New York Mets general manager Billy Eppler watched the World Baseball Classic warily this spring. Of course, he knew there were inherent risks for his squad. And on March 16, as he sat in his spring training apartment with Catherine Eppler, his wife, he tried to mentally steer Edwin Diaz around the potholes of possibility from afar. Eppler followed Diaz’s pitch count and tracked the outs remaining for Diaz, and when Diaz closed out a win for Puerto Rico, Eppler felt relief. He got up and walked into another room.
Catherine lingered in front of the television to watch the Puerto Rico celebration, and she called to her husband in alarm. “He’s still on the ground,” she reported, and once Eppler saw Diaz at the feet of teammates, in a heap, he immediately dialed his phone, desperate for information.
What Eppler did not know in that moment was that the first domino had fallen in what would turn out to be a lost season. The first of many dominoes, as it turned out. The Mets were preparing for their Opening Day game when Justin Verlander, the team’s most important acquisition after the 101-win season of 2022, went down with a teres major injury and would start the season on the injured list. It was apparent to coaches early in spring training that Starling Marte wasn’t close to fully recovered from offseason core surgery. Max Scherzer became the most prominent player suspended for a sticky stuff violation, and lost the wipeout slider that had distinguished him in recent seasons. Veteran starters Carlos Carrasco and Jose Quintana both missed months with injuries. And just about every position player other than Brandon Nimmo and rookie Francisco Alvarez would go through some extensive slump. “It was one thing after another,” said one organizational source. “It never felt like we got our sea legs underneath us.”
Going into spring training, the Mets believed they would have one of the best bullpens in the majors, and instead, their relief corps ranks 21st among the 30 teams in ERA, at 4.19. With the signing of Verlander designed to complement the presence of Scherzer, the Mets had thought they would have a dominant rotation, led by two future Hall of Famers — and as of Friday, the ERA of the Mets’ starting pitching was a perfectly mediocre 4.49. The team expected to have one of the better offenses this season, if not necessarily the most powerful, and what they’ve had is one of the worst lineups, ranking in the bottom 10 in run production.
All of this served as context for one of the most surprising sell-offs in major league history. In the last 96 hours before the trade deadline, the Mets flipped both Scherzer and Verlander in blockbuster trades, eating enough salary to get high-end prospects in return. What the Mets really did was to turn sunken costs into prospect acquisitions.
\When the 2023 schedule was released, the Mets’ series against the Braves this weekend was expected to be an National League East showdown, perhaps for first place. Instead, the Mets are already in the business of reshaping their team for future seasons, while Atlanta is widely regarded as baseball’s best team — and a standard for the Mets to chase as owner Steve Cohen continues to make decisions.
Mets sources say the looming reality of a lost season began to harden during a three-game series against the Atlanta Braves in early June, in which both Verlander and Scherzer made starts. In each of the three games, the Mets built leads of three runs only to be swept by the Braves. Long before Cohen greenlighted the trades of Verlander and Scherzer, there was a sinking realization for some in the organization that the 2023 Mets would never escape a losing trajectory. While speaking with reporters recently, Cohen acknowledged that he had realized the team wasn’t good enough weeks before the trade deadline.
“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.”
Scherzer told reporters that in his conversations with Eppler and Cohen after being dealt, he ascertained that the Mets intended to take a step back in 2024 and to not necessarily compete at the top of the free agent market, for the top of the stars.
For some Mets sources, the belief about what’s possible in 2024 is different from what Scherzer conveyed. Though it’s true that nothing like last year’s spending frenzy is expected, Cohen and Eppler do plan to use available resources to improve next year. Sources describe the trade deadline decisions as using assets from what is already a lost season to strengthen a farm system that is already good — and preclude the need for such big spending.
Yes, Mets staffers believe that next spring, when projections for 2024 are posted, the expectations for the Mets will be much more modest than they were in the spring of 2023 — after Verlander was added to a team that made the playoffs with 101 victories. That seems inevitable. But sources say Cohen and Eppler are confident they can improve over the reality of this club’s performance, likely to be about 75 wins.
The Mets have former All-Stars under contract in Diaz, Nimmo, Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, Jeff McNeil and Marte (who they hope will be more physically able next year, as he continues to recover from double hernia surgery). Alvarez, the best in the wave of young Mets prospects, is likely to finish first or second in the voting for NL Rookie of the Year. Around that core of players, the Mets will look to add help in the rotation and the bullpen as well as other value signings. Rival executives expect the Mets to at least explore the possibility of signing Shohei Ohtani, although there is broad speculation that he’s likely to wind up with a West Coast team.
As one staffer said, Cohen is too ambitious to pass up good buy opportunities this winter if they present themselves, whether that’s someone like Ohtani or a veteran starter on a short-term deal. And if the Mets are in position to contend for the playoffs next July, “he’ll do what needs to do to help.”
“What Steve showed this year is that he’s not going to spend in the face of bad performance even when it’s illogical,” the staffer said. “He wants results, and along the way, he’ll shift strategy if that’s what the situation dictates. He’ll adapt.”
That could mean hiring someone like former Milwaukee Brewers GM David Stearns, whose contract with Milwaukee will soon expire, leaving him in position to speak with other teams. If Stearns is hired, it might be that he’ll oversee a front office that includes Eppler. If Stearns or someone else is installed at the head of baseball operations, Cohen has the option of allowing that new executive to pick a new manager — or continue with Buck Showalter, who is in Year 2 of a three-year deal. Cohen is on the record as saying that he doesn’t view Showalter as responsible for the 2023 disappointment, but friends of Cohen say he believes in process, and that he’ll want to settle his front office pecking order before the manager of the 2024 Mets is anointed.
Seven weeks remain in what has been a disastrous season — an excruciating frustration that started the night that Diaz blew out his patellar tendon. Already, they have started the business of resorting the pieces for 2024.
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