Max Scherzer said the reports about the Mets clubhouse weren’t accurate and that he and Justin Verlander are actually “in a better place” than they were at the start of this season.
“I talked to Billy,” Scherzer told The Athletic. “I was like, ‘OK, are we reloading for 2024?’ He goes, ‘No, we’re not. Basically, our vision now is for 2025-2026, ‘25 at the earliest, more like ‘26. We’re going to be making trades around that.’
“I was like, ‘So the team is not going to be pursuing free agents this offseason or assemble a team that can compete for a World Series next year?’ He said, ‘No, we’re not going to be signing the upper-echelon guys. We’re going to be on the smaller deals within free agency. ‘24 is now looking to be more of a kind of transitory year.”
The conversations between Scherzer and the Mets’ leadership were after he made his final start for the team on Friday night.
Scherzer understood that strategy but still wanted more answers. Players from multiple teams were texting him that their clubs were making trade offers for him, asking if he would accept.
After Eppler informed him of the club’s plan, Scherzer told the GM, “I’ve got to hear this from Steve. It is a change in organizational direction.” Cohen, Scherzer said, told him, “exactly the same thing, kind of verbatim.”
Scherzer then gave the Mets permission to trade him, and the next day, went to the Rangers along with approximately $36 million for infielder Luisangel Acuña, a top-100 prospect.
“If they had said, ‘We’re going to hold on to all the ‘24 pieces,’ that would have been a different story,” Scherzer said. “But they were saying no, we’re going to be moving players under contract for 2024 before the deadline.
“That’s a completely different vision from what everybody had in the clubhouse. All the players had a vision we reloaded for 2024. That was no longer the case.”
Speaking to reporters, Eppler said following his trade of Scherzer, of the Mets’ plan, “I do want to be clear that it’s not a rebuild. It’s not a fire sale. It’s not a liquidation. It is just a repurposing of Steve’s investment in the club and shifting that investment from the team into the organization.”
But Scherzer, who could have opted out of his three-year, $130 million free-agent contract at the end of the season, said he would have preferred to stay with the team if Eppler and Cohen had told him they intended to retool quickly.
“If they had said, ‘Hey, we’re looking to compete in 2024,’ I wasn’t itching to get out of New York. I was happy in New York. I had a house. The family was all set up.
“When they were trying to compete outside my contract. I said, ‘OK, that’s the math,'” Scherzer said. “That’s what Steve said: ‘I never thought in a million years we’d be in this situation, being at the deadline and we’re selling. But the math is the math. And the math says this organization needs to retool.’ That was Steve saying that.
“I said, ‘I get it. I’m not here to say you’re wrong.’ It is what it is. I understand from Steve’s perspective that’s the direction he wants to take the team based on where everyone is at within their contracts, arbitration, and free agency. That was the new vision for the Mets. That was outside my contract. At that point, that’s when it became binding. I said I will accept a trade.”
