Max Scherzer: I accepted Rangers trade after Mets said 'vision now is for 2025-2026'

Max Scherzer said he was not “itching to jump ship,” but he told The Athletic that he ultimately decided to waive his no-trade clause after a conversation with Mets owner Steve Cohen and general manager Billy Eppler indicated the team was not going to reload the roster to compete in 2024, and was building for the future.

Scherzer told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic that he spoke to Eppler and, “I was like, ‘OK, are we reloading for 2024?’ He goes, ‘No, we’re not. Basically, our vision now is for 2025-2026, ‘25 at the earliest, more like ‘26. We’re going to be making trades around that.’

“I was like, ‘So the team is not going to be pursuing free agents this offseason or assemble a team that can compete for a World Series next year?’ He said, ‘No, we’re not going to be signing the upper-echelon guys. We’re going to be on the smaller deals within free agency. ‘24 is now looking to be more of a kind of transitory year.’”

Scherzer’s conversation with the Mets’ leadership took place after his final start for the club on Friday.

The night before Scherzer’s start, he said he spoke to the GM who informed him that the club would be moving their potential free agents, which is why the trade of David Robertson to the Miami Marlins did not surprise him. However, the veteran starter still had unanswered questions about the team’s overall strategy and when Eppler informed him of the team’s plans, Scherzer told The Athletic that he needed “to hear this from Steve” that “this is a change in organizational direction.”

According to Scherzer, the Mets’ owner told him “exactly the same thing, kind of verbatim.”

Scherzer then gave the team permission to seek a trade for him, which resulted in a deal with the Texas Rangers for infield prospect Luisangel Acuna.

“If they had said, ‘We’re going to hold on to all the ‘24 pieces,’ that would have been a different story,” Scherzer told The Athletic. “But they were saying no, we’re going to be moving players that are under contract for 2024 before the deadline."

Scherzer said they talked about some players who he had in mind who could be moved and he found out the Mets' plans were more extensive than his list and included "more substantial names" and "any player who was a free agent after 2024" could be moved at the deadline at the right price.

“That’s a completely different vision from what everybody had in the clubhouse. All the players had a vision of, we reload for 2024. That was no longer the case,” he said.

After the Scherzer trade, Eppler told reporters Sunday the Mets were not “punting” on 2024 and “we're going to have a competitive team.”

“I do want to be clear that it’s not a rebuild. It’s not a fire sale. It’s not a liquidation,” Eppler told reporters Sunday. “This is just a repurposing of Steve’s investment in the club, and kind of shifting that investment from the team into the organization.”

The GM added: “We just don't want to endure long stretches of being bad. And that's not going to be satisfying to anybody. And so, Steve's made the investment. He wants an elite farm system. He's articulated that. I know I've kind of regurgitated that goal and shared that goal. And that's what we're after."

Scherzer told The Athletic he was not looking to chase a ring and that he made a three-year commitment to play in New York and was going to “honor that if we were going to try and win in 2024.”

“But that wasn’t the case. What was being communicated to me was that there were a lot of pieces being moved for prospects to try to make the 2025 team better,” he told Rosenthal.

Speaking to the media on Tuesday, Scherzer said it was "an honest conversation between both sides and understanding what both sides were trying to want."

"We went into the season with high expectations rightfully so we had a very good team and unfortunately, we didn’t play up to it. And because of where everyone is at with their contract situation, age, everything Billy and Steve they had a different vision now," he said. "The math changed on me. They wanted to be able to flip guys for prospects."

Scherzer told Rosenthal that Cohen told him that the situation had changed.

“That’s basically what Steve said: ‘I never thought in a million years we’d be in this situation, being at the deadline and we’re actually selling. But the math is the math. And the math says this organization needs to retool,’” he said.

Scherzer said he understood the Mets’ perspective and “it is what it is.”

“That was the new vision for the Mets. That was outside my contract,” Scherzer told The Athletic. “At that point, that’s when it became binding. I said, I will accept a trade."

Speaking from Texas on Tuesday, the former Mets' ace said every team has the right to build the roster as they see fit and he understood where his former club was coming from.

"I understand from roster construction what was going on in New York and that that’s the decision they had to make and it’s tough making those decisions but that’s why they’re paid big bucks to be able to make those decisions," he said."And for me, it was just being a part of that conversation and understanding that and realizing that I was only under contract for one more season after this and that the best thing for both parties was to accept the trade."