Steve Cohen Hired the Best Mets Money Could Buy. They Were Still the Mets.
- Mets only manage one hit in decisive Game 3 loss to Padres
- Point72’s Cohen spent a league-leading $314 million on payroll
Steve Cohen’s dreams of bringing a third World Series to the New York Mets will have to wait at least another year.
The team crashed out of the Wild Card round of the Major League Baseball playoffs Sunday night in ignominious fashion, mustering only one hit in a 6-0 loss to the San Diego Padres in the deciding game of their best-of-three series.
It’s not the result that Mets fans wanted after a 101-win season, the franchise’s best since 1986, when it last won a World Series. They had high hopes after Cohen, the hedge fund titan worth $12.8 billion, quickly amassed the league’s most expensive roster.
Cohen, 66, the founder of $26 billion hedge fund Point72 Asset Management, said he wanted to win a championship within three to five years after paying $2.4 billion for the team in 2020. The early exit raises questions about needing to spend even more to go all the way.
Some of the Mets’ stars are now eligible to enter free agency, including pitchers Jacob deGrom -- who notched the team’s only postseason win -- and Edwin Diaz. Re-signing them could be expensive.
It didn’t look like the season would end this way in August, when the team was riding high after series wins against last year’s champions, the rival Atlanta Braves, and the league-leading Los Angeles Dodgers. On Sept. 1, after knocking off the Dodgers, the Mets were 84-48.
But the team faded the rest of the way. It culminated in a sweep by the Braves heading into October, costing the Mets their division lead and forcing them into a Wild Card duel with the Padres.
The Mets lost 7-1 in Game 1 on Friday, then bounced back with a 7-3 win on Saturday. Then came Sunday’s loss, when Mets batters were struggling so much against Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove that Buck Showalter had the umpires check his ears for foreign substances.
Cohen sought to build a roster that would advance deep into the playoffs. He spent a league-leading $314 million on payroll with a number of big free-agent signings, including a record-breaking $43 million a year for pitcher Max Scherzer. Scherzer went 11-5 in the regular season but surrendered four home runs when he started on Friday and was pulled in the fifth inning.
Scherzer said the end to the season felt like “a kick in the balls.”
If history is any guide, Cohen will seek out new talent heading into 2023. And he may not need look very far.
Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees star who broke the American League record for home runs this season, will become one of the most high-profile free agents in the offseason. If Cohen shells out enough cashBut for now, the Yankees have one obvious advantage over the Mets: They’re still in the World Series hunt. Their first game of the playoffs is Tuesday night against the Cleveland Guardians. to bring him in from the Mets’ crosstown rival, it might be a sign that the balance of power in New York baseball is shifting.
bloomberg