All it took for Steve Cohen to convince everyone he was indeed a better owner than the Wilpons was one Black Friday shopping spree in which the Mets reportedly agreed to terms with outfielders Mark Canha and Starling Marte and infielder Eduardo Escobar on contracts worth a combined $123.5 million.
The haul was as impressively versatile as it was swift by Cohen’s new front office tandem of Sandy Alderson and general manager Billy Eppier. Canha and Escobar are the type of expensive depth pieces the Mets never added in the back end of the Wilpon reign. And as good as Brandon Nimmo has been the last four years, Marte — fresh off a monster season in which he led the majors in stolen bases — should give the Mets the natural centerfielder they’ve lacked since Juan Lagares’ Gold Glove-winning peak in 2014.
But given all the gaping holes the Mets had exposed during a 2021 in which they managed to spend more time in first place than any sub-.500 team in history, the Black Friday moves should represent just the start of the Mets’ off-season shopping, not the bulk or even the peak of it. At some point soon — maybe even tonight or on Cyber Monday — the Mets need to make the biggest splash of the pre-lockout winter.
The Mets need to sign Max Scherzer.
The Hall of Fame-bound pitcher, who set an almost surely unbreakable record last year by failing to reach base once in 59 plate appearances, won’t further bolster what was one of the NL’s worst offenses last year. But he’d be the safest investment of the winter, in more ways than one, for the Mets.
As Francisco Lindor and James McCann proved again last season, sure thing offensive upgrades for the Mets rarely turn out as such. But even with Lindor, McCann and everyone else in the lineup outside of Nimmo and Pete Alonso struggling, the Mets were comfortably atop the NL East thanks to a rotation led by the otherworldly Jacob deGrom and the solid 2-3 punch of Marcus Stroman and Taijuan Walker.
But deGrom, of course, never pitched after July 7 due to a sore right elbow, leaving him with perhaps the most plaintive pitching season of all-time. Walker, pitching a full season for the first time since 2017, wore down in the second half (0-8 with a 7.13 ERA after the All-Star Game). Stroman remained consistent but, as he’ll let anyone and everyone know on Twitter, is torching bridges because he doesn’t think the Mets want him back.
There are no sure things with pitchers, especially 37-year-olds with more than 2,700 professional innings on their right arms. But adding Scherzer to the rotation would not just give the Mets a terrific best-case scenario — two Cooperstown-caliber aces atop the rotation — but also dramatically lessen the worst-case scenario by reducing the pressure on the new members of the lineup while also lengthening the depth of the rotation. There’s no drop-off from deGrom to Scherzer, whose presence would allow Walker, Carlos Carrasco, David Peterson and whomever else the Mets import this winter to remain as mid- and back-end rotation types.
Scherzer would also represent the rarest of possibilities — a chance for a team to naturally change its culture. Scherzer, possessing an uncommon level of self-awareness for an elite athlete, would not pull a Curt Schilling and arrive with all the subtlety of a jackhammer at sunrise. (For those who forget the good ol’ days when Schilling merely made noise for being a loudmouth baseball player, he spent the winter of 2003-04 posting on Red Sox fan forums and declaring, among other things, that the press had no idea of the inner workings of the Red Sox clubhouse even though Schilling had yet to throw a single pitch in Boston)
One of the most telling Tweets of last season was the footage of the Dodgers holding a closest to the pin competition to determine the first pick in their fantasy football draft. In the video were four former award winners — Scherzer along with Clayton Kershaw, Clay Bellinger and David Price. Scherzer was the only one performing at or near his peak in 2021, yet as the newest member of the Dodgers, he lingered on the edge of the group and was smiling yet restrained in his reaction while the rest of his more tenured teammates went nuts after Bellinger won the right to draft first.
The Mets are still the team of deGrom and Alonso, and Scherzer wouldn’t arrive in New York looking to usurp them. As long as deGrom makes it through the winter healthy, he’s still the unquestioned no. 1 and Opening Day starter. And it’s easy to envision Scherzer, who can certainly let loose with the best of them, assisting Alonso in ripping off someone’s T-shirt following the first walk-off win of 2022.
But Scherzer doesn’t have to barge in and take over the locker room in order to create a much-needed changing of the Mets’ culture, which lately has celebrated how hard they tried and how much everyone liked each other. That’s fine when the effort yields the numbers produced by deGrom and Alonso, but not quite acceptable otherwise.
Few people in baseball are as bottom-line driven — in all regards — as Scherzer, who arrived in Washington when the Nationals’ locker room looked like a ‘70s disco after routine regular season wins and exited with a World Series ring. There are no guarantees he’d do the same in New York. But signing Scherzer would be the boldest move in franchise history, and the most emphatic way for Cohen to declare a new era has begun.
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November 29, 2021 at 09:14AM
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After A Black Friday Shopping Spree, The New York Mets Need To Sign Max Scherzer - Forbes
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