NEW YORK — An open letter to Steve Cohen:
First of all, congratulations, Mr. Cohen, for fulfilling your lifelong dream of buying the Mets. I’m sure the reported record sale price of $2.4-2.5 billion for a North American sports franchise will be more than enough to secure the necessary 23 votes for approval from the other 29 MLB owners. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Once that happens, you are going to have to work fast in putting together a management team to restore the Mets to a championship-caliber ballclub. Hopefully, you’ve already begun an exploratory process in that regard, but if you haven’t, allow me to offer some free advice on behalf of long-suffering Mets fans:
Enough of these Jeff Wilpon “We’re smarter than everyone else” out-of-the box hires. These are what got the Mets Mickey Callaway, Brodie Van Wagenen and even Luis Rojas over Buck Showalter or Joe Girardi. You need to hire experienced, proven successful baseball people to run your operation. There are a few of them out there working for other organizations, but I can think of two in particular, Brian Sabean and Ned Colletti, who over the last 22 years have been two of the most successful general managers in baseball. You could hire either one of them and give the Mets instant credibility with your fan base.
Even better, hire both of them as a tag team.
Last year, Colletti, 66, finished runner-up to Mike Elias for the Orioles’ general manager job. At the time, he made it known that, if he got the job, he planned to bring in Sabean, his former boss with the Giants, as his top advisor. Word around baseball is that both of them — Sabean, with a Hall of Fame resume of three world championships with the Giants, and Colletti, with more wins than any other GM in baseball plus five postseason teams during his nine years as head man of the Dodgers from 2005-2019 — are hankering for one more challenge.
I’m sure nobody has to tell you this has been an extremely unsatisfactory year for the Mets. With nearly half of baseball qualifying for the playoffs in this pandemic-truncated season, the Mets were supposed to be one of them and they are not. That falls on Van Wagenen and Rojas.
There are a lot of reasons why the Mets fell short of expectations. The starting pitching after Jacob deGrom collapsed; they were one of the poorest defensive teams in baseball, particularly up the middle, and Pete Alonso regressed dramatically. If it’s decided Rojas deserves another year, it would seem at least a makeover of his coaching staff is in order.
Assuming you do bring in a new management team — and you really need to do this now, not a year from now — ask them to talk to David Cone about being your pitching coach. Cone knows and understands as much about pitching than almost anyone in the game. It would be a great coup for the Mets to spirit him away from the Yankees, who passed him over last year in favor of the analytics-driven Matt Blake. (How’s that worked out?)
Of course you have to know, Mr. Cohen, no matter who you bring in as GM, Mets fans are looking to you as their savior and expecting you to spend as much as it takes to bring them a winner. As a result, the player agents are salivating, as they all do, whenever a new owner comes into the game looking to make a big splash with his fans. None more so than the good folks at CAA, who just happen to represent J.T. Realmuto, the premium free agent in this winter’s market. The Mets desperately need a frontline catcher and Realmuto is among the best, if not the best, in the game. But he’s also 29, meaning he’s got maybe 3-4 prime years behind the plate remaining. And his agents are likely to start off at 10 years, if nothing else to see who if anyone salutes it.
Be prepared for this, Mr. Cohen, and understand the rest of your new lodge brothers have suffered brutal losses this year and there isn’t going to be a lot of big spending in baseball this winter. (I’m hearing the Phillies have resigned themselves to not being able to afford to retain Realmuto and are already focusing doing whatever spending they can on starting pitching.) Nevertheless, these agents are masters at getting owners to bid against themselves for their clients and they’ve got you in their crosshairs. Because at the same time, you, too, need starting pitching and that’s where you’re going to have to particularly compete with your money this winter. You can get Realmuto, but unlike Phillies owner John Middleton with Scott Boras and Bryce Harper two years ago, you don’t have to be stupid about it. That’s all I’m sayin’.
Lastly, if I could, I’d like to put in a good word for a few loyal Mets employees you’re going to want to cultivate: Terry Collins, the second greatest Mets manager (behind Gil Hodges), Omar Minaya, the dean of Latin America scouting, and the inimitable longtime publicist Jay Horwitz. Collins and Minaya are two guys you’re gonna want sitting in your box with you at games where you can just soak up their baseball knowledge. As for Jay, he may be 75, but nobody has done more — or continues to do more — to promote the Mets and their history.
And speaking of Mets history, make sure that statue of Tom Seaver is finished and on display outside Citi Field next year.
The best of success with your new toy,
Bill Madden
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