Drew Gilbert (screenshot)
The dust is settling on the dismantling of the New York Mets.
Within six days, general manager Billy Eppler took the richest team in baseball history — and one of the most disappointing ones, as well — and gutted it of some of its central fixtures.
Starting pitchers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, the two future Hall-of-Famers that were supposed to pace a vaunted starting rotation, are gone. David Robertson, the team’s best reliever in a shambolic bullpen who filled in so admirably for the injured star closer Edwin Diaz, is gone. Tommy Pham, one of the Mets’ most consistent and productive bats since May within a sputtering lineup, is gone. So are outfielder Mark Canha and reliever Dominic Leone.
With it, the Mets have waved the white flag in 2023 — confirming what most of us realized in June. The team with the highest payroll ever simply wasn’t good enough.
But Eppler, with the backing of affluent owner Steve Cohen and his ability to eat tens of millions of dollars on these veteran contracts to maximize the Mets’ returns, rebuilt the organization’s farm system in less than a week.
“We’re just trying to restock and reload a farm system,” Eppler said on Tuesday night. “You have to go through a little bit of pain to get to where we want to go. But I feel like the organization is making strides toward a better future.”
That little bit of pain will be the rest of the 2023 season and potentially 2024 if he doesn’t get the green light from Cohen to make a few splashes on the free-agent market to bring on starting pitchers for a depleted and incredibly thin rotation.
But suddenly, the pipeline of sustainable, young talent that Cohen and Eppler have often dreamed of a la the Atlanta Braves or Los Angeles Dodgers is taking its foundation. What the Mets received in five trades across six days takes years for organizations to build in their farm system.
Here’s a look at some of their new…
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