KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The remaining Mets might not have seen the overhaul coming, but at least publicly weren’t displaying any animus Tuesday.
Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, David Robertson, Mark Canha, Tommy Pham and Dominic Leone all departed in trades over the past week, leaving the Mets as a shell of the team that opened the season with a $364 million payroll and high World Series title aspirations.
“It’s a repositioning of players and assets in the organization, and we’re trying to build a sustainable system,” Francisco Lindor said before the Mets’ 7-6, 10-inning loss to the Royals. “It is, I will call it … relocating the assets that we have — moving some players and trying to allocate some players that are going to help us maybe late this year, next year and in the years to come.”
Lindor, whose contract runs through 2031, said he’s onboard with the philosophical shift and he remains optimistic about the near future.
Pete Alonso, who can head to free agency after the 2024 season, said he’s trying to win every game regardless of who is on the roster.
“My job is to go out there and perform every single night,” Alonso said. “I can’t necessarily worry about the team philosophy because it’s just in my DNA as a player, every time I am written in the lineup I am doing everything I can to win the game.”
Call it what you want, but the Mets are in the midst of a rebuild.
In a text to The Post’s Steve Cohen, the owner admitted the Mets are looking beyond next season.
“We will be competitive in ’24, but I think ’25-’26 is when our young talent makes an impact,” Cohen wrote. “Lots of pitching in free agency in ’24. More payroll flexibility in ’25. Got a lot of dead money in ’24.”
Scherzer underscored that plan Tuesday when he told The Athletic he was informed by general manager Billy Eppler that the team doesn’t intend to pursue top free agents this offseason and reload for 2024. Instead, the Mets are looking toward 2025 and more likely ’26. That information prompted the 39-year-old Scherzer to waive his no-trade clause last weekend and accept a trade to the Rangers.
Eppler declined to address Scherzer’s comments but said he expects the Mets to compete next season.
“Going into 2024, we don’t see ourselves as having the same odds as we did in 2022 and 2023,” Eppler said, reiterating comments from last week. “But we will field a competitive team in 2024, so now is a time we start to think about what kind of opportunities will exist in the wintertime, what kind of resources we will have at our disposal and put our best foot forward. But to get to the sustainability we always talk about we were going to have to do that organically.”
Eppler said tanking to obtain better draft positioning isn’t an option.
“We won’t have the same [World Series] odds in 2024, but we’ll put together a competitive team,” Eppler said.
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