After an offseason in which ardent New York Mets fans had been injected by rare optimism, New York’s 2021 season flamed out in epic fashion and was riddled by chaos throughout. The ensuing weeks provided a snapshot of the fallout — the game’s brightest minds rejecting overtures to lead their baseball operations department, some of the most attractive free agents eschewing their larger offers to play elsewhere, the Mets’ fervent owner tweeting angrily through it, while other executives and agents laughed along. By Thanksgiving, the Mets were a franchise in disarray.
On Monday morning, the Mets conquered all of that chaos in the most effective, efficient way possible — by throwing a ridiculous amount of money at it.
Max Scherzer — the best pitcher available this offseason and quite possibly the best pitcher of this generation — agreed to join the Mets on a three-year, $130 million contract, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan. It gives him an average annual value of $43.3 million, more than 20% higher than the previous record set by Gerrit Cole‘s contract with the New York Yankees. It’s a staggering number for a man who just completed his age-36 season and is approaching 3,000 career innings. But it’s what needed to be done.
Steve Cohen’s checkbook is open.
When the billionaire hedge fund manager secured his purchase of the Mets 388 days ago, he brought with him the promise of spending the way a big-market owner should. Cohen would make the Mets a financial juggernaut that would compete with, perhaps even surpass, the behemoths of the industry. His Mets fandom and his deep pockets had the potential to change the dynamic of the sport. It started with a 10-year, $341 million extension for shortstop Francisco Lindor last spring. Monday’s signing — on the heels of a tumultuous first 12 months of ownership — was further evidence of what that actually means.
Cohen went where no other team dared, according to sources. Scherzer sought three guaranteed years, so Cohen gave him that, on a record salary, and threw in an opt-out after Year 2 for good measure. It was the type of deal even Scherzer, a member of the union’s executive subcommittee in the midst of contentious negotiations over a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, couldn’t turn down. Now the Mets’ rotation features a pairing that could be one of the most devastating pitching duos in decades, up there with the likes of Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke, Dwight Gooden and Ron Darling.
Scherzer joins Jacob deGrom, who boasts a 2.50 ERA since his rookie season in 2014, second-lowest in the majors for pitchers with at least 50 starts. Third on that list — behind Kershaw at No. 1 — is Scherzer, at 2.81.
Last year, deGrom posted an unfathomable 1.08 ERA through 15 starts, striking out 146 batters and walking only 11 in 92 innings. Persistent elbow and forearm trouble kept him from pitching in the second half, and yet deGrom still finished ninth in National League Cy Young Award voting. His health remains a major question moving forward, one that will significantly alter the Mets’ immediate future.
Scherzer, at the very least, is a major insurance policy. The three-time Cy Young Award winner just completed what might have been the best season of his 14-year career, even with an ominous ending. Scherzer went 15-4 with a 2.46 ERA in 179 1/3 innings for the Washington Nationals and the Los Angeles Dodgers, striking out 236 batters and walking only 36. He finished in the top three in Cy Young voting for the sixth time. In his first nine starts for the Dodgers, who acquired him alongside middle infielder Trea Turner in exchange for their two best remaining prospects, Scherzer fashioned a 0.78 ERA in nine starts.
But after Dave Roberts asked Scherzer to handle the ninth inning of Game 5 of the NL Division Series against the San Francisco Giants, his arm was slow to recover. It forced Roberts to push him back an extra day for both of his scheduled starts in the following round, so, instead of pitching Game 7 of the NL Championship Series, Scherzer watched the Dodgers get eliminated by the eventual champion Atlanta Braves in Game 6. He dismissed long-term injury concerns at the time, stating that his arm was merely tired. But a pending physical examination — the final step in completing his deal with the Mets — will be the final arbiter.
Scherzer’s departure leaves the Dodgers scrambling to fill out a starting rotation that is headlined by Walker Buehler and Julio Urias but features a lot of uncertainty beyond that. The Dodgers wanted Scherzer back, both because he is still clearly pitching at his best and because they loved the tone that was set by his intensity and unselfishness. It’s the type of presence that can help fix a franchise in disarray — which was certainly of note for Cohen and Mets GM Billy Eppler.
In a span of 13 months, the Mets had one general manager (Brodie Van Wagenen) get caught on a hot mic ripping the commissioner of baseball, another (Jared Porter) get fired for sending explicit, unsolicited texts to a female reporter and another (Zack Scott) get placed on administrative leave following an arrest on drunken driving charges and fired two months later. In the midst of that, their president, Sandy Alderson, also had to answer for sexual assault allegations around their former manager, Mickey Callaway, who has since been placed on Major League Baseball’s ineligible list.
On the field, Lindor struggled mightily offensively in the season predating the start of his extension; their young core of position players underachieved; offseason acquisitions such as Carlos Carrasco and James McCann underperformed. The Mets went 29-45 in the second half, missing the playoffs for the fifth straight season. They fired their manager, Luis Rojas, and hired Eppler, only after spending weeks chasing the likes of Theo Epstein and Billy Beane, who turned down offers to become their president of baseball operations.
Nine days after hiring Eppler, Cohen took to Twitter to rip Rob Martin, the agent for starting pitcher Steven Matz, for “unprofessional behavior” after his client accepted what was reportedly a lesser offer to join the St. Louis Cardinals. It was another bad look by the Mets’ owner, after prior tweets in which he criticized his team’s offensive approach and characterized the exploitations of the amateur draft, among others.
Of course, none of Cohen’s eccentricities will matter to Mets faithful if he builds their team into a winner. The Mets spent $124.5 million on Starling Marte, Mark Canha and Eduardo Escobar on Friday, moves that helped to address their woeful offense from 2021. Four days later, they pushed their 2022 payroll into the $260 million range, a figure that will blow past the luxury-tax threshold no matter what the next CBA looks like. But holes remain throughout the roster.
So Cohen, who finally has the Mets acting like a big-market team, will keep spending. The checkbook is open.