In the early hours of April 15, following another loss to the Dodgers, Mets owner Steve Cohen tweeted he saw proof of life that he described as “green shoots,” signs of an economic upswing.
“Hang in there fans,” wrote the hedge fund baron. “We will turn this around!”
The Mets promptly responded by falling again, 8-2, to complete the sweep and extend a losing streak that would ultimately grow to 12. The Mets have now dropped 15 of their last 17 after being swept at home by the Rockies, a club that has lost 323 games over the last three seasons, including 119 last year.
Very few people want to see Carlos Mendoza fired for this, a truth shaped by the respect for his refined approach and by the acknowledgment that general manager David Stearns handed him an impotent roster. But after Boston fired Alex Cora, a World Series champion and former Met, Mendoza’s job status is listed as day-to-day.
Someone has to pay for a 9-19 record and baseball’s most pathetic offense, even if the buck stops with the man who is spending more than half a billion bucks (including taxes) on the dreadful product the Mets keep putting on the field.
When Cohen bought the franchise from Fred Wilpon for $2.4 billion in 2020, he was greeted as a deep-pocketed liberator. Mets fans who had suffered through so much, including the Bernie Madoff scandal, finally found their own George Steinbrenner, an owner who cared a ton more about winning than making money.
A grown-up Mets fan from Long Island, Cohen said he was doing this to make millions of fellow fans happy. He revealed he wanted to win a World Series within three to five years. He promised to “create a blueprint for winning” and to hire “the best and the brightest” executives who would deliver great teams year in and year out.
“You build champions,” Cohen said. “You don’t buy them.”
Five-plus seasons later, there are no champions built and no trophies displayed.
And there are no tweets posted to counter the likes of the Twins and Rockies, who have mocked Cohen’s operation on X.
Up front, it needs to be stated that the owner’s heart and wallet have been in the right place. Cohen does care about winning first and foremost. He has provided the necessary funding for all facets of a successful franchise, including talent acquisition, player development, analytics, technology, a pitching lab and game-day experiences for players, family members and fans.
The Mets set a Citi Field attendance record last year for a reason.
But just like in the world of finance, a healthy investment in sports does not guarantee a healthy return. In fact, it’s easier for a hedge fund manager to anticipate the ups and downs of the market than it is for a baseball owner to judge how a highly paid human will react to the pressure of playing an extremely difficult game in New York.
Or to find the GMs who can identify the athletes best suited for the job.
And that’s the chief reason Cohen has failed to establish the consistent culture required for the sustained winning he all but guaranteed on arrival.
His GM hires included his first, Jared Porter, who was fired five weeks into his term for sending graphic and unsolicited texts to a female reporter while working for the Cubs in 2016. Porter’s replacement, Zack Scott, lasted one season before he was fired in November 2021 following an August DWI arrest. (Scott was later acquitted of the charge.) Billy Eppler, hired after a comically long search, lasted two seasons before he resigned in the fall of 2023 while being investigated by MLB for improper use of the injured list, which led to a yearlong suspension.
Before Stearns stepped into the void as president of baseball operations, the former Brewers GM charged Eppler, days before his own exit, to fire Buck Showalter. The second-year Mets manager who had won 101 games in his first year was sacked by an incoming executive he’d never met.
Stearns had every right to fire Showalter. Just not that way.
Cohen allowed it to go down like that. Stearns made a solid hire in Mendoza, who took the Mets on a magical ride through the 2024 playoffs before losing to the Dodgers in the NLCS.
Mendoza was riding high in 2025, leading baseball’s best team, the 45-24 Mets, before a June loss on Friday the 13th sent the team into a death spiral. The Mets finished 38-55 and missed the postseason before Stearns wiped out Mendoza’s staff and flipped the roster on its head. Out were long-timers Pete Alonso, Edwin Díaz, Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil.
In were the guys who have scored an MLB-worst 92 runs, including one in 18 doubleheader innings Sunday. The guys who have an MLB-worst on-base percentage (.288), slugging percentage (.337) and saves total (two).
The guys who have pulled off the impossible, falling 10 1/2 games out of first place before the end of April.
“It’s hard to explain,” Mendoza said.
It’s even harder to accept with a payroll and tax bill that Spotrac puts at $506,843,754.
“I can’t find anyone who says Steve Cohen is a meddler, or someone who isn’t a supportive, positive owner,” one MLB official said. “But the people he’s hired have let him down.
“As a businessman, Cohen is one of the best in the world. But baseball is a very different business model with a lot more unpredictability, and even someone as astute as he is will have difficulty navigating things.”
Fourteen years ago, around the time he lost out on his bid to buy the Dodgers, a New York Times profile of Cohen said he “pits his money managers against one another in daily cage matches for his attention and money” and can fire them “for making one bad trade, even if they made him millions before.”
That Cohen hasn’t surfaced with the Mets. He hasn’t turned the Mets into a game of “Survivor,” or anything resembling that.
But he also hasn’t shown the shrewd eye that turned him into a $21 billion juggernaut. Cohen has been all over the place in his six seasons in Queens, failing to win a division title while lording over his share of Wilpon-ian collapses and controversies. Even his most stunning victory — stealing Juan Soto from the Yankees for an ungodly sum of money – is hard to celebrate given the record with Soto in his employ.
What’s the process? What’s the program?
On a spring training day in 2023, new signee Justin Verlander threw five scoreless innings against the Cardinals and discussed his hope to win an “iconic” title for the Mets. Being part of a championship in New York, the future Hall of Famer said, “those are the stories that live forever.”
Sixteen starts into his $86.66 million contract, Verlander was shipped right back to Houston as part of a Mets fire sale. Again, no process. No program. No plan.
Cohen told reporters in February that he is annoyed by his club’s record, and that the championship drought dating back to 1986 is “just too long.” He said he was confident he would provide the fans with a great team to watch this year.
The Mets have been completely unwatchable instead. You make a quick run to the bathroom when they are due up, and by the time you get back to the couch, there will be two outs and two strikes on yet another overmatched batter. Put it in the books. Their problems can’t be solved by cutting 38-year-old Tommy Pham after 13 hitless at-bats.
Cohen pledged something much better than this. At his introductory presser, he said this of his championship expectations:
“If they’re not met, (the fans) should hold my feet to the fire. In the end, I’m not hitting the baseball. All I’m doing is providing the resources to my management team, and ultimately, I’ve got to be held accountable for that.”
In the end, Steve Cohen has the potential to be a great owner … if only he can figure out how to be one.