Steve Cohen defends NY Mets payroll with one too many tweets

The last time Steve Cohen said anything on X was on September 29. He apologized to New York Mets fans for the team’s regular season failures. 

Since then, it has been a quiet period of time for the Mets owner. He didn’t appear to have any thoughts on the MLB playoffs. The first month and a half of the offseason had him away from the keyboard as he did things like sell gold toilets and get casino deals done. It took a story by the NY Post about projected payroll for next season to get Cohen to tweet again.

Within the story, Mike Puma says the Mets are expected to have a salary around $310-320 million. They’re currently at $295 million with arbitration raises factored in. It leaves little wiggle room. Cohen, who has regularly treated fans to an open wallet when it came to spending on players, came out in defense of the notion that the team could be closer to the finish line than not with their offseason free agent purchases. He spent his Friday morning firing off a pair of tweets.

Steve Cohen probably should have stopped after the first tweet

The first one was about all Cohen needed to say. Everything’s okay. Nothing to see here, folks. I might spend as much. It might be a little more. Could be a little less. Who knows? Fair enough.

This might be an instance of saying a little too much, though. In his second tweet, or whatever they’re called now, he brought up waiver claims, major league promotions, and trade deadline acquisitions. All of those often add up but a major league promotion has a player earning league minimum and on a pro-rated salary. Waiver claims are rarely expensive players and when they are, not very good ones. Trade deadline acquisitions can sometimes come with a high salary. Wake us up when the Mets actually trade for someone making a boatload of money midseason. Two years under David Stearns, they haven’t gone there.

Fans weren’t so pleased with Cohen’s second tweet, including Keith Olbermann who went to an extreme we hope is more playful than honest.

Cohen has brought the Mets into a different stratosphere. Only a little over 365 days ago, he personally backed up the track and let Juan Soto take every gold bar out. He’s still the best owner you can find. Something was just missing with his response to the criticism.

What has frustrated Mets fans more than anything this offseason is the lack of transparency about what they plan to do. Run prevention was the two-word phrase and yet they didn’t go full bore at Edwin Diaz. They signed a poor defender, Jorge Polanco, to take on reps at first base while letting Pete Alonso walk. It has been an unusual offseason, but so have many since Cohen became the owner. Only two years ago, when David Stearns was first hired, we all questioned the actions he was taking. There was no big offseason buy. None of the additions Stearns made was even worth a press conference. 

At any payroll, Cohen shouldn’t have to defend himself. Oddly, by responding to it at all, it just seems defensive especially when he proposes an $820K waiver claim in June will help resolve anything.