3 moves NY Mets owner Steve Cohen would make if he was more like George Steinbrenner

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George Steinbrenner set a standard for MLB ownership. Winning was what he demanded most during his time as the face of the New York Yankees. When Steve Cohen took control of the New York Mets, the comparisons were impossible to deny.

As we’ve gotten to know Cohen more, we see there are probably more differences between the two. They come from different generations and as similar as their hobby of owning a baseball team may be, their approach and personalities aren’t mirror images.

Certain Steinbrenner qualities would be nice to have. We can’t say the same about the others. If Cohen did have a little more Steinbrenner in him, we would have already seen him make these three moves.

1) NY Mets owner Steve Cohen would have already fired and rehired Buck Showalter or Billy Eppler if he was more like George Steinbrenner

Billy Martin was fired five times by Steinbrenner during his managerial tenure. I haven’t even had five jobs in my lifetime. The nuttiness of the Steinbrenner/Martin relationship is one-of-a-kind. Imagine if Cohen was like that with his skipper Buck Showalter and even Billy Eppler.

By now, Cohen would have pulled the trigger on at least one of them. Showalter would have been gone in mid-June and would’ve returned by the end of the month when Eric Chavez didn’t get anything more from the ball club.

Eppler would have lost his job after the end of the 2022 season. The ferocity of Cohen would have made other general managers timid to take on such an insecure position, especially while knowing David Stearns was eventually going to land an office at Citi Field. Eppler would have been rehired in the offseason with Cohen calling a lot of the shots. It does already seem like this is the working relationship the two have. Cohen says “jump and sign me Justin Verlander” and Eppler asks “how high do you want his salary?”

The Mets were already an unstable franchise and have continued to be so even under the guidance of Uncle Steve. A little more Steinbrenner in him and the Mets might be a whole lot messier.

2) NY Mets owner Steve Cohen would have sold the farm for Shohei Ohtani if he was more like George Steinbrenner

If George Steinbrenner got to know the existence of Shohei Ohtani, you better believe he’d be a member of the Yankees at some point. It doesn’t matter if they’re not a West Coast team. Steinbrenner would have found a way to make it work even if it meant flying Yankee Stadium across the country like they did with the old castle on the animated show Gargoyles back in the day from Scotland to New York.

Ohtani is the kind of superstar player Steinbrenner skips meals to have on his ball club. He is more than a once-in-a-generation talent. Ohtani is something we’ve never seen before.

Cohen will have a realistic shot at signing Ohtani in the offseason. However, if he was more like Steinbrenner, Ohtani would already be in Queens. He would have sold every last piece of the farm system in order to acquire the two-way superstar.

This would mean no Francisco Alvarez, Brett Baty, and a couple of other guys. It would have been the kind of massive haul for the Los Angeles Angels they could never imagine. Everyone on the Mets would be available. A guy like Pete Alonso would be on the trade block for a shot at Ohtani.

We can debate if this would be for the best or worst. Considering most huge trades in sports memory tend to benefit the team getting the surplus of talent over the one player, this might be too ambitious of an undertaking. Cohen has continually preached the necessity to build a farm system. This is a Steinbrenner move we should be glad he won’t make.

3) NY Mets owner Steve Cohen would have fined the players for excessive celebrations if he was more like George Steinbrenner

Steinbrenner was respected but also not afraid to rub players the wrong way. The relationship he had with players wasn’t always the greatest. Until the Yankees started winning in the mid-1990s, his reputation wasn’t what it eventually became thanks to all of those championships the Derek Jeter-led clubs secured.

There’s definitely some stuffiness to Cohen as there would be for anyone successful in business. He is a little more relaxed than I think many of us expected. He has, or at least used to, enjoy Twitter. There’s a fun personality in there somewhere. If he was a little more like the public version of Steinbrenner, his tweets would be more about the excessive celebrations by the Mets players.

Steinbrenner wasn’t shy about instituting a no facial hair policy for his ball club. A more Steinbrenner-esque version of Cohen might do something with excessive celebrations.

It’s tough to believe the 2023 campaign is the same one where we saw Mets players gyrating after big hits or wins. The final weeks of May were wild. Then came June and there wasn’t much to celebrate.

Mets players would have been fined for that. Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil would have a swear jar.

As much as we’d like to see Cohen have Steinbrenner qualities, there are some he can refrain from acquiring. Let The Boss be The Boss.

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