Dominic Leone
If you tune into WFAN (why would you do that yourself), you will hear the narrative being pushed that the Steve Cohen tenure as New York Mets owner has not been successful. If you hear someone espouse that, please ignore them because they are just espousing ignorance.
That’s not to say there haven’t been missteps. Of course, there have been missteps.
Since purchasing the Mets, Cohen has had difficulty building the front office he envisioned. A very large part of that is the fact Cohen wanted the best of the best for the role, and David Stearns was not available until this year. When Stearns became available, Cohen pounced.
What is important with the rocky GM history is Cohen’s response to each of them. With Jared Porter, his alleged improprieties cost him his job. The same for Zack Scott. This led to the hiring of Billy Eppler, which was a mixed bag.
What was interesting during Scott’s tenure is he traded Pete Crow-Armstrong for Javier Baez and Trevor Williams. At the time, the Mets were in first place and the only team in the division over .500. At the time, no one knew injuries would dismantle that team, and the thumbs down drama would ensue.
What Cohen did learn from that is not to double down on a flawed team. We saw that at the trade deadline this past season as the Mets moved David Robertson, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Tommy Pham, and Dominic Leone. Having learned lessons, the Mets completely revamped their minor league system.
Looking back on that 2021 season, Luis Rojas was foisted upon Porter and Scott. With Stearns being hired, he was permitted to fire Buck Showalter even though he was a popular figure with the media and players. Again, Cohen learned a lesson.
People will want to harp on and mock the signings of Scherzer and Verlander. However, that purposefully ignores the 101 win season. You can’t mock the signings while ignoring where it was successful.
We can opt to hold the Mets payroll and failures against them in 2023. It was definitively a failure. However, it was a failure borne out of an owner attempting to win and build off of a successful season. When it didn’t work, Cohen changed course.
Keep in mind, this wasn’t the Mets 2017 sell-off to save money and collect right-handed relief prospect after right-handed relief prospect. No, Cohen continued to use his financial might to fortify the farm system.
Cohen is now entering his fourth year of ownership. Let’s take stock of where the Mets are now.
They have Stearns as the POBO. They have a future Hall of Famer in Francisco Lindor. They kept Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil over the long term. Top prospects like Francisco Alvarez and Mark Vientos have had successes to build upon for 2024. Kodai Senga was phenomenal, and Edwin Diaz is coming back healthy next year.
The Mets are in great shape to build a competitor in 2024, and they have what they need to make the Mets contenders year-in and year-out. If you don’t think this has been a success, you’re a fool.
When we discuss the New York Mets bullpen, it always need the caveat that the Mets are without Edwin Díaz. Naturally, not having the best closer in baseball is going to severely impact your bullpen and how it is constructed.
For example, David Robertson was signed to be the eighth inning set-up man. That means he steps up to closer with everyone filling in behind him. That naturally weakens the bullpen even with Robertson being almost as good as Díaz was last season.
Now, if the Mets had Robertson and Díaz, they would have the 8th and 9th innings completely locked down. However, they would still have issues with the earlier innings. That was always going to be the place, but for some reason, that was always going to be the plan.
The Mets are suffering from that plan. Putting aside the plan, here are who the Mets key set-up relievers were supposed to be, and here is how they are performing this season:
- Adam Ottavino 0-2, 4.38 ERA, 96 ERA+, 4.79 FIP
- Brooks Raley 1-1, 3.10 ERA, 136 ERA+, 4.52 FIP
- Drew Smith 3-2, 3.74 ERA, 112 ERA+, 4.03 FIP
Raley and Smith have been alright, but they have not been dominant. Ottavino has struggled. What is really concerning with this trio is when you look at their FIP, they are over performing how they are pitching. The last thing the Mets can afford is any of them to regress, and from the looks of it, all of them are due for a regression.
Past them, it’s been a revolving door of relievers. The flavor of the week is Jeff Brigham and Dominic Leone. Previously, it was Jimmy Yacabonis, Denyi Reyes, Dennis Santana, John Curtiss, etc. The only conclusion to be drawn from these names is Billy Eppler and the Mets purposefully opted for relievers who can go back-and-forth instead of one or two more established arms.
The end result of all of this is a bad Mets bullpen. Their 4.17 bullpen ERA is 10th worst in the majors and fifth worst in the NL. The 4.51 FIP is sixth worst overall and third worst in the NL. Overall, the bullpen is just plain bad even with Robertson being dominant.
It needs to be reiterated the Carlos Correa deal fell through. That left the Mets with money to spend on the bullpen, and they didn’t. They instead wanted to go with a bunch of journeymen like Tommy Hunter. Again, this was the plan.
With that being the plan, we should not be surprised the bullpen has not been good. Chances are, it will get worse, at least from what we see with the team FIP. While the Mets didn’t plan on this being the case, that is the end result of their plan, and frankly, they should not be surprised by these results.