To say the last year and a half of Mets baseball has been frustrating would be an understatement. Go back to the beginning of last season, the Mets were World Series contenders. They had one of the best one-two punches in baseball in Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, a lineup of good hitters, and an owner in Steve Cohen who seemed to do whatever it took to get a championship back to Queens.
However, the Mets would underperform their pre-season expectation and were forced to become sellers at the deadline. Trading away anyone who wasn’t a part of the long-term for big-time prospects. Coming into 2024 some said that if everything went right the Mets could contend for a Wild Card spot. So far the Mets have been hovering around .500 and haven’t inspired much confidence that things will turn around.
With all of this underperforming, there is a group of Mets fans that have placed the blame on Steve Cohen saying that Cohen has failed to live up to his expectations and that he is one of the worst owners in sports. However, that is simply not true at all.
Cohen Is Pivitoing Strategy
The biggest criticism fans who don’t like Cohen bring up is the Mets not winning a World Series in three to five years of his ownership. This was the goal that Cohen laid out in his introductory press conference when he bought the team. We are now in year four and it doesn’t look like the Mets are anywhere close to winning a World Series.
However, people are underestimating how hard it is to win a World Series and aren’t giving credit for Cohen to try. Cohen was trying to win in the short term, causing him to sign guys like Scherzer, Verlander, and Starling Marte. This strategy worked in 2022 but didn’t work in 2023. Now rather than Cohen trying to force this strategy to work, he pivoted and started to focus more on the farm system.
This is also something Cohen talked about in his introductory press conference. Yes, he said he wanted to win in three to five years. However, he also said he wanted to do it the right way by building up the farm system and selling the future for short-term success. He said he wanted to follow what the Dodgers were doing. Spend big, but have their core come up through the minors. Last year’s deadline transformed the farm system from an average to one of the best in baseball. It was clear from the start that 2024 was a transition and all about developing the young talent in the system. Then by 2025-2026, the team is ready to compete again.
People Have Forgotten How Bad The Wilpons Were
Even if you’re one of the people who say that Cohen has failed in his ownership so far. You can’t say he’s the worst owner the Mets have had. If you are one of those people, you are either too young or have completely forgotten about the Wilpon era. Don’t forget there was a time when any Met fan would do whatever it took to get Fred and Jeff Wilpon out of the ownership box. Why? Because they didn’t care about winning or the Mets in general.
Money
The Wilpons were one of the most well-known victims of the Bernie Madoff scandal. If you’re unaware of what that is here is a YouTube video that will explain it much better than I could. Now although the number is unknown, it has been estimated the Wilpons lost at most 700 million, although many have said the real number is probably less. However no matter how much they lost, after the scandal they ran the Mets like a small market team. They never went after big free agents, and always valued cheaper options to save money, rather than making the team better.
Team History
However, the most unforgivable thing they did was ignore Mets’ history. They didn’t care about it at all. They seemed to care more about the legacy of the Brooklyn Dodgers. That’s why when Citi Field first opened it was essentially a shrine to them. And built it in a way that took all the pop out of their star player, David Wright, bat. Or, in 2008 after the second brutal collapse and the emotional closing of Shea Stadium, which many have described as having a funeral feel. The Wilpons were in the owner’s box popping champagne to celebrate the new stadium. Those are the most glaring examples but there are others such as barely retiring numbers or not building Tom Seaver a statue while he was still alive.
This is something that Steve Cohen has changed since taking over. It’s clear that he loves the Mets and cares about their history. He built the Seaver statue. He retired Jerry Koosman, Keith Hernandez, Willie Mayes, Dwight Gooden, and Darryl Strawberry numbers. These are guys who had a major impact on the Mets franchise. Cohen has also started an old-timers game to continue to celebrate all the players who have dawn the orange and blue. You can be mad that the Mets are struggling but calling Cohen a bad owner isn’t the case.
Thanks for reading! Credit for my feature image goes to Jim McIsaac. You can find more MLB content at Belly Up Sports and follow me on Twitter/X.
