Senga and Smyly signed a week apart. I would think by the time Senga signed they had a pretty good idea of how much it would take to sign each pitcher, and what options were left out there to use the surplus funds on if they signed Smyly instead of Senga. The Mancini-Cubs rumors were persistent going back to early/mid-December, so same idea there.
Maybe Senga specifically had no interest in choosing the Cubs over the Mets, but if it came down to who was offering the most money, the Cubs likely had a pretty good idea of what a plan B of Smyly/Mancini would cost.
And for a team that would be staring down the potential departures of Hendricks and Stroman post-2023 and had only Justin Steele, who was coming off 3 excellent months sandwiched between 2 poor months on one end and an injury on the other, penciled in for 2024 and beyond at the time of Senga’s signing, 5 years at an AAV of $15 million (let’s even call at $16 million+, acknowledging that we’d have had to outbid the offer that ultimately brought him to NY), to me, was a feature, not a bug.
I’ll concede a bit on Barnhart as Amaya was no sure bet to be a contributor to the 2023 squad and they weren’t going to wrap up the off-season without signing a backup catcher. Even if Barnhart at $3.5 million for two years was not my preferred choice.