PORT STREET LUCIE — Steve Cohen said something that shocked me late Sunday morning. While speaking to reporters in his home dugout at Clover Park, he responded to a question about whether the Mets are where he envisions himself entering Season 4 under his ownership. answered.
“What is given is given.”
It was a comfortable way to never mention the Wilpons and still acknowledge the anti-modernity, questionable morale, and sketchy mess of the farm system he inherited. Cohen’s first instinct was to see if he could solve the problem. Will he be able to use his money to build an entertaining and winning Major League team, provide time to fix and rebuild everything that needs attention, and camouflage it?
The executives he tried to run baseball operations were all slow at first, either fearful of his reputation or New York, or satisfied with their status quo. Within the organization, Cohen refers to that first year of ownership as a “hazing” season. A lot went wrong, ranging from “unfair treatment” to two of the baseball operations chiefs, Jared Porter and Zach Scott, being ejected for off-field violations.
The 2022 season was all about money. The Mets were healthy overall. They bought it and brought them 100 wins, but they also had the frustration of a late division fade and early playoff exit. The reaction to this was to put even more money into the Major League product of record payrolls…and not a little at a time.
But by midway through the 2023 season, Cohen evolved into an epiphany. He was “given what he got” and fully understood that just throwing money at a major league roster wasn’t enough. In his mind, he needed to redouble his efforts toward a long-term vision of replenishing the organization as a bulwark to sustained success. So he redirected the majority of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander’s contracts to essentially buy prospects at the trade deadline. He finally handed over the helm of offseason baseball operations to a subordinate named David Stearns. And he turned the temperature down from a win-or-lose situation to a season where he simply made the playoffs.
Do you know what Cohen is seeing now for the first time since he took over in September 2020? his team. He has gone far beyond “what is given is given.” His infrastructure is in place. He is excited to hire Stearns and managers Carlos Mendoza and Scott Havens to run the business. He seems like an owner who feels he has the pillars in place to execute his vision. The hard work of tidying up is over, and from now on, the accumulation is going full steam ahead. He can see tomorrow, and it’s not impossibly far away. This is season four of his administration, but in many ways it’s the beginning.
“For the first time, we can say we are starting to build up. [prospects]” Cohen said. “I don’t think I’ve ever used that word. It feels good. All right. Between that and our ability to leverage resources in the free agency market, this is a very powerful combination.”
Here comes what I would call a warning against the March Delusion. Go to any camp and the person in charge will look outside and see the bright side. If we can’t believe and dream about the impact that new pitches, better technology and coaching will have on young people, and the depth of our promising base during this time, we will never do so. And while Cohen isn’t exactly the kind of person you associate with Vertigo, he’s as close to it as he’ll allow himself to be about a system that, even if it’s not starry-eyed, is clearly better than what came before. was.
“For the first time, we are excited about what we are building with this farm system,” Cohen said. “We haven’t developed our pitching in a long time. And for the first time, it looks like there’s depth there. We have six, seven, eight pitchers that could be the next starters. That’s very exciting to me because the cost of pitchers is crazy high in baseball today. So we can start building a team with young, fresh blood and surround it with veteran talent. You can. It’s a winning combination.”
Notice the use of “for the first time” in each of Cohen’s last two quotes. It sounded like a new start. And note that even Cohen believes pitchers cost too much. For now, he will continue to support his maximum salary, which is partially funded by the huge amount of dead money through Messrs. Scherzer and Verlander. And he repeated, without sounding like he was trying to add, say, J.D. Martinez. We have been very clear that we want to play with young players and find out what we have. I fully expect that to happen. ”
Cohen acknowledged that the half-youth movement has gone from high expectations to “a pretty low bar in the past 12 months, and I think there’s going to be a surprising upswing.” Yes, I almost got dizzy. It felt like what was given to him was replaced with what he has now and where it’s going. In my fourth year, I felt like someone I was in my first year.
“I’m excited about what we’re putting together here,” Cohen said.
