Inevitable though the comparisons may be, Steve Cohen is not George Steinbrenner. He does not yell; he tweets. He wears polo shirts and baseball caps instead of suits and scowls. And on Wednesday, when he held a much-anticipated news conference to address the woes of an underachieving roster on which some would say he overspent, Cohen did not exactly explode.
“It’s incredibly frustrating,” he said of the 36-44 New York Mets team that will cost him nearly $350 million in payroll this season, the most any owner has ever spent.
But over the next 20-plus minutes, he did not rant or raise his voice. Instead of pointing fingers, Cohen said Manager Buck Showalter and General Manager Billy Eppler will “absolutely” keep their jobs through this season. Instead of signaling a shake-up, he said his front office will “prepare for all contingencies,” including a once unthinkable sell-off at the trade deadline if their record does not improve. He admitted he hopes it does not come to that. Cohen did not make threats; he made a case for patience.
“The worst thing you can do is be impulsive,” Cohen said. “Win the headline for the day, then over time you’re not going to attract the best talent. They won’t want to work for someone who has a short fuse.”
News conferences such as this one — in circumstances, if not tone — used to be the purview of the owner in the Bronx, where high payrolls were meant to inoculate the other New York team against the ebbs and flows that infect clubs with tighter budgets. Cohen arrived with a fan’s enthusiasm and a similar plan: Spend enough to make the beloved but beleaguered Mets annual World Series contenders. Treat the Mets’ habit of engineering disappointment with enough superstars to prevent a relapse.
So far, the only thing the biggest payroll in Major League Baseball history has guaranteed is the Mets’ status as a contender for the most expensive bust ever.
“It’s kind of weird. It’s actually very strange to me. I don’t know if the players are anxious,” Cohen wondered aloud, matter-of-fact in his assessment, if not fully empathetic.
“There’s nobody to blame,” he added. “It’s really across the whole team.”
As of Thursday morning, the Mets’ lineup — which on any given day is making as much as $120 million — had an OPS of .714, same as the rebuilding Washington Nationals, below the major league average of .728. Almost everyone in the lineup, from slugger Pete Alonso to former batting champion Jeff McNeil, is producing well below their career averages.
Their starting rotation, which includes two future Hall of Famers who also happen to be the highest-paid players in major league history, owns a 4.80 ERA, 23rd in the majors. The MLB average is 4.42. Justin Verlander’s 4.11 ERA would be his highest since 2014 if the season ended today. Max Scherzer’s 3.95 ERA would be his highest since 2011.
And their bullpen, which lost Edwin Díaz to a freak World Baseball Classic injury, has looked as if it is missing its most valuable part. Veterans David Robertson, Adam Ottavino, and Brooks Raley have been its most reliable members. But all of them are 34 or older. All of them accumulated 30 appearances before the end of June.
“What the reason is, I don’t know. It’s a little bit above my paygrade. It’s not my forte,” Cohen said. “It doesn’t mean it has to last all season. But the reality is the reality. Players know it. Management knows it. I know it. Hope is not a strategy.”
“I’m a realist,” he added. “It’s June 28. The trade deadline is Aug. 1, a little more than a month. We’ve got to get going.”
If the Mets do not get going, Cohen acknowledged, they will be ready for that, too. He said he considers payroll money already spent, so he wouldn’t hesitate to pay portions of big contracts for other teams if it meant improving the prospect haul the Mets got in return.
Any of Robertson, Ottavino, and Raley would be attractive to contenders. The Mets already shipped veteran infielder Eduardo Escobar to the Los Angeles Angels for young pitching. Starter Carlos Carrasco battled injuries early this season but is a free agent after this year and could be another trade candidate. Veteran outfielder Tommy Pham is playing on a one-year deal. Perhaps the biggest names in a potential sell-off would be Scherzer (signed through 2024) and Verlander (signed through 2025), both of whom are making more than $43 million annually. Either might appeal to a contender, but Cohen was realistic about their trade value, too.
“These are great pitchers. We brought them in for a reason. I don’t want to broach that topic,” Cohen said. “Plus they have contracts. No offense but …”
What Cohen meant, it seemed, was that not everyone can afford Scherzer and Verlander. And they have no-trade clauses in their contracts, meaning both would have to approve a move if it came to that. Maybe they would do that. Maybe picking apart this roster will be the best solution long term. The difference between Cohen and impulsive New York owners past is he does not seem to assume sudden change will yield sudden success.
He made the case that with their starting rotation getting healthier, with Scherzer finding his footing, the Mets might be ready to engineer a turnaround. A few hours later, they lost, 5-2, to the Milwaukee Brewers and fell 8½ games out of the final National League wild-card spot. A few hours later, their crosstown rival and relatively stingy neighbors in the Bronx watched Domingo Germán throw the first perfect game in the big leagues since 2012, moving the Yankees eight games over .500 on a night the Mets ended eight below.
“Obviously we came in with higher hopes than making the last wild card or whatever. But that’s where we are. So the season’s not over,” Cohen said. “ … We’ll see where it goes. It’s all on the players. They’re veterans. They’ve been there before. I think these are players that have done it. We’ll see if they can get their act together.”
But if Cohen was downright measured, he was also firm. He reiterated his long-standing goal to find a president of baseball operations, someone to work above Eppler and therefore take some of that decision-making authority from the man who holds it now. He did not rule out bigger change this winter, though he did not commit to it, either. He said he hopes he won’t have to spend like this forever, but he knows retooling the Mets’ farm system will take time — and what happens with the big league team in the interim will probably depend on how much he is willing to spend to make up for the lack of a steady pipeline, particularly with pitching.
“Pitching is really expensive. I think that’s the reason why we’re spending as much as we are. Position players, we have young players coming up. I think that, over time, is going to help from a payroll perspective,” Cohen said. “I don’t think it’s sustainable in the long term, just losing the type of money I’ve been losing. Frankly, we’ll figure that out as we go. I certainly have the wherewithal to do it. It’s just a question of how long.”
The more immediate question for the Mets is how long Cohen’s commitment to patience will last, how long the most eager owner in recent memory will wait before trying something new before deciding that giving people a chance to fail costs too much time and energy to allow it to continue. The most expensive team in baseball history is closer to having the worst record in the NL than it is to a playoff spot. The money may not be running out soon. But the patience might.
“Fourth place is not the goal. Anytime you end up in fourth place, to sit and do nothing is probably not a great place to be, okay?” Cohen said. “Getting to specifics? I don’t know what the answers are. We’ll figure out what went wrong.”