Rather than pay Jacob deGrom to return to Queens, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen turned the loss of his ace into a surprise win.
When a team loses their ace, things usually don’t go well afterwards. It’s usually the smaller MLB teams that end up losing their best pitcher to bigger clubs. So when the New York Mets lost Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom to the Texas Rangers, fan morale was somewhat shaken.
To be clear, the Rangers are no small baseball club — especially after last winter’s free agent spending — but they are no Mets.
That being said, Steve Cohen did not settle for defeat like many other clubs would have done in such a situation. Rather than feel sorry, Cohen took the money deGrom would have been paid and used it to completely rebuild the Mets’ pitching staff.
One man’s salary is another man’s entire rotation.
As Jomboy’s Jolly Olive remarkedthe Mets would have had to pay $187 million to bring deGrom back, but instead invested $187 million in three new pitchers this season.
- Justin Verlander – 2 years/$86 million
- Kodai Senga – 5 years/75 million dollars
- Jose Quintana – 2 years/$26 million
When you compare those numbers to the five years and $37 million a year the Rangers have pledged to pay DeGrom, the pain begins to ease for fans unhappy to see him leave New York.
Obviously, this whole story has to unfold before we can have a good idea of whether that gamble paid off for Cohen. As things stand, this is a very good bet and a surprisingly smart use of money for a team with a history of mishandling their contracts.
The departure of DeGrom should not make us forget that the three new recruits of the Mets join Max Scherzer. So even though New York has lost a Cy Young winner, it still has one at the top of its rotation.
New York Mets pitching rotation slated for 2023
- Max Scherzer
- Justin Verlander
- jose quintana
- Kodai Senga
- Carlos Carrasco
It’s a great rotation to set up and sharpen for the post-season next October.
New York has already tried the approach of pairing Cy Young winners at the top of its rotation and filling in the gaps from there. Technically, that strategy is still in place as Verlander just won his third Cy Young (and his second in four years), but the rest of the squad is more fleshed out than in the past.
Anyway, that’s Cohen’s bet and it seems to be the smartest decision of the winter so far.
