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Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

batmagadanleadoff Dec 19 2022 03:09 PM

From The Athletic: Bowden: The biggest winners and losers of the MLB offseason so far Winners 5. Steve Cohen, owner, New York Mets Cohen is baseball's new George Steinbrenner, ready to outspend every MLB owner and he really doesn't care about it. If you can't beat them, just outspend them, and don't worry about what's going to be the biggest luxury tax bill in the history of the sport. The Mets' payroll is already in the $350 million range, which carries an expected tax of $75 million. The Mets' tax payments alone will be more than at least 10 teams are expected to spend on their entire rosters next year.....

vtmet7 Dec 19 2022 03:54 PM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

Kinda funny... I just read this thread here, not noticing that it was a quote from the Athletic. A notification showed up on my phone, clicked on the article without reading the title...read the section on Steve Cohen thinking "I swear that I just read this, word for word" ... returned to the forum, and saw the quote...

smg58 Dec 19 2022 04:51 PM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

Baseball player salaries have not risen at a rate commensurate with revenues for about as long as George's kids have been running the Yankees. The younger Steinbrenners fell in line. The Red Sox went on a spending spree a few years ago that correlated with a winning spree, but they have since fallen in line themselves to the point of selling off their most expensive assets (or letting them walk) and angering their fans. Even the Dodgers are not spending the way it looked like they would when their current ownership took over. Is Cohen going to go rogue and stay there, or will he be reeled in too? Only time will tell. And in the meantime, we can laugh at the Yankees for being cheapskates.

bmfc1 Dec 19 2022 05:06 PM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

Jim Bowden can bite me. He is the worst part of having an Athletic subscription. Whatever they are playing him is too much. Cohen isn't a "winner" simply because he has money. He's a winner because he is using his money to help his team win, unlike many of the pathetic owners that exist just to soak up the income that is distributed to every team no matter how much they put back into the team.

G-Fafif Dec 19 2022 05:32 PM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

I've noticed every free agent who signs specifies “Steve and Alex Cohen,” and it seems more than perfunctory. I don't know to what extent ownership is a partnership, but it's reassuring there are two Cohens getting it done (rather than two Wilpons undoing everything).

A Boy Named Seo Dec 19 2022 05:42 PM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

=smg58 post_id=115136 time=1671493875 user_id=62] Baseball player salaries have not risen at a rate commensurate with revenues for about as long as George's kids have been running the Yankees. The younger Steinbrenners fell in line. The Red Sox went on a spending spree a few years ago that correlated with a winning spree, but they have since fallen in line themselves to the point of selling off their most expensive assets (or letting them walk) and angering their fans. Even the Dodgers are not spending the way it looked like they would when their current ownership took over. Is Cohen going to go rogue and stay there, or will he be reeled in too? Only time will tell. And in the meantime, we can laugh at the Yankees for being cheapskates.

I think the loose strategy all those teams are trying to hit on (some more successful than others) is do this for like 3-5 years:



1) hoard prospects

2) spend big and try to win NOW!!!!

3) absorb some luxury tax hits for a couple few years

4) promote hawt prospects and let some of the big contracts go to dip back under the tax threshold and reset the clock

5) repeat



I think the Dodgers are in step 4 of that right now. The Mets are not at all being coy about this and are SHOWING US THE PLAN! Somewhere, Ambler is peacefully resting. His work is finally done.

nymr83 Dec 19 2022 07:51 PM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

ABNS is right, that is the Dodgers' plan and it has worked for them. It sounds like that is Steve's plan too. The question will be, if draft/develop doesn't work out, will he just keep spending? It'll be awhile before we know that.

Edgy MD Dec 20 2022 07:49 AM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

Whatever his plans are, I hope they garner him a better nickname than "baseball's new George Steinbrenner."

Benjamin Grimm Dec 20 2022 08:41 AM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

I'm not crazy about this one either: https://live.staticflickr.com/244/459386761_3284600f6c_b.jpg>

G-Fafif Dec 20 2022 08:48 AM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

"Steve." --Justin Verlander on what drew him to the Mets (and he clarified he didn't mean Gelbs, who hsd just asked him a question) [tweet]https://twitter.com/AnthonyDiComo/status/1605219998963847168[/tweet]

G-Fafif Dec 20 2022 09:01 AM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/SNYtv/status/1605223744741539842[/tweet]

batmagadanleadoff Dec 20 2022 09:29 AM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

Edgy MD wrote: Whatever his plans are, I hope they garner him a better nickname than "baseball's new George Steinbrenner." How about "Steve"? Just "Steve". Like Bono. Or Cher. Or Beyonce. First name only.

MFS62 Dec 20 2022 09:49 AM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

=nymr83 post_id=115146 time=1671504664 user_id=54] ABNS is right, that is the Dodgers' plan and it has worked for them. It sounds like that is Steve's plan too.

A far better way to emulate them than building a stadium that looks like Ebbets Field.

Later

stevejrogers Dec 20 2022 11:14 AM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I'm not crazy about this one either: https://live.staticflickr.com/244/459386761_3284600f6c_b.jpg> As a two-time uncle of nephews, I'm obligated to say “HEY! COME ON, MAN!” ;)

Edgy MD Dec 20 2022 11:32 AM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

No, you're an actual Uncle Steve. You've earned that.

batmagadanleadoff Feb 06 2023 07:23 PM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

Shootin' the breeze with Mets owner Steve Cohen... Excerpt: The union held firm on its priorities to increase the CBT and limit penalties, and the spending this offseason boomed despite the introduction of a fourth threshold, this year at $293 million, which has earned the nickname in industry circles as "the Cohen Tax." The MLBPA bet that the new threshold wouldn't be a deterrent for the eponymous tax -- and it was right. "I didn't think ["The Cohen Tax"] was that big a deal," Cohen said. "I was already going to be in a big bracket anyway, no question. So it's like the government raising taxes. You're already in a high bracket. What I think about is making income. If I make income, it solves problems. It'd be great to get the payroll to the point where I don't have to pay tax anymore. That's the goal. If we do our job and develop a farm system and get a nice, sustainable pipeline going, we should be able to accomplish that. The [Los Angeles] Dodgers did it. The Dodgers -- what was their payroll in 2015?" It was $297.9 million, a record that held until the Mets' final payroll last season of $299.8 million. [***] But in the end, [Cohen] knows, his mark will be made when the Mets win another title. And if the players he signed this year don't get that done, he knows what Mets fans now expect. Shohei Ohtani and Manny Machado are free agents after this year? Get 'em. Juan Soto is gone after the 2024 season? Make it happen. (Cohen is mum on these topics, having learned his lesson with Correa: Talking publicly about players who are under contract or free agents is an absolute no-no.) https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/insider/story/_/id/35583053/mets-owner-steve-cohen-record-spending-free-agency-2023

batmagadanleadoff Mar 26 2023 12:57 PM Re: Wanna know who deserves his own thread? Steve Cohen. That's who.

Steve Cohen's Amazin', Maddening, Money-Losing Bid to Own New York Once a symbol of Wall Street excess, Cohen has invested lavishly in the Mets, becoming the most beloved billionaire in Queens. Is that enough to reverse team history? Excerpt: He is at once an extreme version of a type — the munificent steward, willing to lose money in a show of how much money he's made — and a model all his own, his tenure rocketing toward something that can feel like a referendum for the man, the Mets, their city and the sport itself. Cohen, 66, has carried off a remarkable reversal in public standing, migrating over the past decade from a reclusive avatar of scofflaw capitalism to an avuncular Twitterer who could probably be elected Queens borough president by acclamation. The Mets have swiftly shed their ingrained identity as lovable losers, their ownership shifting from the cost-conscious, Madoff-swindled Wilpon family to a white-collar boundary-pusher long appraised as neither lovable nor a loser. New York has made room in its political class for a burgeoning macher, with Cohen donating prodigiously to key officials as he imagines transforming the neighborhood around Citi Field into a casino-cum-entertainment hub. And baseball is grappling with the ramifications of Cohen's runaway spending in the nation's most capitalistic major league, where no salary cap constrains him and only one team thought to buy Super Bowl ad time just because it could. [***] The Manager-Made Lasagna Some snapshots from Cohen's long Mets arc can resemble any die-hard's: a precious day at the Polo Grounds with his father, a garment manufacturer from whom Cohen has said he craved more attention as the third of eight children; slumming it with friends in the Shea Stadium upper deck, then swiping better seats as they emptied. Other episodes were more bespoke, fantasy-camp-style indulgences to accompany Cohen's growing fortune. For some $400,000, he acquired the baseball that squirted through Bill Buckner's legs on the way to the Mets' 1986 World Series title. For considerably less, presumably, he and his wife, Alex, won a charity auction around 1999 requiring Bobby Valentine, then the Mets' manager, to prepare lasagna for 20 people at the Cohen estate in Greenwich, Conn., Valentine recalled. And when Cohen's young son seemed primed for batting lessons many years back, the family hired Art Shamsky, from the 1969 World Series champions, for private sessions in Central Park, where Shamsky hauled a hitting tee that often felt decorative. “He just wanted to run after squirrels,” Shamsky said of the boy, who now works in cryptocurrency. Cohen's jaunt through Mets history elides his baseball trajectory some. He has said he used to pull for the Yankees, too. “They were terrible,” he has said of the Mets' leaner years, adding: “It was more fun to follow the Yankees.” Read it all (long read) at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/sports/baseball/steve-cohen-mets-new-york.html Oh, by the way, according to Forbes, Cohen's net worth is now up to $17 billion. And one more excerpt: Max Scherzer, the three-time Cy Young Award winner in his second season with the team, said he did not initially expect New York to be his destination. Then he spoke to Cohen. “Steve at one point said, ‘Yeah, we're going to win and we're going to do whatever it takes,'” he said. “I said, ‘Whatever it takes?' He sat back here and said, ‘Whatever it takes.'” Brandon Nimmo, the outfielder with a new $162 million contract, said Cohen defaults to a four-word refrain whenever Nimmo mentions his impervious spending: “Brandon, it's just money.”