Mike's Mets - Cohen-Vision

 

By Mike Steffanos

While a former New York Met waxes poetic on the vision of the Rangers' organization, things are looking just fine here with the old club. 

In the olden days, hearing the Mets associated with the name of a premium free agent was almost inevitably a precursor of eventual disappointment, even before the Madoff fiasco crippled the team's finances. One of the factors that made Omar Minaya so popular with the fanbase initially was his signings of Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran during his first winter at the helm. I remember feeling electrified by the news of Beltran's signing, fully expecting Carlos to end up elsewhere that winter.

Those signings turned the franchise around. For an all-too-brief period, they made Queens a preferred place to be. Sadly, Minaya's magic faded, soon followed by the owners' finances. By the time Steve Cohen took over the club in November 2020, New York's National League franchise was about as favored a destination as Khabarovsk in January. The eventual cure would take one measure of spending and another measure of winning to turn things around for the Mets.

Newly appointed Mets GM Billy Eppler went on quite a spending spree last November, inking Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Eduardo Escobar, and Mark Canha just before the lockout shut down baseball. Then the club hired Buck Showalter to be their manager the following month. The Mets were coming off a disappointing season in Cohen's first year as owner. It was clear that Steve Cohen had no intentions of enduring another. I remember thinking that the rapid-fire signings, necessitated by the lockdown, would likely be a one-of-a-kind experience for Mets fans like myself. Not that I didn't expect the Mets to sign some free agents in the future, just not at last November's frantic pace.

As you know, it took only another year before my assumption was blown out of the water. It began late in the evening of last Friday, December 2, with the sad news that Jacob deGrom was leaving town, heading to Texas for oodles of cash with a side order of vision. The Mets headed into baseball's winter meetings in San Diego with a big hole to fill in their rotation and other essential needs to be addressed. The Daily News' Deesha Thosar neatly summarized the events of the next few days in this tweet:

Mets free-agent signings since Jacob deGrom bounced for the Rangers:

-Justin Verlander (2 years, $86.7M)
-Brandon Nimmo (8 years, $162M)
-José Quintana (2 years, $26M)
-David Robertson (1 year, $10M)
-Kodai Senga (5 years, $75M)

$359.7 million guaranteed in one week. 💸

— Deesha (@DeeshaThosar) December 11, 2022

In a scant few days this past week, Steve Cohen's club went on an epic spending spree that dwarfed last November's haul. First, the Mets replaced deGrom with Justin Verlander, the one available starting pitcher capable of truly replacing him, ace for ace. Then they added third and fourth starters to the rotation, an important setup man to the bullpen, and brought their leadoff batter and CF back into the fold. Oh, and they traded for Brooks Raley, finally adding a capable southpaw to the bullpen. A week after deGrom's departure left a big hole in their roster, the Mets plugged that hole and arguably just about every other hole that needed filling.

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