Life goes on for the Mets.
That was the message team owner Steve Cohen conveyed to The Post Friday morning, less than 12 hours after Japanese ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto spurned the Mets’ offer and accepted a 12-year contract worth $325 million from the Dodgers.
“I think the whole organization tried our hardest, and someone was going to win and someone was going to lose and that is the way it goes,” Cohen said, interrupting a Caribbean vacation. “I feel good about our efforts and I left it all on the field. Life goes on.”
Cohen’s efforts included a trip to Japan with president of baseball operations David Stearns to meet with Yamamoto before the winter meetings.
Last weekend, Cohen hosted a dinner party at his home in Connecticut, allowing Yamamoto to meet with manager Carlos Mendoza and pitching coach Jeremy Hefner.
The Mets’ offer for Yamamoto was for the same amount and length of contract as the Dodgers.
Cohen declined to offer specifics about the negotiations, but an industry source said the Mets’ offer was among the first received by Yamamoto’s camp and the team never was never offered an opportunity to increase the bid.
The source added the Mets may not have gone much higher anyway given the posting fee that pushed the total outlay to about $375 million.
Following a report that Yamamoto – who was also heavily pursued by the Yankees, Giants, Red Sox and Phillies, among others – grew up rooting for the Dodgers, Cohen joked he was going to scour Japan for players that are Mets fans.
Plan B for the Mets will likely mean taking a measured approach to addressing the rotation rather than the knee-jerk response of pivoting toward big names such as Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery.
“We’re going to be thoughtful and not impulsive and thinking about sustainability over the intermediate long-term, but not focused on winning the headlines over the next week,” Cohen said. “I think there’s a couple of ways to build a team.”
The 25-year-old Yamamoto was the team’s white whale, but Cohen said he’s undeterred in retooling the Mets.
“Last I looked, there’s never one player that is going to make or break your team,” Cohen said. “We’ll build it. It will happen. Slowly and surely you will see changes and improvements. We have got the right management in place with a shared vision.”
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