The New York Mets concede 2023 & 2024, plan to compete in "2025 or 2026"
The New York Mets' plan is to resume competing for the World Series in 2025 or 2026, according to now-traded pitcher Max Scherzer.
Speaking to The Athletic ($) in his first public comments after his trade on Sunday to the Texas Rangers, he detailed the organization's direction, as relayed to him by owner Steve Cohen and general manager Billy Eppler.
“I talked to Billy,” Scherzer told The Athletic. “I was like, ‘OK, are we reloading for 2024?’ He goes, ‘No, we’re not. Basically our vision now is for 2025-2026, ‘25 at the earliest, more like ‘26. We’re going to be making trades around that.’
“I was like, ‘So the team is not going to be pursuing free agents this offseason or assemble a team that can compete for a World Series next year?’ He said, ‘No, we’re not going to be signing the upper-echelon guys. We’re going to be on the smaller deals within free agency. ‘24 is now looking to be more of a kind of transitory year.’”
To that effect, the Mets have already traded closer David Robertson (to Miami), Scherzer (to Texas), and OFs Mark Canha (Milwaukee) & Tommy Pham (Diamondbacks).
Reportedly, the Mets were open to not only trading players with contracts that expired after 2023, but players that had contracts expiring after 2024 as well. Among those that would fall under that group are starter Justin Verlander (who was, in fact, traded to Houston on Tuesday afternoon), 1B Pete Alonso, reliever Brooks Raley, and starter José Quintana.
The New York Mets famously assembled the highest payroll in baseball history this season, $353.5M, just to enter Tuesday's slate at 50-55, 17.5 games back of Atlanta and in 4th place in the National League East behind the Philadelphia Phillies and the Miami Marlins.
The Mets peaked at six games over .500 on Friday, April 21st, with their last day in the NL East lead coming after the 4th game of the season when they were 3-1 and 0.5 games up on the rest of the division. Any thoughts the Mets had at making a run were destroyed in June, after they went 7-19 in the month to fall to 18.5 games back of the division lead.
The Mets have a -10 run differential and are only 16-14 against their divisional foes, with most of the damage being done by Atlanta, who has beaten the Mets in five out of six contests this season. Most famously, Atlanta swept the Mets in early June after Pete Alonzo's now infamous "throw it again" comment, directed at Atlanta's Bryce Elder.
And now they've thrown in the towel on the 2023 and 2024 seasons. And according to Scherzer, it's not something anyone in the clubhouse saw coming:
"All the players had a vision of, we reload for 2024. That was no longer the case. [...] What was being communicated to me was that there were a lot of pieces being moved for prospects to try to make the 2025 team better.
That’s basically what Steve (Cohen) said: ‘I never thought in a million years we’d be in this situation, being at the deadline and we’re actually selling. But the math is the math. And the math says this organization needs to retool.’ That was Steve saying that."
I guess with inflation, Steve Cohen's money just doesn't go as far as it used to.
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