In New York, One Team Is Lost and the Other Is Targeting 2025
Scherzer said he spoke with Eppler before the trade to Texas, and expected to hear that the Mets would reinvest in the roster this off-season.
Instead, Scherzer told reporters in Texas on Tuesday, Eppler’s “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.”
Cohen gave Scherzer a $43.3 million average annual salary, the richest in major league history (since matched by Verlander), before the 2022 season. After speaking with Eppler, Scherzer said he sought clarity from Cohen on the team’s immediate plans.
“He basically articulated the same vantage point,” Scherzer said. “That was the new vision for the Mets, that was the new timeline that they were identifying. So once it became, that’s the vision for the Mets, then I said, yes, I will waive my no-trade clause underneath those pretenses.”
If Cohen and Eppler meant what they told Scherzer, that would seem to rule out an aggressive free-agent bid for Shohei Ohtani, the two-way megastar Eppler signed for the Angels from Japan in December 2017. And while several core offensive players are signed to long-term deals — Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil — the slugging first baseman Pete Alonso, who is facing free agency after next season, is not.
Source: The New York Times
