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Mad Max is happy he will continue to live in his luxurious Florida estate.
After signing on with the Mets on Dec. 1 in a historic $130 million deal, eight-time All-Star and 2019 World Series champ with the Nationals Max Scherzer revealed that where the team trains was a big plus when it came to the decision to join the New York league.
Scherzer’s announcement comes on the heels of Noah Syndergaard’s exit to go play for the Los Angeles Angels in a one-year deal.
“It’s right in my backyard,” Scherzer said over Zoom joined by owner Steve Cohen and general manager Billy Eppler.
Cohen “looks at this as he wants to win a championship, and he’s going to do whatever it takes to win,” Scherzer explained. “You don’t hear that from owners too often these days. When you can finally hear an owner want to do what it takes to win, obviously that piqued my interest.”
The pitcher shelled out $9.75 million in June 2020 for a five-bedroom, eight-and-a-half-bathroom estate in Jupiter — not far from where the Mets train during the spring and long before he would ever predict it would be his new team.
The team trains in Port St. Lucie, about 30 miles from where Scherzer, 37, lives.
Scherzer has had a long-drawn-out career having also played for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Dodgers, but he has experienced some setbacks this season with a dead arm that kept him from pitching a second time in October’s National League Championship Series.
Scherzer was set to pitch Game 6 for the Dodgers but was replaced as a result of an “overcooked” arm after pitching three times in nine days in the wild card game and National League Division Series.
“I went past the kind of work capacity where I was built up for. Unfortunately, that happened,” the new Met said in his introductory news conference Wednesday. “I didn’t foresee that happening, but it did. But from a long-term standpoint to a structural standpoint, health standpoint, I’m ready to go. I’m ready to start training.”