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(Eric Hartline/USA TODAY Sports)
Regarding the title of this article, I still feel as if I need to be pinched in order to wake up. If five years ago you told Mets fans -- who were in the clutches of the penny-pinching Wilpon regime -- that one day soon we would have an owner who cared about us, and wasn't afraid to spend the way a New York team should, we'd have laughed at you. What's even crazier, is that we definitely wouldn't have believed you if you told us that one day, the Mets rotation would feature Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer.
But that is no longer a hypothetical, and our collective prayers have been answered.
Only days after signing three huge bats in Eduardo Escobar, Mark Canha and Starling Marte, Mets owner Steve Cohen and newly acquired GM Billy Eppler set their sights on even bigger fish, and acquired possibly the biggest arm on the free agent market this year, one of the best to ever take the mound, Max Scherzer.
Scherzer expressed a disinterest in playing for the Mets shortly before he was dealt to the Los Angeles Dodgers at the 2021 MLB trade deadline, and he also expressed a desire to stay on the west coast, but money has a weird way of changing people's minds.
After years of booing the man for being the ace of one of the Mets biggest and most heated rivals, the Washington Nationals, and after months of jokes from fans of other teams about how "Scherzer would never sign with the Mets," here he is, signing a three-year, $130 million contract.
Max Scherzer will be entering his age 38 season in 2022, but time hasn't slowed him down a bit. In 2021, despite dealing with a small groin injury midway through the season, Scherzer registered his lowest career ERA at 2.46, posted a 15-4 record, and struck out 236 batters, all while keeping a consistent mid-90's velocity over nearly 180 innings pitched. Scherzer also finished third in the National League Cy Young voting.
The addition of Max Scherzer gives the New York Mets the best 1-2 punch in all of baseball with deGrom in the one spot and Scherzer following him up. And don't blink now, because all signs point to the Mets front office not being done quite yet here in free-agency.