Among the players Mets owner Steve Cohen spoke to during his visit with the team in Kansas City after the trade deadline fire sale was Adam Ottavino, who has played on clubs that have reached the postseason every year since 2017 — until now.
Despite the horror show that is the 2023 Mets’ season, the right-hander said he wants to remain in Queens for the long haul.
Based on his conversation with Cohen last week, he said he believes the bad times won’t last much longer.
“He’s not gonna sit back and let the team drown,” Ottavino said of the outlook going into the offseason. “That’s not who he is. He didn’t get into this to not be competitive.”
Both Cohen and general manager Billy Eppler have tempered expectations for free agency this offseason and for their chances of competing in 2024.
Ottavino, though, is confident that the Mets will continue to spend.
“Steve is still gonna have a better payroll than most teams and we’re still gonna have a chance to win every year,” Ottavino said. “He can still build up the good base [in the minor league system] that he wants and win at this level.”
Ottavino will turn 38 in November and has a $7.25 million player option he intends to opt into, with an idea of remaining in the Mets for even longer than that.
“This is an ideal situation for me,” the New York City native said. “I like the overall direction of what they’re doing.”
Even after seeing the Mets fell out of playoff contention before August and became buyers at the deadline?
“This year was a swing and a miss,” Ottavino said of the effort to put together a contending roster. “That doesn’t deter me.”
Ottavino has been around enough successful teams to understand what makes a winner.
Every team Ottavino played on since 2017 — the Rockies, the Yankees, the Red Sox and the Mets last year — had reached the postseason.
“We have talent here,” Ottavino said, pointing to Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso, Francisco Alvarez and Kodai Senga, among others. “It turns on a dime,” he said of a baseball team’s fortunes. “As quick as we got to 100 wins [last year] to whatever we’re gonna have this year, it can go in the other direction just as quick.”
As an example, Ottavino pointed to the 2021 Red Sox team he played on after being traded away by the Yankees.
“We went into that season without a lot of outside expectations,” Ottavino said of Boston, which was coming off a last-place finish in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. “We got into the playoffs, won the wild-card game, beat the Rays [in the ALDS] and were up [two games to one] against the Astros in the ALCS. We were right there. Things can happen fast.”
A lot would have to happen for the Mets to duplicate that kind of turnaround, especially after they traded away veterans such as Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander for prospects who likely won’t help until 2025, at the earliest.
“I want to keep pitching for a lot longer than maybe people realize and I would like it to be here,” Ottavino said. “Hopefully that includes another period of winning and that would be a lot sweeter here than going somewhere else as a hired gun.”