Tag: Steve Cohen

After Mets’ reported Carlos Correa signing, here’s how much owner Steve Cohen could pay in luxury tax

It’s A LOT.

Wow. What an offseason for the New York Mets.

We knew owner Steve Cohen had deep pockets and wanted to spend this offseason to help a playoff team get much better.

But we didn’t know he’d spend THIS much.

Reports broke early Wednesday morning that after a physical may have held up a deal between shortstop Carlos Correa and the San Francisco Giants — a Tuesday news conference was called off — and that the Mets swooped in to spend $315 million over 12 years to grab him to play third base.

That’s on top of an offseason that’s included re-signing Brandon Nimmo, Adam Ottavino and Edwin Diaz, and adding Justin Verlander, Kodai Senga, Jose Quintana, David Robertson and Omar Narvaez.

So how much will Cohen reportedly pay in luxury taxes, which are a penalty IN ADDITION to all that free agent money?

Here’s your answer:

WOW.

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Mets owner Steve Cohen tweeted a pun about injury to Francisco Lindor, and it deserves a facepalm

It is a lot harder to make fun of the Mets now that they are one of the best teams in baseball.

It is a lot harder to make fun of the Mets now that they are one of the best teams in baseball, but it’s impossible to see this tweet and not say something.

Mets superstar infielder Francisco Lindor was ruled out in the first game of their series against the Dodgers because he caught a finger in the door of a hotel room. Even just typing that out right now feels absurd, but sometimes the truth is way stranger than fiction.

If it hurt enough that a professional athlete decided to sit out, it must have been a brutal slam. But one person who sees the humor in the situation is Mets owner Steve Cohen.

After the news broke on Thursday night, here is what he said on Twitter:

“Lin-door just got hurt by a door,” said Cohen. “Ironic.”

In fairness to Cohen, it is pretty ironic that someone whose name sounds like “door” got injured by a door.

However, while it was originally exciting to see an owner like Cohen tweet about baseball when he first bought the team, that honeymoon did not last for very long.

It got ugly when he tweeted about former Mets pitcher Steven Matz, and fans hated what he had to say about unsigned first-round draft pick Kumar Rocker as well.

So maybe, as funny as the joke was for Cohen, he shouldn’t tweet jokes about when his players get injured. Unless, of course, Lindor sees the humor in his own injury as well.

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Some of the wildly exorbitant purchases MLB owners have made over the years

But let’s focus on Max Scherzer’s car instead …

Major League Baseball is currently in a lockout, which means an on-time start to the season is very much in jeopardy. But it’s important to remember that this isn’t a strike. It’s a lockout.

The owners instituted a lockout as the collective bargaining agreement expired in December. And though commissioner Rob Manfred could have kept the season on track while simultaneously negotiating with the players union, he opted for the contentious lockout strategy. It didn’t have to be this way, and the strange thing about this lockout is the puzzling amount of blame being placed on the players. The very players who want to be playing baseball right now.

In an Associated Press report from the negotiations in Jupiter, Fla., Max Scherzer was singled out for driving a Porsche to the meetings. Sure, a Porsche Taycan is a nice car. But Max Scherzer is a three-time Cy Young Award winner. He can have a nice car. The Athletic’s Jim Bowden also blamed the players for a step “backwards” in negotiations. Again, stop blaming the players. 

But if we’re going to get mad at Scherzer’s car, let’s take a look at some of the things MLB owners have purchased over the years.

Mets owner Steve Cohen’s latest angry, unhelpful tweet appears to rip Steven Matz’s agent

Here we go again.

It seemed like there might have been a chance for starting pitcher Steven Matz — a Long Island native drafted by the New York Mets in 2009 who pitched for the club for six years before being traded to the Toronto Blue Jays last season — to return to the Mets this offseason as a free agent.

But on Wednesday, we learned he was signing a deal with the St. Louis Cardinals, for a reported four years and $44 million.

Apparently, behind the scenes, that wasn’t what the Mets thought was going to happen. And owner Steve Cohen appeared to make sure the world knew it:

So what’s that all about? A report from MLB Network’s Jon Heyman:

And a thread from Joel Sherman of the New York Post:

Hm.

I’ve written before about Cohen’s tweets and how they don’t help the Mets from an on-field point of view. I’m fine with the owner having fun on Twitter, trolling here and there, interacting with fans and floating ideas that people can respond to. That was enjoyable and a huge change for a franchise that needed it earlier in the year.

But the tweets about “unproductive” hitters or trying to out anonymous sources in articles criticizing him? Not helpful. I can imagine free agents pausing and wondering if this is the franchise for them if the owner acts like that, and that culture spreads down across the organization.

And this tweet is under that umbrella. Yes, he clarified it was about Matz’s agent. But does that mean other agents won’t want to deal as much with the front office if it means being called out by Cohen?

Just dial it back a little! That’s all.

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Mets owner Steve Cohen offered reward to whoever could out the source of a negative story about him

Maybe don’t tweet?

When Steve Cohen took over ownership of the New York Mets, his presence as baseball’s wealthiest owner set the highest of expectations for Mets fans. He was supposed to use his deep pockets to bring in talent, and he didn’t shy away from offering Francisco Lindor a $341 million contract.

But money alone hasn’t made the transformational impact that Cohen hoped for, and organizationally, the Mets have remained a mess with Jared Porter’s firing for sexual harassment and acting GM Zack Scott’s arrest for DWI. In a recent article from The New York Post, that front-office turmoil was chronicled. But there was one quote from an anonymous source that really caught Cohen’s attention.

It read:

“Cohen is out there tweeting about the organization and about stuff that he shouldn’t be tweeting about like he’s a fan,” the former executive said. “Why would somebody want to sign up for that? I think it’s a huge issue.”

Now, Cohen has been active on Twitter since taking over the Mets — aside from briefly deactivating his account amid threats related to GameStop stock. He also tweets a lot about things that don’t help the Mets at all — the quote was pretty spot on. But if there’s one way to prove a negative source wrong about your tweeting habits, this wouldn’t be the way to do it.

Cohen took to Twitter on Thursday to tweet his response to the story, which was offering a reward to the person who could guess the source behind that New York Post quote. The prize was being able to watch a game with Cohen in his suite at Citi Field.

Without evidence, Cohen accused former Marlins exec and current CBS Sports personality David Samson as being the source behind the story.

Both Samson and Mike Puma (the writer of the article) denied that — not that any reputable reporter would out a source even if Cohen was correct.

It is a bit wild that Cohen’s reaction to criticism of tendency to tweet about things he shouldn’t tweet about is to … well … tweet about things he shouldn’t tweet about. Way to show ’em, Steve.

This could only happen with the Mets.

Steve Cohen’s scathing tweet about struggling Mets is exactly what the franchise doesn’t need

Not good.

It was all fun and games with New York Mets owner Steve Cohen on Twitter for a while.

He’d send a joke or two, respond to fans and mix it up with them, solicit ideas for what the team should do on and off the field and build the kind of trust that Mets die-hards had hoped for when he bought the team from the Wilpon family.

But as the team has gone through a rough patch that started with the way Cohen and the Mets passed on signing 10th overall pick in the MLB Draft Kumar Rocker to the collapse on the field that has the Mets now in third place in the NL East, the tone has changed.

And on Wednesday, Cohen tweeted this:

That is a shot right into the clubhouse. That’s not some thinly-veiled, “we need to do better and we will do better” rhetoric meant to keep Mets fans from losing it more than they already are. This is something players — both with the not-so-Amazins and outside — will see and talk about.

Everyone within the organization knows there are some serious problems right now, and even though you could point to ace Jacob deGrom and the struggling Francisco Lindor being out due to injury as two reasons why the collapse happened, hitting the panic button now and so publicly can only damage trust of the front office by current players, and free agents might think twice if they see the top person in the organization outwardly slamming his own squad.

It’s also opening himself and the rest of the front office to plenty of criticism for the moves or lack thereof in the offseason and trade deadline (Javy Baez is batting just .171 since the trade from the Chicago Cubs):

I get it. He wants to show he’s not happy and express that fans shouldn’t put up with this kind of performance from a team with higher expectations in 2021. But this is the wrong way to go about it.

If you want to do deliver this message, do it to your general manager, who can then do with it what he thinks is best for the players. If you want to meet with the team itself to see what you can learn — and even that might seem weird to players — do that privately.

A public tweet with this kind of anger for all the world to see can only do more harm than good.

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MLB fans destroyed Mets owner Steve Cohen’s tweet about not signing Kumar Rocker

He said the quiet part out loud.

When the New York Mets selected Vanderbilt pitcher Kumar Rocker with the 10th pick in the MLB Draft, there was plenty of optimism around the Mets. They had seemingly been gifted a can’t-miss, widely known prospect who was expected to get drafted far earlier.

It didn’t even take three weeks for all that to come crashing down.

The Mets allowed Sunday’s deadline to pass without signing Rocker to a contract. This means that Rocker will not play for the Mets — he’ll instead have the option of training for a year, playing independent league baseball or returning to school (he’s ruled out going back to college). The Mets will receive the 11th pick in 2022 as compensation, and Rocker will be draft eligible again next year.

According to ESPN, the Mets had concerns about Rocker’s arm. Rocker’s agent, Scott Boras, disputed those concerns and said that Rocker was healthy.

But even if Rocker’s arm needed medical attention, you would think the longterm upside of Rocker would be worth any wait.

With that in mind, this tweet from Mets owner Steve Cohen did not go over well.

How Mets owner Steve Cohen reportedly got involved in the GameStop stock explosion

Don’t worry, Mets fans!

The GameStop stock phenomenon — in which a bunch of Redditors bought stock and pushed the price of the struggling retailer into the stratosphere, we explained it all for you in a handy post — has taken another wild and crazy turn as the price continued to increase into Wednesday.

And now, New York Mets Steve Cohen is reportedly involved.

No, he didn’t go and buy a bunch of the stock. Per the Financial Times, Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management — with $750 million — joined with Citadel to infuse money into Melvin Capital, one of the firms hit hard because of its short position on GameStop stock.

CNBC then reported on Wednesday morning that Melvin Capital closed out on its GameStop investments the day before, taking a huge loss, but it was the money from Cohen and Citadel that helped.

Cohen had this to say on Tuesday:

And if you’re a Mets fan worried this would hurt the team in some way, Cohen — reportedly worth $14.5 billion and who paid $2.475 billion to buy the franchise — put that to rest:

https://twitter.com/StevenACohen2/status/1354246193510014983

This GameStop thing continues to get crazier by the day.

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Mets owner Steve Cohen tweets Jared Porter is fired after GM sent explicit texts to a female reporter

The organization made its decision quickly.

An ESPN report from Mina Kimes and Jeff Passan late on Monday night said that New York Mets general manager Jared Porter — hired by the franchise just a month ago — had sent “unsolicited texts and images” to a female reporter back in 2016.

The horrifying report details how Porter repeatedly sent messages to her even after she stopped texting him back. When ESPN reached Porter, the general manager “acknowledged texting with the woman. He initially said he had not sent any pictures of himself.”

The Mets had released a statement from president Sandy Alderson in which he said the franchise would follow up with a review, but on Tuesday morning, word came directly from team owner Steve Cohen, who tweeted at 7:55 a.m. Eastern that Porter had been fired and that “there should be zero tolerance for this type of behavior.”

There was no foot-dragging, no days of debate on how to handle it, none of that. When Porter, as the Mets original statement, “acknowledged … his serious error in judgement,” the organization made its decision swiftly.

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Mets owner Steve Cohen is hilariously mixing it up with fans on Twitter

This is great.

Fresh off paying $2.475 billion for the New York Mets, Steve Cohen delivered an introductory press conference that had everyone impressed with the way he spoke about everything from the money available to spend on the roster to social justice.

Since then, he’s been a great follow on Twitter, responding to fans tweeting all kind of requests/jokes/questions at him, kind of like Kevin Durant without the trolling. And it’s a delight! What other owners in sports spend this kind of time on Twitter speaking to random die-hards?

There are jokes like this one in response to a question about getting Billy Joel to play at Citi Field:

There are simple replies to simple questions:

It seems like he’s learning things from Twitter?

And we’re even learning some facts about a Mets’ front office job:

It’s another way to build a relationship with a fanbase that needs it. Good stuff.

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