Mets owner Steve Cohen addresses trade-deadline, thinks team will compete in 2024
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Although the New York Mets are planning for 2025 and past, proprietor Steve Cohen doesn’t wish to get “embarrassed” subsequent season.
Cohen met with gamers, coaches and reporters Wednesday earlier than the struggling Mets performed in Kansas City, someday after the staff capped a surprising selloff of veteran gamers main as much as baseball’s commerce deadline.
After buying a bevy of minor league prospects in return, New York is clearly centered on the long run. Cohen, nonetheless, stated he nonetheless thinks the Mets will likely 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 mentioned the choice to commerce star pitchers Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and others.
“When you look at the probabilities,” he stated, “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 alternative for a stable return in trades was engaging.
“We thought we got a great return for the people we ended up trading,” he stated. “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 stated he’d spoken with each Verlander and Scherzer, and associated a part of a dialog with Scherzer that helped make clear the distinction in quick visions between the proprietor and gamers.
“You’ve got to remember, Max and Justin, they’re at a different point in their career,” he stated. “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 simply accept a deal to Texas that was introduced Sunday. The 40-year-old Verlander, like Scherzer a three-time Cy Young Award winner, accepted a commerce again to Houston on Tuesday.
An absence of consistency on the sector and a shortened timeframe to show across the season performed into the Mets’ determination to turn into large sellers on the deadline.
“We have 58 games left,” Cohen stated. “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 wouldn’t tackle particular personnel choices. All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso can turn into a free agent after the 2024 season.
“We love Pete as a Met,” Cohen stated. “He’s an integral part of the Mets. He’s still with us for another year. We hope we work things out.”
Cohen believes supervisor Buck Showalter isn’t in charge for the staff’s disappointing outcomes this 12 months.
“I don’t put it on Buck,” he stated. “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.”
