Mets have turned into joke
Cohen searching for someone to get team back to respectability
NEW YORK — Impossible as this was to accomplish, following the hated Wilpons as he did, Steve Cohen has managed to turn the Mets into the laughingstock of baseball. We’re talking equal owner incompetence here, the only difference between the two being Cohen’s willingness to spend money — if only anybody would take it.
A dizzying number of people have turned down the Mets’ Baseball Operations/General Manager jobs so far, at least two of them from the Brewers alone — David Stearns (who the Mets were denied permission to talk to) and GM Matt Arnold, who declined to be interviewed — but it’s become beyond embarrassing. Theo Epstein, Billy Beane, Giants GM Scott Harris, Cardinals GM Michael Girsch, Dodgers assistant GM Brandon Gomes, they’ve all said no, as Cohen and his search team headed up by Sandy Alderson and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie seemingly keep digging deeper and deeper to the bottom of the barrel to find someone — anyone — who will say yes.
There was one highly decorated baseball man — Brian Sabean — who was said to have been interested in at least talking to the
Mets. But according to inside Mets sources, Cohen flatly rejected the 65-year-old former three-time world championship Giants GM because he thought he’d been away from baseball too long — even though Sabean is still actively working for the Giants as executive vice president.
When Beane declined to be interviewed by the Mets he cited family considerations and insisted it had nothing to do with Cohen. And yet, as it turned out, he preferred staying in Oakland, knowing that
A’s owner John Fisher would be ordering another payroll purge that will result in Beane likely having to trade more of his star players, in particular first baseman Matt Olson and third baseman Matt Chapman, this winter. That alone was enough for Bob Melvin, Beane’s longtime manager, to bail out of Oakland for San Diego on Thursday.
It’s a wonder where the Mets’ daily adventure goes from here.
The names Peter Bendix and Josh Byrnes periodically surfaced in recent days. But Bendix, the Rays VP of Player Development, is also said to have no interest in the job, while Byrnes, currently a baseball ops VP with the Dodgers after previous front office stints with the Indians, Red Sox, Rockies, Diamondbacks and Padres, has a terrible reputation throughout baseball for undermining his superiors.
What should be worrisome now for Mets fans is that Cohen, in his growing desperation, tells Alderson: “Just get me anyone who wants the damn job!” In that regard, disgraced former Astros baseball ops president Jeff Luhnow, who was thrown out of the game for a year after presiding over the Houston cheating scandal, is available, as is his assistant, the infamous Brandon Taubman, who was just reinstated after his suspension for his abusive tirade at female reporters during the 2019 Astros World Series celebration.
Cohen has been the Mets owner barely a year and, between the
Jared Porter and Zack Scott sins, the Javy Baez/Kevin Pillar/Francisco Lindor “thumbs down to the fans” fiasco, the botched drafting of Vanderbilt pitcher Kumar Rocker, etc., the Mets culture has already taken a goodly share of hits under his stewardship.
So with his search committee clearly scrambling, here are a few names they probably haven’t considered all of whom with resumes of proven accomplishment: Dan Jennings, former Marlins GM and manager who is now special assistant and top pro scout for Nationals’ GM Mike Rizzo; Blue Jays VP of Player Personnel Tony LaCava, Phillies VP/ general manager Sam Fuld, A’s assistant GM Billy Owens, and former Dodger GM Ned Colletti. To the best of my knowledge, none of them has an Ivy League education, but all of them are highly respected throughout the game for their baseball acumen and talent evaluating skill.
It could be none of them would want to work for Cohen either, but after all this mess he owes it to himself to start engaging with proven, accomplished baseball people.