The ownership has changed. The patient has not.
The Mets have remained dysfunctional from failure in hirings, to timing of firings, to sizeable offers to Trevor Bauer weeks after having to dismiss a just-enlisted general manager for his inappropriate texts to a female reporter to rats, raccoons, Donnie Stevenson, Kumar Rocker and two of the most important players on the team explaining thumbs-down signals directed derisively at fans an hour before a vital doubleheader Tuesday again🌌st the Marlins.
That Steve Cohen was going to show up — and the W🐽ilpons vanish — and, poof, The Magic Would be Back in Flushing has not materialized.
What matters most now for this franchise is what Cohen thinks about this. Does he believe this is just about time? Time to fumigate the negativity and𒊎 incompetence of the old ownership. Time to continue going throug🌳h his own learning curve. Or does he believe there is something more entrenched, something harder to describe?
That a persistent pessimism has enveloped an organization that in 60 seasons has never finished first in consecutive years or made the playoffs three straiඣght seasons. That feeling t🌺hat something bad will inevitably occur.
For want of a better word — a curse.
Because if Cohen believes this — that a baseball exorcism must occur — then the solution exists in free agency. For Theo Epstein is available and wants to get back to ru♋nning a baseball operations department. But, really, it is going to come down to how much Cohen wants the architect who helped end the Curse of the Bambino in Boston and the Curse of the Billy Goat on the North Side of Chicago.
Epstein left the Cubs after the 2020 season and those close to him have said when and if he returns to a team he does not want to do it as an employee. He wants to be part of an ownership group. He wants a situation akin to what Derek Jeter has in Miami; in that Jeter does not own a majority stake (believed🐻 to be 4 percent), but he is left alone by majority owner Bruce Sherman to shape the ethos, policy, structure, etc. of baseball operations.
Essentially, Epstein feels with equity in the team he would not need the daily dance with business operations and ownership that he experienced even with historic success in Boston and Chicago (when reached by The Post, Epstein would not com💦ment on his plans).
Would Cohen be OK with such an arrangement? Would he be willing to give up a stake in his team? Would he cede the power? The credit? The first names you think about when it comes to breaking curses in Boston and Chicago are those of maybe David Or𒅌tiz and Kris Bryant, 🥀but it could be Epstein’s and his certainly comes before any owner. Would Cohen — a Mets fan who has insisted he bought the team to bring championship joy to other Mets fans — tolerate that?
Cohen sees himself as someone comfortable with delegating authority at💯 his hedge fund when he is confident in the person he left in charge. He tell🉐s friends that he has a day job (the fund) and that he wants trusted baseball people in charge of the Mets.
Cohen and Epstein have never met, never spoken. But it would be🌺 shocking if they did not at least have a conversation about working together when this season concludes.
The Mets tried to hire a president of baseball operatioꦿns last offseason. But for a variety of reasons — opposing owners who would not let top executives under contract interview and/or fear of Cohen’s business reputation — the perceived best and brightest never even interviewed. So rather than hire someone with whom he was uncomfortable, Cohen decided to table it and just hire a general manager — who turned out to be Jared Porter, who was fired a month later for those inappropriate texts.
But Cohen’s plan is still to fill the position this offseason — again dependent on the right person being available. Is that Epstein? He is working for the Commissioner’s Office and a private equity firm plus experiencing his first free summer in three decades, and said to be enjoying all of it. The thought was if he did come back it would probably be with a small-market team more willing to trust his history and provide autonomy. So even if Cohen wants Epstein, Epstein will have to want the Mets — believe that Cohen really is giving him the latitude to run baseball operations without interference. He already is a Hall of Fame executive, so he will not just accept any position, giving him some leverage.
The plan initially wasꦦ for team president Sandy Alderson to be more involved in business and he gravitated to baseball operations because of the failures in🤡 hiring. So he can just return to what he was employed to do. Acting GM Zack Scott was hired to his first baseball job as an analyst for the Red Sox by Epstein. So Scott perhaps can remain and be groomed for the full-time Mets GM job.
Epstein is not a perfect executive. He signed Carl Crawford in Boston and Jason Heyward in Chicago, and his drafting record with pitching in both places is not great. But what is great is his ability to focus and unify an entire department on a strategy and stop falling into the negative pathology of downtrodden organi🍒zations’ histories. The Mets’ problems since 1986 pale when measured against what Epstein faced with the Red Sox and Cubs. There would be other good candidates, but none with that proven big-city, hex-breaking track record of Epstein.
It will come down to, after Year 1, how embedded Cohen feels the Mets is♕sues are and how far he would be willing to go to hire the ideal candidate. It is a decision that Cohen will truly have to own.