NEW YORK -- Before Kodai Senga arrived on the scene, and before Brandon Nimmo committed his baseball life to Queens, before David Robertson and José Quintana and Omar Narváez hopped on board, there was nothing in Flushing but a fragmentary roster that Jacob deGrom was about to reject. In prior years, that sort of problem might have been unsolvable to the Mets, who haven’t always had the easiest time recruiting free agents to play at Citi Field.
Steve Cohen knows little of that world. Even before deGrom departed, the Mets owner called Justin Verlander, beginning the conversation by telling him he didn’t want to talk about baseball. Cohen simply wanted to assess Verlander the human, to see if he might be a roster fit.
By the time deGrom left for Texas, the Mets were comfortable enough with Verlander to usher his agent into their Winter Meetings suite and bar him from leaving until a deal was consummated. Accomplishing that required more than a two-year outlay of $86.6 million. It also required Cohen to convince Verlander -- and this may seem silly in retrospect, but at the time, it was no sure thing -- that a spending deluge was actually going to happen.
“I took a leap of faith,” Verlander said Tuesday as the Mets introduced him formally at a press conference at Citi Field. “And here we are a few weeks later. I think definitely the faith has paid off.”
All told, Cohen has committed to pay close to half a billion dollars in payroll and luxury-tax penalties next year, with hundreds of millions tied up in future seasons as well. This plan of his -- spend aggressively now to buy time for the farm system to mature -- has gone largely as envisioned. But it wouldn’t have been possible had Verlander, a three-time Cy Young Award winner and two-time World Series champion, not agreed to serve as the first ball bearing in Cohen’s Rube Goldberg machine.
“Justin shares the vision that we have,” Mets general manager Billy Eppler said. “We know that he’s going to bring a tenacity, an intensity of focus and just help us drive home that championship standard.”
At the beginning of the offseason, Verlander held interest in New York, but he wanted to wait for deGrom -- “he’s iconic here,” as Verlander put it -- to choose his next team before signing a contract of his own. When deGrom departed, Verlander acted quickly, signing days later.
No stranger to New York, Verlander lived in Battery Park for an offseason last decade alongside his supermodel wife, Kate Upton, who attended Tuesday’s press conference and drew nearly as much attention from the cameras. That experience “really opened my mind as to how great the city is,” said Verlander, who squirreled away the information for future use. Following his presser, Verlander planned to look into real estate for the upcoming summer.
“It’s really intoxicating,” Verlander said. “It’s just such a great town and city. You have everything at your fingertips.”
Yet Verlander’s signing was less about the city of New York than about the team that plays in its largest borough. After the Mets signed Edwin Díaz, Nimmo, Senga and others, those players all cited Cohen’s vision as a driving factor behind their decisions.
The 39-year-old Verlander, who has accomplished everything possible in his Major League career -- three Cy Youngs, two ERA titles, an MVP, nine All-Star selections and two World Series titles -- is likewise seeking lofty ideals. Asked about what continues to drive him, Verlander spoke of the two major surgeries he’s undergone in his career, all the work he’s poured into his craft, then questioned, “why would I put in all that time and effort and work and sacrifice and sell myself short at the end?”
“That’s just my mindset,” Verlander continued, likening himself to a marathoner with 10 miles to go. “I feel great. My body feels great. I feel like the game will naturally tell me when it’s time to step aside, and I’m nowhere near that point yet.”