Max Scherzer says Steve Cohen’s willingness to win, chance to pitch alongside Jacob deGrom top reasons for signing with Mets

NEW YORK — Can the baseball season start already?

It’s the feeling Max Scherzer elicited for all Mets fans watching and listening to their new too-good-to-be-true reality of the club’s forthcoming lethal rotation. Max Scherzer, who has three Cy Young awards and has finished in the Cy Young Top 5 in eight of his last nine seasons, plainly stated how excited he is to be a Met and how thrilled he is to pitch as the team’s second ace behind Jacob deGrom. Go ahead, read that last sentence again. Max Scherzer — a future Hall of Famer and the active leader in punchouts — will soon bring his 3,020 strikeouts to Flushing, and team up with one of the franchise’s greatest pitchers.

“Steve [Cohen] said, ‘It’s whatever it takes to win here.’ He looks at this as he wants to win a championship,” Scherzer said Wednesday afternoon in his introductory Zoom press conference. “You don’t hear that from owners too often these days. When you can finally hear an owner wanting to do whatever it takes to win, that piqued my interest.

“When you look at the team, the most obvious thing is yeah, pitching with Jake,” Scherzer grinned.

The eight-time All-Star added his house in Jupiter, Fla., and the commute to the Mets’ spring training complex in nearby Port St. Lucie made his decision to sign with the Mets that much easier. And there are, of course, 130 million other reasons.

Scherzer’s record-breaking contract ushers in a new Mets era, one in which Cohen uses his financial prowess to bring baseball’s biggest stars to Citi Field.

The process started a year ago, when Cohen inked Francisco Lindor to a $341 million deal over 10 years. Then, in a span of four days last month, the single richest owner in Major League Baseball spent a combined $254.5 million on four free agents. Scherzer, the splashiest Mets signing among a quartet that includes Starling Marte, Eduardo Escobar and Mark Canha, will receive $130 million in three years. The eight-time All-Star’s $43.3 million annual average value shatters Gerrit Cole’s previous record, set at $36 million when he signed with the Yankees in 2019.

The Mets are counting on these significant moves and lucrative price tags to help get them into the playoffs for the first time since 2016.