Good Morning,
We have a lot to cover, so let’s get right into it.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the trade by now: the Mets are sending Max Scherzer to the Texas Rangers for 21-year-old shortstop prospect Luisangel Acuña, the younger brother of Braves superstar Ronald.
Steve Cohen will pay ~$35 million of the roughly $57 million still owed to Verlander between this season and next. The deal was temporarily held up until Scherzer was willing to agree not to opt out of his contract. That means he will be a Ranger through the 2024 season.
The trade sent shockwaves through the Mets’ dugout and the entire baseball industry: the Mets have placed a giant “for sale” sign on their clubhouse door.
“If a guy with a no-trade clause [can be traded], anyone can,” Pete Alonso told reporters last night. When asked about his own future with the team, Alonso responded, “There are implications and I'll think about it for sure but I'm just perplexed by the Max trade.”
Brandon Nimmo used Scherzer’s line from Friday that there will be a “conversation” with the front office about the short- and long-term vision.
Meanwhile, Billy Eppler’s phone must have been buzzing all night long, as teams check in on the availability of other players, including Justin Verlander, who the Dodgers are reportedly eyeing after the Cardinals made clear Nolan Arenado will not be traded.
⚾️ This trade marks the end of an up-and-down tenure for Max Scherzer with the Mets. Many fans will never forgive him for faltering down the stretch last year, and imploding in the playoffs. He was injured multiple times, suspended for using sticky stuff and had trouble finding his rhythm early this season when the team started to unravel and put themselves in this position to sell.
Still, he showed flashes of his dominant self on many nights. While his underlying metrics tell a certain story, his top-line numbers reveal a star who finishes his time in New York with a 3.02 ERA over 42 starts. With the benefit of a small sample, that’s the fourth lowest ERA of any Mets pitcher who has started at least 40 games, behind Jacob deGrom (2.52), Tom Seaver (2.57) and R.A. Dickey (2.95).
Ironically, he will now fill the void in the Texas rotation initially created by deGrom’s injury. I don’t want to think about the possibility of the duo working together to lead the Rangers to a championship in 2024.
🔹 Tell me more about Acuña
Luisangel Acuña immediately becomes one of the best prospects in the Mets’ system. Sam Dykstra of MLB Pipeline feels comfortable he will rank No. 1 when they rerank the system in August, so does Mets prospect guru Joe DeMayo.
FanGraphs ranks him as the 56th-best prospect in all of baseball (one spot below Alex Ramírez). Baseball Prospectus recently ranked him 59th overall.
He is currently slashing .315/.377/.453 with seven home runs, 51 RBIs and 42 (!) stolen bases in 84 games in Double-A. Those are strong numbers; however, he is living off a .381 BABIP that will certainly lead to a regression. More importantly, he is checking many of his developmental boxes, including adding more loft to his swing. He has accumulated over 500 Double-A plate appearances between this year and last. He will surely progress to Triple-A by next season and could make his way to the majors by the end of the year.
If you’re wondering how his numbers might translate onto the major-league level, here are the latest ZiPS projections:
I will talk about the challenge of where he fits positionally later, but as a two-win player, he projects to be an above-average middle infielder who is under team control for the next 6+ seasons. If he meets these 50th-percentile projections starting in 2025, he would be worth over $100 million in value. The Mets won’t pay anything close to that in his pre- and arbitration-eligible years. Of course, this assumes he actually develops into an everyday player over the first six years of his career, which we know is far from guaranteed, even for a prospect of his ilk. That’s why his value is closer to the $35 million they paid of Scherzer’s contract, which we will talk more about in a bit.
After trading David Robertson for raw talent and a potential 50-grade prospect in Marco Vargos, the Mets targeted a prospect that Keith Law characterizes as “more floor than ceiling.”
I will let prospect expert Eric Longenhangen provide a deeper dive into his potential:
Were Acuña a draft-eligible college player, he’d easily be the first infielder off the board, as no college shortstop in the 2023 class can match his level of athleticism and explosiveness. His swing has a load and leg kick similar to his brother’s before Luisangel takes a gargantuan stride toward the mound and whips his entire torso around in the blink of an eye. His hands are lightning-quick and direct to the ball, though he struggles to make contact in front of the plate, often over-swings, and tends to chase.
Acuña’s epicurean approach to hitting hasn’t yet led to excessive strikeouts. Instead, the knock-on effects of his desire to swing at most anything is more evident in his middling home run output and high groundball rate. He has adjusted to the quality of pitching at Double-A and, after struggling there at the end of last season, is slashing .315/.372/.450 as of list publication. Big league pitchers will likely figure out that they can get him to chase whatever (Acuña has a 50% swing rate) and start junk-balling him to death, and Acuña should be considered a high-variance prospect who’ll likely need to make adjustments once his talent alone is insufficient for him to rake.
Defensively, he has spent most of his time at shortstop, and while he isn’t technically polished, he does have the twitch and arm to project there with additional refinement. He is one of the many upper-level prospects in this system who makes sense as a trade target for other teams at the deadline because they’re blocked by great big leaguers but are still proximate to the majors.
🔹 Did Eppler make a good trade?
That’s a complicated question. Let’s start with the prospect return and then we will get into the bigger picture implications.
Earlier this month in my 2023 Mets Trade Values piece, I introduced the concept of prospect valuation. Based on historical data, we can approximate the value of prospects relative to their scouting grade. Using that framework, I predicted the Mets might be able to land a top prospect by paying ~$35 million of Scherzer’s remaining salary (including his opt-out year).
As it turns out, the Mets will pay ~$35 million of Scherzer’s remaining salary. They will receive what FanGraphs classified as recently as July 9th as a 50-grade prospect in Acuña. Pretty close to my expectations. In fact, if we use the latest ZiPS projections for Scherzer (3.4 WAR through 2024) and put everything in $10.4M/WAR values, Scherzer’s surplus value becomes ~$27 million after the Mets pay down the majority of his contract. As you can see in the chart below, that almost perfectly lines up with a 50-grade positional player.
Another way to look at this: Acuña needs to produce at least four WAR to match what the Mets gave up in Scherzer and cash. We saw his projections earlier. It seems reasonable to expect him to get there.
When you consider that Acuña could also serve as a future trade chip, it’s almost impossible to believe the Mets won’t end up with positive value from this trade. Scherzer’s value means little to them over the next few months, and it’s reasonable to expect he will continue to decline in his age-40 season in 2024. If Cohen is willing to reinvest the $22 million he saves by trading Scherzer instead of keeping him, there are avenues to find an improvement over Scherzer in 2024, while gaining a quality future asset.
🔹 What does this say about competing in 2024?
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been living under the following assumptions:
Steve Cohen wants to compete in 2024.
Steve Cohen will eventually stop spending absurd amounts of money.
I feel less confident in the second assumption than the first. But still, it seems plausible that Cohen will eventually slow his spending after a record-setting payroll resulted in a failed season, and especially after he continues to pay for players to play on other teams. The Mets are already projected to have a luxury tax payroll around $280 million in 2024, which would put them into the tax for the third straight season, which carries significant consequence.
That’s why I wrote yesterday that a trade of Scherzer or Verlander seemed unlikely “unless the Mets receive an offer that allows them to both re-tool their farm system and acquire major-league ready pitching.” By acquiring Acuña the Mets got close to achieving these goals, with the notable exception that he is close to a major-league ready position player instead of a pitcher.
The more I think about this Max Scherzer trade, the more it seems possible that Cohen will in fact continue to spend absurd amounts of money, as long as it fits a particular strategy.
And that strategy appears to be to use the trade market to stockpile the farm system, and then replenish the veterans that were traded via free agency.
If the Mets are willing to pay top dollar for free agent starters next offseason, trading Scherzer has relatively no impact on their ability to compete in 2024. Besides the most coveted target, Shohei Ohtani, there are attractive starters such as Julio Urías, Aaron Nola and Blake Snell, among others, who are set to hit the market, along with the possibility that NPB ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto is posted.
It’s unclear exactly how the cash considerations will be split between the next two seasons, but if Cohen is willing to maintain the same payroll, with as much as $22 million in savings in 2024, the Mets can reinvest that into a younger (and probably better) starter.
If the Mets enter the 2024 season with Aaron Nola and a new top prospect ready to crack the lineup at the same cost they would have paid had they kept Scherzer, are they more or less competitive in 2024 and beyond?
Of course, this assumes the first assumption is true, that Cohen wants to compete in 2024. You have to wonder how the conversation between Scherzer and the Mets’ brass went before this trade went down. Is Scherzer simply at the point of his career where punting on 2023 is too much for him to accept? Meaning, he wasn’t as concerned about next year? Or did the Mets indicate they are taking a step back to retool the farm system?
Francisco Lindor told reporters last night that he initiated a conversation with Eppler that made him feel good the team is more in “transition” than in a full rebuild. However, if the Mets keep trading 2024 pieces for future assets, at some point it becomes untenable to replace all of them within one year of free agency.
There are just too many unknowns to know how this will impact the Mets in 2024. We will see what other trades materialize over the next few days. At the very least, the farm system is suddenly looking a lot deeper.
🔹 Where does Acuña play?
This is the most fascinating question about this trade. While Acuña hasn’t played above Double-A, he will surely jump to the next level shortly, and could easily break into the major leagues as soon as next season.
Acuña became expendable by the Rangers because they are paying Corey Seager $325 million to be their shortstop until 2031. Now, he joins a Mets team that has Lindor getting paid $341 million to play shortstop until 2031.
Acuña is capable of playing other positions, including center field and second base—two positions already filled by core players on multi-year deals, with Brandon Nimmo signed through 2030 and Jeff McNeil signed through 2026. That’s not to mention the prospects already searching for new positions in the Mets’ system.
It makes you wonder if there’s another shoe to drop. At the very least, it means either Nimmo or McNeil could eventually find new positions to make room for Acuña. Quite frankly, it could mean McNeil doesn’t see the end of his contract with the Mets. There just isn’t enough room for Lindor, Nimmo, Acuña, Mauricio AND McNeil past 2024. The DH gives the team some flexibility to find at-bats for a logjam of players, but there are plenty of other candidates that might need the safety of that role in the future.
As a speedy shortstop, Acuña is a valuable player that projects to be worth ~2 wins per season. If he’s forced to move to another position, that value is suddenly compromised.
🍎 Oh yeah, the Mets played a baseball game last night. Carlos Carrasco was rocked and they lost to the Nationals. Moving on.
🧳 Mark Canha just wants to know if he will be traded. “The uncertainty is uncomfortable,’’ Canha said before last night’s game, via the NY Post. “You want to know. It’s a helpless feeling because there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s always in the back of my mind. You compartmentalize things, but the worst part is not knowing. I try not to worry about it, but that’s not easy.”
🚜 Right-hander Blade Tidwell was promoted to Double-A Binghamton, according to Mike Mayer.
⏭️ UP NEXT: The Mets and Nats will close out their four-game set this afternoon with Justin Verlander scheduled to start against former Met Trevor Williams (5-5, 4.47). Could this be Verlander’s swan song? Will the Mets even let him pitch while they continue to field trade offers? We shall see.
🔗 How did Max Scherzer end up with Rangers? The Mets knew when to cut their losses, by Will Sammon and Tim Britton, The Athletic ($): “It’s unclear. It’s not a certainty that Verlander will be traded, but the Scherzer deal offered a blueprint of what to expect should the Mets decide to unload their other top starter. Verlander has performed better than Scherzer and, in theory, should net a better prospect.”
🔗 Rangers land Scherzer in 2023 Deadline’s first blockbuster trade, by Michael Baumann, FanGraphs: “Both the Rangers and Mets have improved their short- or medium-term outlooks with this trade. A contending team that cares about winning went out and traded prospects for short-term help. A team that’s having a bad year but wants to bounce back made a trade to improve the upper levels of the farm system, and shelled out a little extra money in order to get as much help as possible. On both ends, this trade is the result of an urgent need to win.”
🔗 Grading Mets-Rangers Max Scherzer deal, by Bradford Doolittle, ESPN: “Mets Grade: B. Adding to the depth of their system, right now, in a non-contending season, increases the Mets' options for improving their roster in the years to come. Standing pat at this juncture would have been a huge mistake for New York. As disappointing and inefficient as this roster has been, at least now the Mets are making sound decisions that reflect the reality of where they are.”
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How's that vacation going?
Look, the front office was almost forced to bring back the same unit as last year - what are you going to do, rebuild a 101-win team - in New York, no less?! So, they went all-in again and it failed this time around for multiple reasons in a meltdown that began last September in Atlanta and continues unabated. It happens, but IMHO the FO response has been spot-on in refusing to mortgage the future for a long shot like the Phillies last year. A smart organization knows when to cut its losses, reduce its payroll by tens of millions (including tax) by unloading a grossly overpaid fading ace who failed twice when it really counted in exchange for an exciting ATHLETIC top prospect controllable for six years, and acquires two more athletic, high-ceiling infielders for a closer they no longer need. And it sends a message to the shell-shocked players that, because of their epic failure, no one deserves to be safe - a shot across the bow for a team is not just the oldest in MLB, but slow at a time when speed has become a premium, and worst of all, boring. Good on the FO for recognizing this group is simply unsuited for the game as played today.