The Mets look to the future with consequential deadline trades
The Mets came into this season with credible World Series aspirations.
By Tuesday’s Major League Baseball trade deadline, they had reshaped their roster, trading their two pitching aces and closer.
High-priced hurler Max Scherzer was dealt to the Texas Rangers last weekend and the franchise’s prized winter free-agent signing, 2022 American League Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander, was dealt back to Houston Astros — with which he won the World Series a season ago — on Tuesday.
The Mets also traded closer David Robertson to the Miami Marlins this past weekend and outfielder Mark Canha to the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday. The collective deals by and large yielded the Mets a bevy of talented but unproven prospects. It’s a roster reconstruction, no matter how Mets general manager Billy Eppler framed the upheaval.
“It was a strategic decision,’’ explained Eppler after moving Scherzer and Robertson and prior to reuniting Verlander with the Astros. “We took this opportunity to serve another goal of the organization, which is to enhance the farm system. But I do want to be clear, it’s not a rebuild, it’s not a fire sale, it’s not a liquidation. This is just a repurposing of (team owner) Steve’s (Cohen) investment in the club and kind of shifting that investment from the team into the organization.”
At his first press conference on Tuesday as a Ranger, Scherzer said he was informed by Eppler when inquiring about the Mets’ front office’s immediate plans that the organization would be pivoting from contending this season to shaping the outlook for the future.
“His answer was that the team is now kind of shifting vision and that they’re looking to compete now for 2025 and 2026, and that 2024, that it was not going to be a reload situation in New York, and that it was going to be more of a transition in 2024,” Scherzer revealed.
The Mets were 50-56 when they faced the Kansas City Royals Wednesday on the road, fourth place in the National League with virtually no chance of catching the Atlanta Braves, which were in first place at 68-37. The Mets were a disconcerting seven games behind the Brewers for the third wildcard spot, with another four teams ahead of them in the race.
Scherzer, 39, posted a 9-4 record with a 4.01 ERA this season with New York. He was signed by the Mets in November 2021 to a three-year, $130 million contract. The three-time Cy Young Award winner went 11-5 in 23 starts last season with a 2.29 ERA, helping the Mets to a 101-61 mark, tied with the Braves for the third-best record in the league.
The 40-year-old Verlander, also a three-time Cy Young Award recipient, was inked to a two-year, $86.7 million contract last December and had his final start with the Mets on Sunday, beating the Washington Nationals 5-2 at Citi Field and earning his 250th career win. He was 6-5 in 16 starts during his brief Mets tenure with a 3.15 ERA. So now, during the next off-season, the Mets will look to leverage their acquired assets for more established players via the trade route, develop the youngsters they believe have the potential to be impact players on the Major League level and continue to use Cohen’s deep pockets in free-agency.
The Mets, who began this season with the highest payroll in MLB history at $353.5 million, have been an abject disappointment to fans that rightly had high hopes the team would end what is now a 37-year World Series winning drought.
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