Steve Cohen hears the complaints about his team and knows that the fans are waiting for a storm to come from ownership toward his underachieving, highest-payroll team ever.
When will he lambaste poorly performing players? When will he fire someone as a statement?
But the Mets owner — in a nearly hour-long conversation with The Post on Saturday morning, about 10 hours after his club lost a seventh straight game in humiliating fashion to the Pirates — insisted that is not his style.
“When things get really bad, I’m not going to blow up,” Cohen said. “I don’t think that’s the proper response. I don’t think it solves anything, other than it gives people a one-day story. But it doesn’t really solve anything. There’s plenty of blame to go around from a performance point of view. So blowing up, I’m not sure it solves anything. It would demonstrate, ‘Oh, he really cares. He’s one of us.’ But the reality is it’s not going to solve our problems. And I think in some ways it can be demotivating.
“I’m trying to be thoughtful about this. And not reactionary. Because I’ve got enough experience, whether in my business or even in baseball now, to know that when things are going great, you are never as great as you think you are, and when things are going really bad, you are not as bad as you think you are. Things can turn around fairly quickly.
“You have to take a look at your process. Work hard. Try to fix what you can fix. And not be reactionary. I think that’s the worst thing you can do is to be overly reactionary. General fan reaction, it’s usually, ‘I can’t believe Steve’s not going nuts, fire somebody.’ My answer to that is, ‘OK, let’s say I went nuts. Let’s say I fired somebody. Then what?’ What does that accomplish? Who are you gonna replace them with? This is the middle of the season. And then if you actually ask people [who are the replacements], they have no answers, other than they’re just angry, and I get that. I’m frustrated too. The players are frustrated. The front office is frustrated. We are frustrated. No one expected this. This is really surprising. It doesn’t mean that things won’t get better. If we can find ways to fix our weaknesses, we’ll try.”
Cohen said he believes the biggest problem with a team that had fallen to 30-34 is inconsistent, underperforming starting pitching, which has overexposed and exhausted the bullpen. He insisted he believes in those starters and that he expects them to eventually pitch to their past performance, and the team’s success to follow that.
“It’s a moment in time, and it doesn’t look good,” Cohen said. “It looks pretty bad right now. But this is not a bad team.”
He also said he supports GM Billy Eppler and manager Buck Showalter, insisting the team’s bad first two-plus months has been group wide and will have to be repaired the same way — in unison, as a group.
As for if he feels any regret about investing $380 million-ish in payroll — which will necessitate another $110 million-ish in luxury-tax payment — Cohen said:
“I’m a different cat than other people. I commit to something, I do the best I can. I get it, everyone is so focused on the money. If I spent half the amount of money and we performed this way, I’d be as frustrated. It’s not a question of the money. I get it’s a great story: ‘They spend all this money and look at what they’re doing.’ I’ve always said it’s a bridge [until the farm system is better], right? There are no guarantees. Take a look at free agency and how many players have performed well out of free agency from last year. Look at the minefield. Look what happened with Jake [deGrom]. I feel bad for him. Obviously, [Carlos] Rodon, a six-year deal, I’m sure he’ll be fine, but he’s been injured. It’s a tough place to build a team because you’re making bets based on a place with a lot of volatility.
“I’ve always said even in my hedge fund, I’d rather develop talent on the inside than buy it on the outside. My data in my firm says we do much better when we develop our own talent. Baseball is no different. Look at the whole [Carlos] Correa situation and how that turned out [the Mets failed him on a physical, like the Giants did, and so far Correa is performing poorly for the Twins]. I wish him the best. Good guy. Free agency is a tough place to build a sustainable winner.
“If you don’t have a farm system that’s producing quality players or sustainable organizational depth, then you’re forced into doing things that are maybe sub-optimal. Thankfully, I have the resources to be able to play that game. But if I had my druthers, I’d prefer to develop a stable pipeline of young talent. That’s my goal. I said in the earlier press conference this year, I’m gonna rate my success on our ability to develop talent in the farm system, because I think that’s how you develop sustainable winners.
“For now we have good players. They’re talented, they’re smart, they’re passionate, they’re veterans. We have some Hall of Famers. I’m not writing these people off. Their record is too strong to just write them off. I know these guys. I have conversations with these people. I know how much they care. I know how much they want to win. This is a smart group. It’s actually a good, smart, thoughtful bunch. So, if I were to bet, I would bet that they’re going to right the ship, and that’s what I firmly believe. So yeah, am I frustrated? Of course, I’m frustrated. We’re all frustrated. It’s hard to watch your team get blown out or lose leads, but I don’t think that’s going to continue the whole season.”
The Mets swept the Phillies before losing three straight to the Blue Jays at Citi Field, blowing at least three-run leads in each game of a three-game sweep in Atlanta then getting wiped out 14-7 in Pittsburgh on Friday night. That left them fourth in the NL East and four games out of a wild card.
“This is sort of unimaginable, this streak,” Cohen said. “Last week it started to look like it was coming together and then we fell into another rut. The offense has been fine. Earlier in the year it got off to a rough start. I just think the pitching has been so spotty. You can’t win games if your pitcher goes three innings, four innings. You just can’t. It is like a cascading effect. It burns the bullpen out. These are veteran pitchers that pitched well last year. I don’t know why [it isn’t going well], to be perfectly blunt. I know they’re working hard. I know they’re motivated, and it’s doesn’t preclude things getting better. When things get this bad, you almost feel like it’s got to mean revert back to something more normal. I suspect that’s what’s going to happen. The results are the results. It’s not good. I think the players, the front office, everybody knows it. They get it. They’re all working hard.
“Just as a sidelight, let’s say I’m running my hedge fund. It’s not always up and to the right. And it’s not always going great. When you have problems like this, when things are not working out the way you planned it, that’s when everyone’s got to get their heads together and try to figure out a way out of this. I know everyone’s thinking about it, working on it. I’m in constant communication with Billy. Everybody cares, everybody wants things to get better, but you can’t will it?
“Unfortunately, it’s a time of year where we’re gonna have to figure it out internally. It’s gonna be really hard to find ways to improve the team and make serious roster changes. I believe in this team. I know the euphemism about the back of the baseball card. One of the predictors of future successes is past success — how well have these players played in the past? There’s no guarantees, right? No guarantees, you know, the past performance doesn’t guarantee future performance. These are veteran players who have been successful in the past.
“So you hope things mean revert back to where they’re performing at a level that they expect themselves to perform. You sit and watch the team blow three leads in Atlanta. We could have won all those games. How de-motivating that is. How frustrating that is to everybody. Some of that can be solved at some point, you know. You can get relief pitching at some point if the team needs the arms. That is one of the easier ones probably to fix at some point, but it just doesn’t happen when you want to do it.
“We’re not at the trade deadline. You need sellers, you need someone who actually wants to sell, and you don’t want to make a bad deal. It gets back to that cascading effect where starters don’t go long enough. Buck is forced to bring in relievers earlier than he would want to. They’re pitching more than they should, and it’s sort of a cascading effect. I think that’s the root of the problem. The irony is all the experts were saying we had one of the best pitching staffs before the season started. So now, all of a sudden, that hasn’t been the case so far. But what’s the real truth? It can go the other way pretty fast, and we could be talking about something completely different in a month or two.”
In the lengthy conversation, Cohen also hit on if he would fire someone as a way to try to shake up the group:
“I don’t run my business that way. I don’t run any business that way. In my hedge fund, there are moments where we’ve drawn down really hard for whatever reasons — whether it’s markets, whether it’s something that we did wrong — it doesn’t mean I completely change or let people go. I don’t operate that way. These are challenges. This is management. This is the moment where you get to witness how your management deals with problems.
“When things are going great. It’s easy, right? It’s no problem. Team is winning 100 games or playing well, that’s easy, right? You can sit back, relax and do your thing and you don’t have to make any course corrections. When things aren’t going well, then you get to witness how your management team operates. How do they deal with these problems? That’s what we’re gonna see. Billy and the entire management team are working hard. They’re trying to figure this out. You gotta give them credit. They’re, they’re all over it. I’m all over it with them. I’m not leaving them and just saying, ‘Go fix it.’ It’s not your problem. It’s our problem. I’m all over it.
“I speak to Billy all day, especially when things aren’t going well. Some of the stuff is hard to fix at the moment, because of the time a year. We’ve made significant investments in our pitching staff. And we’ve had some negative mean reversion with some of our younger pitchers where they haven’t performed up to what we thought they were capable of and what they did last year. You sorta have a mix of problems here that could change. But I still keep coming back to, it’s a pitching problem.
“Then the only other thing I see that, frankly, I’m a little bit troubled by is I’m seeing mental errors that we didn’t see last year and that we can fix. That’s fixable. And I just don’t know why that’s happening. We all see it on the field on a daily basis. And that’s, that’s on the players, you know, and they’re working hard. I guess teams get into a funk, that happens. And then come out of it. These are veterans that have performed before, and they’re working hard. They care. They’re good guys. I believe in them. And they’re smart enough, they care enough, that they’ll fix it on their own. They’ll fix, at least the mental side. We’re going through a bad period, but they know it, and they are willing to own it. Those are what I would call unforced errors that we can fix and we will because these are good guys who are working hard. As much as the fans care, as much as I care, they care even more.”
When asked if mental errors reflect on the manager, and if that has lowered his belief in Showalter, Cohen said:
“I’m not putting it on the players. I don’t know why it’s happening. I would call this an organizational problem, right now. … I’m just observing it. I don’t know the core reason why it’s happening. Maybe our baseball people would know more than me. Maybe Buck would know more than me. He has observed a lot. I don’t think it’s going to continue. I think these are veterans and professionals and it’s a moment in time, and these are the type of guys that are going to try their hearts out to right the ship.
“This is an organizational problem, it’s not on any one individual. I think it’s a joint effort. In the end, everyone has to put their heads together, make sure that we’re all communicating and being open with a common goal of trying to fix what we can fix and be on the same page. Billy’s talking to Buck every day. Three times a day. I can only imagine for a manager to have to deal with inconsistencies. … I don’t think we’re this bad. I mean, I don’t think any team is this bad except for the obvious ones. We have way too much talent. But it happens. Why does it happen? The mysteries of baseball, right? We had three leads in Atlanta and we blew the leads. That’s very uncharacteristic of this team and how we played in the past. What is that symptomatic of? I think it’s symptomatic of ultimately the bullpen has been stretched because the starters are not going as long as they should or what’s expected.
“Each pitcher has its own issues. But in general there’s been incredible inconsistency, and if we can solve that and get some length, then our bullpen would stay rested and we’ll get better performance there. And we’ll win more games. I don’t think this is like so complex a problem.”
Cohen on the mounting negative noise around the team:
“Everything is amplified in New York. Our fans are passionate. They want immediate answers. Sometimes there aren’t immediate answers. I’ll come back to, no one anticipated that our problem would be our pitching. No one anticipated that. So that’s life, right? You wake up one day and you’ve got a problem you didn’t know you had . Whether it’s my hedge fund business, whether it’s in general life, [bleep] happens. That’s the way it goes, and then you’ve got to deal with it. That’s what we’re trying to do. Are we panicked? We are not panicked? I don’t panic. I’ve been around too long.
“You gotta be really careful about recency bias, and reacting to what is clearly mediocre performance at best and inconsistent performance. And everybody knows that. We are all banging our heads together trying to find solutions, but sometimes solutions are not so easy. Ultimately you have to fix what you can fix. I believe we have veteran pitchers who have performed in the past. I think they’re gonna do better. I think we’re seeing signs of it. Verlander went out the other night and pitched three innings. The start before he threw 120 pitches. Is one related to the other? Might be, I don’t know, it’s way above my paygrade. Generally he’s the type of pitcher and Max [Scherzer] is the type of pitcher, I think they are going to be fine. I think [Carlos] Carrasco is pitching better. [Jose] Quintana is coming back soon. Kodai [Senga] has had his moments. I think we’re gonna see better out of him. When you put it all together, you can come up with a scenario. … What is the odds this group of pitchers will pitch this way the entire season. Probably unlikely.
“That is why there is reason for optimism in a moment where it looks like the wheels have just come off. I do think we got to fix the inconsistency of [Tylor] Megill and obviously [David] Peterson took a step back. We’re working on that, and I’ve had conversations with our pitching coach and our pitching people in the organization and we’re working on that. These are people who have performed in the past, and you’ve got to believe that it’s fixable. I keep coming back to that: The best indicator of future performance is how they performed in the past. And they have performed consistently well in the past. That gives me optimism for the future.”
Cohen on the mounting criticism from media/social media:
“I think it incites the fans a little bit and creates this kind of short-termism which I don’t think is how any team can run or think. … I don’t create the world. I got to live in this world. This is the world we’re in. So I’ve got to manage that. I totally appreciate the frustration. I know my fans care. I know people care. Their lives revolve around the Mets. They care, and that’s phenomenal. I just love that. I love the interaction with the fans. But because they care so much, they want immediate fixes. And sometimes there aren’t immediate fixes. And sometimes you can do a lot of damage being impulsive. Not just in the short term, in the long term. If I were incredibly reactionary and started doing irrational things, why would anybody want to come to this organization and be subjected to that?”
Cohen once more on responding in the moment to a crisis and a call to make changes:
“I get they [fans] want immediate results. There’s a real recency bias — what have you done for me lately? You can’t make changes like that. That’s not good management. It’s not a good strategy. You’re better off trying to manage through these periods and not throw your entire plans out the window. It’s just not good management, good strategy. That’s not how I’m going to run this team. That’s not how I’m dealing with my people. And if people don’t like it, what can I tell you? I’m gonna do it the way I do it. I don’t know who they thought they were getting. Just because I spent money doesn’t mean a change — I’m gonna run it in my style. Thoughtful. Involved. And sometimes there are no easy answers. And you have to accept that.”
