Mets: How Steve Cohen can score a hat trick with Mets fans this offseason

1) Fire General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen and hire a new General Manager

Usually, when new ownership comes into an unstable organization many changes are made at the top, and I don’t see this scenario being any different. I could envision Cohen wanting to rebuild the front office from scratch with his own personnel and bring in a new manager as well, as Luis Rojas is currently tied to Van Wagenen and he wasn’t even his first choice.

While not all moves have been bad with Van Wagenen as the General Manager as he acquired J.D. Davis, brought Pete Alonso with the big club on Opening Day last season, and has had some really solid drafts the last couple of seasons, several moves have not sat well with Mets fans.

Unfortunately, the move that forever will be tied to Van Wagenen is the Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz trade two offseasons ago. The trade hasn’t exactly panned out in our favor to this point and the Mets lost one of the most highly regarded prospects in all of baseball in outfielder Jarred Kelenic. Also, I would hate to even bring up the Jed Lowrie robbery of a contract so we’ll move past that one.

Another black eye on Van Wagenen’s resume has been the amount of pitching depth in the Minor Leagues that have been depleted. In a season where the Mets have been starved for pitching and looking for hope in the minors aside from David Peterson, the Mets have traded away pitchers Justin Dunn, Anthony Kay, Kevin Smith, Jordan Humphreys, Simeon Woods-Richardson, and Blake Taylor all within the last two seasons. While the Mets do have highly regarded prospect Matthew Allan in the minors he is at least two to three seasons away from any kind of impact at the Major League level.

There is also the experience factor as Van Wagenen is a highly regarded baseball agent and sorely lacks front office experience compared to his peers. I believe Cohen will want to bring in somebody with a stronger background in regards to front office experience as well as baseball operations experience in general.