In the past five days, the Mets jettisoned closer David Robertson, No. 2 starter Max Scherzer, outfielder Mark Canha, setup man Dominic Leone, No. 1 starter Justin Verlander and outfielder Tommy Pham. They all but gave up on this season. And they may have cost themselves two-way star Shohei Ohtani.
Almost no one seems to know what will lure the 29-year-old Ohtani, perhaps the greatest baseball player the world has ever seen, when he becomes a free agent after this season. He has declined to comment on how much money he is seeking or which cities he most enjoys. But over and over, he has made one thing clear.
Late in 2021, his fifth straight losing season with the Angels, Ohtani said, through interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, “I like the fans. I like the atmosphere in the organization. But my feelings of wanting to win are stronger.” Two weeks ago, at the All-Star game, Mizuhara characterized Ohtani’s position thus: “Those feelings get stronger year by year. It sucks to lose. He wants to win. That gets stronger every year.”
The Mets are serious about pursuing Ohtani. But after the way they approached the trade deadline, Ohtani may not be serious about the Mets.
Owner Steve Cohen’s decision—executed by GM Billy Eppler—to cut bait on a lost season made sense. The team entered Tuesday in fourth place in the National League East, with a record of 50–55, 17 1/2 games behind first-place Atlanta and six games out of a wild-card spot. Scherzer, 39, and Verlander, 40, are each making $43 million. They both got off to bad starts and missed time due to injury. Every veteran hitter except Pham and shortstop Francisco Lindor is having the worst full season of his career. Only one prospect—catcher Francisco Álvarez—seems like a star. On the eve of the season, FanGraphs gave the Mets a 77.1% chance of making the playoffs; as of Thursday, just before the sale began, that figure was down to 14.9%. And that’s after playing .609 baseball in July!
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So Eppler is “repurpos[ing] Steve’s investment,” he said on Sunday, using Cohen’s cash to eat most of the large contracts in trades and in return receive better prospects. That’s a smart use of the tridecabillionaire’s resources, and it may indeed set the team up for the stability and sustainability Eppler often mentions. But it doesn’t bode well for the immediate future.
Scherzer, who had to waive a no-trade clause to be shipped to the Rangers, saw that. So did Verlander, who had to do the same to be dealt to the Astros. Scherzer could have remained in Queens through 2024, Verlander through '25. Both had said they had hoped to honor their commitments to the Mets; both changed their minds when faced with the reality of what that would look like.
“I talked to Billy,” Scherzer told The Athletic. “I was like, ‘O.K., 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.’”
Eppler said on Tuesday that he wanted “to kind of honor [the confidentiality of] those conversations that we had” but acknowledged that “going into 2024, we don't see ourselves as having the same odds that we did in 2022, 2023, but we will field a competitive team in 2024.”
He added that he did not believe the Mets’ shifted focus would affect their attractiveness to potential free agents who want to win now.
Well, he knows Ohtani as well as anyone, having signed him as Angels GM when Ohtani came over from Japan before the 2018 season. And it’s certainly possible that relationship or Cohen’s largesse or an unreported love of bagels will bring Ohtani to New York. But Ohtani has said he wants to win now, and the Mets have just said he can’t do that with them.
