![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/scherzer_verlander.jpg\")
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I\u2019m not going to pretend like I pay a tremendous amount of attention to baseball news these days, but I know enough of what\u2019s going on to know that the Mets are dumping a tremendous amount of money to try and become a championship contender.\u00a0 I knew they already had Max Scherzer, and that they were paying him an inordinate amount of money for a guy that effectively plays once every five days, so it was somewhat head-scratching when I heard that the Mets went out and \u201cwon\u201d the Justin Verlander sweepstakes, signing him to a 2-year, $86-million dollar contract, I\u2019m thinking damn, the Mets are really locking up $86 mil a year on just two pitchers?\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure the Oakland A\u2019s entire payroll next year isn\u2019t $86 mil.*<\/span><\/p>\n *at the time I\u2019m writing this, 11 teams don\u2019t have a payroll that cracks $86 mil including of course, the Oakland A\u2019s<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Of course, on paper this has all the pundits thinking the Mets are now the odds-on favorite to win it all, seeing as how they have two of the game\u2019s best pitchers, even if they\u2019re going to be paying them an entire team\u2019s payroll on top of the other 38 guys on the roster they\u2019ll have to pay, including the $54 million to two other players in Francisco Lindor and the freshly re-signed Brandon Nimmo, so if we\u2019re keeping count already, the Mets are paying $140 mil to just four guys for 2023 alone.<\/span><\/p>\n [Repeat the title of this post with me here]<\/span><\/p>\n They won 101 games in 2022 without Justin Verlander, and if not for an epic, late-season collapse against the Braves, should have won the division, but that still didn\u2019t stop them from choking in the first round against the Padres.\u00a0 Regardless, the addition of a talent like Justin Verlander theoretically should make a good team like the Mets even better in 2023.<\/span><\/p>\n Who knows, maybe the 2023 Mets, in spite of the criticism of their historic $300M+ protected opening day payroll will win 102 games, win the division and avoid having to play in the wild card round and actually have a successful playoff run?<\/span><\/p>\n But who are we kidding, this is the New York Mets we\u2019re talking about, they of the LOLMets meme of history.\u00a0 They could have Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax as their starting five, and they\u2019d still probably find a way to fuck things up and fail, as they always do. \u00a0They could spend $500 million dollars and have 4+ WAR players in every position in their lineup, but they\u2019ll still find a way to shit the bed in the playoffs and get bounced by the Cardinals or Padres or Phillies.<\/span><\/p>\n And the biggest thing is that teaming Verlander and Scherzer up is no guarantee, because as many casual baseball fans probably might not be aware of, this has already happened before<\/em>, as both of them were on the Detroit Tigers together between 2010 and 2014.\u00a0 Five years of Verlander and Scherzer in the same rotation, and zero World Series rings to show for it.\u00a0 They even had help from guys like David Price and a resurgent Anibal Sanchez in some of those years.\u00a0 Sure, they made the playoffs four times, but the one time they made it to the World Series together in 2012, they got swept by the vastly less-talented Giants, getting victimized by guys like Pablo Sandoval and Marco Scutaro.<\/span><\/p>\n What I think is funny is how just about everyone the Tigers once had all achieved success outside of Detroit.\u00a0 Max Scherzer got his ring with the Nationals in 2018, Justin Verlander won twice with the Astros in 2017 and this past year, and even David Price got a ring in Boston and Anibal Sanchez was also lights out for that 2018 Nationals playoff team.<\/span><\/p>\n So the point is, if a young and spry Scherzer and Verlander couldn\u2019t get the job done ten years ago, Father Time is kind of betting against 40-year old versions of Scherzer and Verlander doing it, especially when they\u2019ll be trying on a team as accursed as the New York Mets.<\/span><\/p>\n If me writing about it is a temptation of fate and I end up being completely wrong, hey I\u2019ll be glad to revisit this if I notice and care in the future and admit being wrong, no shame in that.\u00a0 But if I\u2019m a betting man, I\u2019m siding with Father Time, and going to take the bet against the Mets.\u00a0 I know you have to spend money to make money, but, and I hate to sound all corporate Braves-ey, but allocating as much money that the Mets are to just two and four players just doesn\u2019t sound what\u2019s best for business.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m not going to pretend like I pay a tremendous amount of attention to baseball news these days, but I know enough of what\u2019s going on to know that the Mets are dumping a tremendous amount of money to try and become a championship contender.\u00a0 I knew they already had Max Scherzer, and that they … Continue reading Sports have too much fucking money, vol. 1,369: feat. the New York Mets<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,66,79,45,153,83,58,190],"class_list":["post-49115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-braves","tag-cashmoney","tag-fail","tag-memes","tag-observations","tag-sports","tag-white-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49117,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49115\/revisions\/49117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}