WE NEED HIM BACK: The New York Mets Owner Steve Cohen, announced to sell the team Due to Poor…
Anas CITY, Missouri (AP) Although the New York Mets have plans for 2025 and beyond, owner Steve Cohen does not want to be “embarrassed” next season.
Cohen spoke with players, coaches, and reporters Wednesday before the struggling Mets played in Kansas City, one day after the organization completed a startling selloff of experienced players ahead of baseball’s trade deadline.
After receiving a slew of minor league prospects in exchange, New York is clearly focused on the future. Cohen, however, believes the Mets will remain “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 said. “I can’t say what’s going to happen in the offseason. I am an opportunist. I don’t want to send out a team that we’ll be embarrassed about. However, we also understand that spending a fortune does not ensure a playoff appearance. I believe we should look around and see what we need. Obviously, we need to start pitching, and that is the most important thing.
Cohen examined the decision to deal top pitchers Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, among others.
“When you look at the probabilities,” he remarked, “what were we at, 15% (to make the playoffs)?” And other teams were improving, so you had to reduce the odds accordingly. So, if you only have a 12% chance of making the playoffs, those are poor odds. I’ve said it before: hope is not a plan. “I wanted to be sustainable.”
The potential for a substantial return on trades was appealing.
“We thought we got a great return for the people we ended up trading,” he told reporters. “We didn’t know that was going to happen. We were not going to do agreements simply for the sake of doing them. I would have kept the players if the return turned out to be mediocre. It’s a time when other clubs were thinking extremely short-term, but I was thinking more intermediate-long-term. I was able to take advantage of that.”
Cohen stated that he had spoken with both Verlander and Scherzer and that a conversation with Scherzer helped clear the owner’s and players’ differing immediate visions.
The 39-year-old Scherzer waived his no-trade clause to accept a deal with Texas, which was disclosed Sunday. Verlander, 40, accepted a trade back to Houston on Tuesday, joining Scherzer as a three-time Cy Young Award winner.
“You’ve got to remember, Max and Justin, they’re at a different point in their career,” he told reporters. “Max asked me straight: ‘Are you going to be all-in at free agency next year?’ And I could not make him that pledge. I couldn’t give him that certainty, and he’s eager to win now. If he believed our chances were slimmer than he had anticipated, he made his decision, as did Justin. I respect that. They’re good guys at a different stage in their careers.”
The Mets’ decision to sell big at the deadline was influenced by a lack of consistency on the field and a short time period to turn around the season.
“We have 58 games left,” Cohen stated. “We need to win two-thirds of our games. We have shown no consistency. It would be difficult to believe that anything will change. With 58 games, things would need to change. I saw no indication that anything was changing.”
