'IT'S ON THE PLAYERS'
Owner pins the blame for struggles on veteran team Declares Showalter, Eppler will survive '23 season
As bad as the Mets have been this season, owner Steve Cohen — who acknowledged how bad they have been during a press conference on Wednesday — said he won’t take it out on manager Buck Showalter or general manager Billy Eppler, at least for the rest of this year.
Cohen said Showalter and Eppler would “absolutely” keep their jobs until the end of the regular season.
Instead, Cohen placed the blame elsewhere for the Mets’ poor showing in 2023.
“It’s on the players,’’
Cohen said of the team that has the highest payroll in MLB history and are 17 games behind the
Braves, in fourth place in the NL East and nine games back in the wildcard race.
“They’re veterans.
They’ve been there before. We’ll see if they can get their act together and string together some wins. We’re hoping for the best.”
That hasn’t worked so far. The Mets have followed up a 101-win season with one in which they are eight games under .500 (36-44) following their 5-2 loss Wednesday against the Brewers at Citi Field and had played increasingly sloppy baseball along the way.
Cohen also took ownership for how badly the season has gone.
“There’s plenty of blame to go around,” Cohen said. “I’ll take responsibility. I’m the owner. Listen, ultimately, for some reason, we’re not as crisp as we were last year. We had a lot of players perform really well last year, and this year, they’re not performing quite as well. What the reason is, I don’t know. It’s a little bit above my pay grade. … It doesn’t mean it has to last all season, but the reality is the reality. The players know it. Management knows it. I know it. Hope is not a strategy, right? This is what we’re faced with.”
The evidence is stacked against a team that had lost 16 of 21 games prior to beating the Brewers on Tuesday. If the downward spiral doesn’t end, Cohen said jobs would be on the line.
“[To finish] in fourth place and to sit and do nothing is probably not a great place to be,’’ Cohen said. “I don’t know what the answers are. We’re not playing well. I don’t care if we’re 16 ¹/₂ or 14 ¹/₂ or 18 ½ [games back]. It’s terrible. That’s not what I expected.”
As Cohen knows, the Mets are running out of time to fix it, with the trade deadline just over a month away and the team showing no signs — other than what the owner called a “crisp” win on Tuesday — of making a run.
“The problem is, we’re close to half a season [being over], so we don’t have as much luxury of time as we had before,’’ Cohen said. “[But] we still have time.”
He also noted that he is continuing to look for a president of baseball operations who would be above Eppler in the organization’s hierarchy. And he said that even if the major league results have been mostly miserable, the Mets have taken steps in the minors, as well as with analytics and technology. None of that, though, will help them overcome their massive hole in the standings in an attempt to get back to the postseason.
“This is where we are, right?” Cohen said. “We got ourselves in this mess, so how are we gonna get out?”
Cohen said flatly he would not add to the roster by the Aug. 1 trade deadline if the Mets are still wallowing in the standings and wouldn’t address whether he would spend less next season if this one doesn’t improve, which he hasn’t ruled out.
“They’re just gonna have to get their act together and act as a team and support each other,’’ Cohen said. “This is not an easy task. It’s gonna require real commitment. … Unfortunately, this year has not been what I hoped it to be. The year’s not over.’’