wallets to help improve the team.
“There was just so much uncertainty going into it,” the person said. “From that perspective, if you’re sitting there trying to improve the team, you always get your direction from ownership, right? If they are feeling good about the financial situation, which you’ve got to believe they are, you would expect to see some areas of improvement going forward.”
An executive from a rival team indicated it was a good day for the Mets and their fans.
“Instead of talking about lawsuits, [the owners] will go back to talking baseball, which is good,” the executive said. “The settlement will change the topic of conversation.”
Another baseball executive predicted the Mets’ payroll would increase next season.
“It’s tough to make any [financial] commitment when you don’t know what any costs are,” the executive said.
The Post has learned the Mets have paid back their combined $65 million in loans to Major League Baseball and Bank of America, but remain a team that lost $70 million last season alone, according to general manager Sandy Alderson.
The Mets will enter the season with a payroll of about $90 million, after spending $142 million on player salaries last year.
In recent weeks, one Met in speaking to The Post was hopeful that a relatively painless resolution to the lawsuit for Wilpon and Katz would lead to the owners sinking more money into the team this season. That could mean trying to add proven players at the end of spring training, but the true test likely wouldn’t come before the summer.
Wilpon is expected back at the spring training complex today and will have to answer such questions.
“The first order of business and the first priority will be getting down to Florida [today], getting to the spring training camp, and trying to bring the Mets back to prominence that our fans deserve and the City of New York deserves,” Wilpon said in a statement.
mpuma@nypost.com
Fred Wilpon, Wilpon, the Mets, Mets, Saul Katz, the settlement, Bernie Madoff, Katz
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