Chris Young, the head of baseball operations for the Texas Rangers, called Bruce Bochy on Thursday with news that stunned the new manager. "Jacob wants to come with us," Young said.
Bochy's response: "Are you kidding me?"
Bochy knew the Rangers were going to be aggressive in their negotiations with Jacob deGrom, and he had been impressed by the pitcher in a Zoom meeting with deGrom and his wife, Stacey Harris, in the days before Thanksgiving. But Bochy had assumed that the process would play out for days and perhaps weeks to come as deGrom considered the possibility of leaving the New York Mets, the organization that had drafted him in 2010.
Instead, deGrom made his decision quickly, agreeing to terms on a five-year, $185 million million contract without even giving the Mets an opportunity to present a final offer, based on interviews with a dozen sources involved in deGrom's free agency. According to sources, Mets general manager Billy Eppler learned about deGrom's deal with the Rangers on Friday evening, just minutes before the news broke -- and more than a day after deGrom had closed his deal with Texas.
For some in the Mets' organization, that last bit of silent treatment from deGrom was confirmation of what they had suspected even during the season: that deGrom, the Cy Young Award-winning pitcher who warmed up to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man" before his starts, probably preferred to pitch somewhere other than New York City.
