Mets need more than money to win
Forget, for a moment, the three true outcomes – a walk, a strikeout, a home run – that increasingly defined Major League Baseball over the past two decades.
Sure, getting on base and hitting for power remain the gold standards for production. Pull back some, though, and you’ll soon find three other characteristics that determine the course and the fate of the game’s 30 franchises. Competence. Desire. Resources. And that brings us to New York Mets boss Steve Cohen.
In his 13 months at the helm of the franchise, Cohen has graded out spectacularly in two of baseball’s most important traits.
Desire? The man traded for and then extended, at a cost of $341 million, shortstop Francisco Lindor before the rubber stamp of approval from his fellow owners had barely dried. He’s even wearing a Mets cap in his little profile picture on Twitter. Big fan!
Resources? Cohen didn’t balk at scratching a $2.4 billion check for the franchise, what with it scarcely denting his estimated $15 billion in personal wealth.
Competence?
We will have to get back to you on that one.
See, baseball and all the major sports are littered with the babbling laments of the mega-rich, who thought their hardcharging ways in the business world would translate so smoothly to franchise stewardship.
It is clear Cohen wants to be viewed as an alpha dog in this arena. On Nov. 29, he made Hall of Famer-in-waiting Max Scherzer the richest pitcher in baseball history, guaranteeing him $43.3 million over three seasons, a startling bookend to the great Jacob deGrom; Mad Max and Jake have combined to win four of the past six National League Cy Young Awards.
That came on the heels of reeling in the best center fielder on the market (Starling Marte, four years, $78 million) and useful multi-positional fellows in Mark Canha (two years, $26.5 million) and Eduardo Escobar (two years, $20 million). Scherzer’s agreement likely isn’t the last the Mets will strike with a starting pitcher, and the door isn’t shut on second baseman Javy Baez’s return.
For a Mets fan base hamstrung for years by the ineptitude of the Wilpon clan, Scherzer is absolutely cause for celebration.
Yet a perhaps equally significant cause for concern is whether Cohen can truly build a championship franchise.
The man nominally putting this team together is Billy Eppler, who is the fourth general manager atop the front office since Cohen’s ownership was approved 13 months ago. Cohen promptly dismissed Brodie Van Wagenen before identifying Jared Porter as the man best suited to shepherd his baseball operations. That lasted five weeks before Porter was fired over harassing text messages he’d sent to a foreign reporter years earlier.
Interim GM Zack Scott? Cited for driving under the influence.
All the while, club President Sandy Alderson remained lodged atop the organizational flow chart, undeniably an at least mild deterrent to a number of talented executives who might have leapt from a mid-market club to run their own show in the big city.
It was Alderson, too, who spearheaded the hiring of Mickey Callaway, who failed as a manager and then, like Porter, was exposed as a harasser of women.
Yet Alderson’s still there, which on one hand could be viewed as Cohen realizing his shortcomings as a “baseball man,” and on the other, an indictment of his ability to surround himself with executives of the highest character.
It is not easy to pick a No. 1, but the ability to do so is what separates the greatest franchises, regardless of market size.
Just look at the Boston Red Sox, the team of this century despite a fair amount of front office turnover. When John Henry’s group acquired the club, he immediately fired longtime GM Dan Duquette and took a season to find his bearings. Henry aimed high – just like Cohen this year, making a run at Oakland’s Billy Beane. But when Beane demurred, Henry pivoted to 28-year-old Theo Epstein. That worked out OK.
After Epstein departed following two World Series titles, the Red Sox claimed another when Epstein protégé Ben Cherington quickly fashioned a championship-caliber club in 2013. After Cherington’s reign ran its course, Henry tabbed veteran Dave Dombrowski to run his club; three years and a whirlwind of moves later, Boston had its fourth World Series title in 15 years.
After dismissing Dombrowski following a desultory 2019 campaign, new GM Chaim Bloom took some of Dombrowski and Cherington’s leftovers, traded Mookie Betts and in two winters produced a club that fell two wins shy of another World Series.
Desire. Resources. Competence. In Tampa Bay, the Rays have two of the three, but their track record under owner Stuart Sternberg decisively proves that competence is paramount. He gained controlling interest in the club in October 2005 from Vince Naimoli and immediately dismissed GM Chuck LaMar; Naimoli and LaMar shepherded a club that lost between 91 and 106 games over eight seasons.
Two weeks later, Sternberg hired a kid named Andrew Friedman, who in three years would have the Rays in the World Series despite a $43 million payroll.
Eventually, Friedman would go off and find limitless resources in Los Angeles. Yet in Tampa, the Rays only continue to dominate. There’s still no new stadium, and the club may be gone by 2027, but Friedman gave way to GM Erik Neander, who helmed a department also featuring Bloom and future Astros GM James Click. A 2020 World Series pitting Neander’s Rays against Friedman’s Dodgers was an indirect ode to Sternberg’s eye for executive talent.
Sternberg’s savvy with New York market resources might have made a devastating combo. Now, the Mets venture into a great unknown with Cohen and Eppler, who knows a thing about “proactive” owners.
He was GM of the Los Angeles Angels for five years, charged with cobbling together a squad around Mike Trout even as owner Arte Moreno’s impetuous acquisitions of Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, Anthony Rendon and others hamstrung Eppler and Jerry Dipoto before him. Moreno inherited a World Serieswinning team in 2003 and kept the good vibes going under GM Bill Stoneman, but, left to his own hiring devices, brought in Tony Reagins, Dipoto, Eppler and now Perry Minasian to run his club. The Angels haven’t made the playoffs since 2014 and have fallen behind the pack in a decade of great change within the game.
Scherzer nearly stole another Cy Young this year despite his trade from Washington to the Dodgers.
The issues will hit soon enough, starting with deGrom, whose 2022 presents something of a Catch-22: The Mets desperately need him to be healthy and dominant after making just 15 starts, but a banner year would enable him to opt out after it.
How much will it take to lock up Pete Alonso, the beloved first baseman who’s halfway to free agency? What of Robinson Cano, two-time PED offender under contract through 2023?
Cohen has already answered two of the biggest questions – he burns to win, and is willing to spend wildly to do so. The answer to the third and most important one will reveal itself much later.