Welcome to Baseball, Steve Cohen
It hasn’t even been a month since Steve Cohen was officially named the owner of the New York Mets. In that time he managed to take the Mets from a laughingstock to a team that people can’t quite categorize. That Cohen did this is no small feat, but even stranger is that he has managed to do this without making a huge splashy signing. In every possible way, Cohen has been what the Mets franchise needed, even if Mets fans still don’t want to believe what is happening.
One can’t blame Mets fans for not knowing what to think about the direction of their team. They have spent years dealing with woefully inept ownership that allowed them to become the butt of many a joke throughout Major League Baseball. That a Mets fan was able to create a March Madness-style bracket of all the instances of the Mets Metsing and people still felt that there were egregious examples of their team’s dumbassery that didn’t make the cut tells you all you need to know about why Mets fans don’t understand their current state of affairs.
There’s also the fact that no matter what image he may be presently cultivating, Cohen isn’t the friend of any Mets fan. He is the owner of the team and he needs to put his considerable money to work or Mets fans will quickly realize they have been caught in another ruse at their expense. Mets fans know that and that is one of the things giving them pause even as Cohen takes to social media to interact with fans like he’s a 16-year-old bragging about the car he just bought. Being an owner puts Cohen in an adversarial position simply on account of the fact that he is a super-rich dude who came to his money through less than ideal means and he’s joining the ranks of a bunch of other super-rich dudes who have similar backgrounds.
The only possible way for Cohen to establish himself as different than any of the other owner’s nickel and diming their way through owning an MLB team is to spend money. But, not just spend money, Cohen needs to spend money in ways that show Mets fans he both wants to win and that he is different than the rest of MLB ownership. That’s a very tall task that every other MLB owner has balked at when confronted with the possibility. In his drive to run his team differently, Cohen has made two very smart moves to start his tenure.
First, he announced that any Mets employee furloughed because of a supposed Coronavirus-induced financial hardship would be brought back on board and have their salary completely restored to what it was before the pandemic. At the same time, he announced the creation of a fund, valued around $2.5 million, for sub-contractors who work at Citi Field but aren’t directly employed by the Mets. He’s pledged $500 a month to these sub-contractors from November 1st to Opening Day 2021.
Second, he cleaned house at the front office level and immediately had Marcus Stroman accept the Mets qualifying offer for the 2021 season. After he did so Stroman specifically pointed to Cohen and his belief that Cohen was trying to make the team better as a reason for signing. In a very short time frame, Cohen sent the message that he wasn’t content with the losing ways of the front office. Meanwhile, he showed that he had gained the confidence of a player the Mets needed to re-sign. In previous years Stroman would have been a no-brainer to walk away and sign with another team, but not this time.
Up to this point, Cohen has done all the right things as the owner of the Mets. Even on social media, he has steadfastly expressed that his desire is to see the team win in every interaction he has with fans. There have been many of those interactions, so many that at some point when the actions match the interactions there may be something to this whole Mets turnaround. It feels odd to give so much credit to an owner, but right now Cohen deserves credit. He could have come into the MLB fold and acted just like every other owner who craves profits over winning and cares little for the fans. Cohen wants to make money, but perhaps, just perhaps, MLB has the first owner in a long time who understands he can make boatloads of money and try to win all the same. Or, Cohen will rip off his mask and reveal that he’s just as money-hungry and disinterested in winning as every other owner, this is the Mets we’re talking about after all.
-Bill Thompson
