Cohen: Couldn’t promise Scherzer we’d be ‘all-in’
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Although the New York Mets are planning for 2025 and beyond, owner Steve Cohen doesn’t want to get “embarrassed” next season.
Cohen met with players, coaches and reporters Wednesday before the struggling Mets played in Kansas City, one day after the team capped a stunning series of trades of veteran players leading up to baseball’s deadline.
After acquiring a bevy of minor league prospects in return, New York is clearly focused on the future. Cohen, however, said he still thinks the Mets will be “highly competitive” in 2024.
“I think the expectations were really high this year and my guess is next year they’ll be a lot lower,” he explained. “I can’t speak to what’s going to happen in the offseason. I’m opportunistic. I don’t want to roll a team out that we’re going to be embarrassed about. But, we also know that spending a fortune doesn’t guarantee a trip to the playoffs. I think we’ve got to look and see what we need. Obviously we need starting pitching, and that’s the key thing.”
Cohen discussed the decision to trade star pitchers Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and others.
“When you look at the probabilities,” he said, “what we were at, 15% (to make the postseason)? And other teams were getting better, so you have to take the odds down from that. So, if you’re going to have a 12% chance of just getting into the playoffs, those are pretty crummy odds. I’ve said before — hope is not a strategy. I wanted sustainability.”
The opportunity for a solid return in trades was enticing.
“We thought we got a great return for the people we ended up trading,” he said. “We weren’t sure that was going to happen. We weren’t just going to do deals for the sake of doing deals. I would have kept the players if it turned out it was going to be a mediocre return. It’s a moment in time when other clubs were thinking very short term and I was thinking more intermediate, long term. And so, I was able to take advantage of that.”
Cohen said he’d spoken with both Verlander and Scherzer, and related part of a conversation with Scherzer that helped clarify the difference in immediate visions between the owner and players.
“You’ve got to remember, Max and Justin, they’re at a different point in their career,” he said. “Max asked me straight: ‘Are you going to be all-in at free agency next year?’ And I couldn’t give him that promise. I couldn’t give him that assurance, and he wants to win now. If he felt like our odds were smaller than he originally thought, then he made his decision, and Justin did, too. And I respect that. They’re good guys and they’re at a different point in their career.”
The 39-year-old Scherzer waived his no-trade clause to accept a deal to Texas that was announced Sunday. The 40-year-old Verlander, a three-time Cy Young Award winner like Scherzer, accepted a trade back to Houston on Tuesday.
A lack of consistency on the field and a shortened timeframe to turn around the season played into the Mets’ decision for making big moves at the deadline.
“We have 58 games left,” Cohen said. “We have to win two-thirds of our games. We’ve shown no consistency. It would really have to take a stretch to think something would change. With 58 games, things would have to change. I saw no indication that things were changing.”
Cohen would not address specific personnel decisions. All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso can become a free agent after the 2024 season.
“We love Pete as a Met,” Cohen said. “He’s an integral part of the Mets. He’s still with us for another year. We hope we work things out.”
Cohen believes manager Buck Showalter isn’t to blame for the team’s disappointing results this year.
“I don’t put it on Buck,” he said. “I put it on the players. I think we’re hitting in some bad luck. It’s kind of unfair to put it on the manager.”
New York traded six players in the days before Tuesday’s deadline and as part of those deals agreed to pay $78,915,591 to the teams acquiring those players. If Verlander exercises his 2025 option, the Mets would send the Astros another $17.5 million.
The Mets lowered their payroll this year to the $340 million to $345 million range and their luxury tax payroll to $370 million to $375 million.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Toronto Blue Jays became the first American League team to secure a spot in the postseason on Sunday with an 8-5 victory against the Kansas City Royals.
The AL-best and AL East-leading Blue Jays locked up a playoff spot with a week remaining in the regular season after a less-than-stellar start of 16-20 in early May and trailing by as many as eight games in the division in late May.
“I remember back when we were in Tampa in May, we weren’t playing very well and we got swept there,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “I think these guys did a great job of rallying around each other, but the turning point was really when we came out of Tampa and went into the Texas series.”
This is Toronto’s third playoff berth in four years and fourth in six seasons. They missed the postseason in 2021 and 2024. Playoff success has been elusive for the Blue Jays, who haven’t won a postseason game since 2016. And, unlike the past three trips, they hope this year they won’t have to play in the AL wild-card round as they try to win their first division title since 2015 as they close out the regular season with a six-game homestand against Boston and Tampa Bay.
“You could feel it with this group in spring training,” Schneider said. “I know that sounds really cliché, but when you get a group of men that are committed to the same goal, you can do things like this.”
The Blue Jays’ 90-66 record is tops in the AL and they lead their division by 2½ games over the New York Yankees. If Toronto wins the AL East and has one of the two best records in the league, it will advance to the AL Divisional Series, which starts Oct. 4.
The last time Toronto made it that far was nine years ago.
“I’m just so happy for them,” Schneider said. “It’s hard at this level for everyone to put their egos aside and to play for one another. It’s so cool to see these guys completely happy for one another when they get the job done no matter who it is. This is the most fulfilling team I’ve ever been a part of with different characters, different skill sets, guys coming together for one common goal which is what’s important now. This is something you always celebrate.”
The Blue Jays are trying to win their first World Series since 1993.
“Today we go back to the postseason, but the journey is not over yet,” Vladimir Guerrero Jr. said. “We still want to win the division over the next six games. Since spring training, everyone has been together and when you see a team like that you start believing.”
Toronto snapped a four-game losing streak with Sunday’s win, and after the game popped champagne in the visitors clubhouse in Kansas City.
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