With spring training underway for the Mets, questions are looming around the future of pitcher Max Scherzer.
The three-time Cy Young Award winner can opt out of his three-year, $130 million contract after the 2023 season. But as the new season draws near, Scherzer is not solely focused on the financial piece of his Mets’ tenure. Instead, he apparently is seeking to understand the trajectory of the club following the loss of pitcher Jacob deGrom, who opted out of his contract and signed a five-year $185 million deal with the Rangers in December.
Scherzer told SNY on Tuesday that deGrom was a key reason why he came to play for the Mets. With championship aspirations in Queens, Scherzer wanted to see how the Mets would respond following deGrom’s departure.
“It was, if Jake opts out, you didn’t know what was going to happen,” Scherzer said. “You didn’t know where the Mets would be as an organization. A big draw for me to come to New York was to get the chance to pitch with him, and here he has an opt-out in year one. If he did take it and go somewhere else, what is the organization going to do?”
But when New York signed nine-time All-Star Justin Verlander to a two-year deal, the 38-year-old Scherzer felt the organization helped him in making a decision about his future. However, regardless of the type of season that Scherzer has statistically for the Mets in ’23, the eight-time All-Star says he is locked in on preparing for the season at hand.
In fact, Scherzer told SNY that the only motive behind including an opt-out clause in his contract was purely from a competitive standpoint, not financial.
“Obviously, you go through six months of the baseball season, anything can change,” Scherzer said. “… I’m not even thinking about [the opt-out clause], because when I negotiated it in, the reasoning for it was that I wouldn’t be stuck in an organization that wasn’t moving in the right direction.
“If it becomes a business situation, we will cross that bridge at a different time.”
