So Where Does That Leave the Mets?

 

Future baseball historians are going to look at the period of Mets baseball between 2021 and 2023 as the first Cohen gambit. There will be more, we know there will be more, but this was the first wave. Where Steve Cohen brought Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Francisco Lindor, Chris Bassitt, Carlos Carrasco, Kodai Senga and very nearly Carlos Correa to Queens for the purposes of bulking up the roster, and it didn't work. How would he learn from this? How much time would it take? All of this is important to the degree and refinement of the next Cohen gambit, which we all know is coming as soon as the non-Lindor pieces of the first wave have subsided.

But going into 2024, which is a year where the Mets cooled down a great deal and only nabbed J.D. Martinez as a gain, is an odd look after three years of trying hard and coming up short. Most of the figures Cohen signed in the last few years are gone. Senga is hurt. Marte at the very least can still hit but he's rounding his last few years. Lindor is really the only piece that's stayed constant, and even he's not 100% as volatile at the plate as he was back in 2021 [despite, at this rate, being almost definitely a future Hall of Famer with just how good he's been since coming up]. 

And so this year, you see a lot of smaller gambles in terms of bolstering the roster. Harrison Bader is on as an outfielder after a down year in 2023, and he's primed for a slight improvement, even if the Mets assume he'll be a lower-key player in this lineup. Luis Severino is a crucial rotation piece, and seems to have found his rhythm again after some dire years in the Bronx. Zack Short and Joey Wendle are both on the roster as infield substitutions, with Wendle having an excellent spring showing. 

But with the exception of Wendle, many of these guys are 'it'd be nice if they did something for us' cases. Severino is the perfect example of someone who could have an excellent season on this small 1-year deal, boost his free agency case, have somebody [maybe even the Mets] overpay to keep him around and then pitch 100 innings in 3 years. He did that for the Yanks loads of times, and we really cooked his throwing arm. Martinez, who isn't ready for MLB play yet given how late his offseason lasted, is in his late 30s and may be a waste of a contract, as many teams figured during Boras' long winded sales processes. 

It also just points to how diluted the Mets' core is. The rotation is astonishingly simple, with only one real homegrown hurler [Tylor Megill], a lot of veterans coming off poor seasons [Sean Manaea, Jose Quintana, Sevvy, Adrian Houser] and...whatever the hell Jose Butto is supposed to be. It's really been like 12 or so years since the Mets had a rotation consisting entirely of shrugs. Even in the early 2010s they had Johan Santana, R.A. Dickey and the beginnings of Matt Harvey, now they have 'well I guess this could work' x5. The lineup still has the core of Lindor, McNeil, Nimmo and Alonso, and Francisco Alvarez being a perennial guy helps, but there's a drop-off after that, and it's palpable. 

There is a chance the Mets throw something together with this team now that the pressure's off, but with two, possibly three NL East squads that are probably better this year, it's a tall order to ask for. Maybe they want these kind of underdog odds. Maybe it's a sign that they needed this last period to fail in order to succeed. 

Or, uh...maybe the rotation being defined by Jose Butto and not De Grom or Scherzer is a sign that things won't go well at all.