The Mets’ offseason has already had MLB managers decry Steve Cohen’s spending spree: ‘No collusion…but’

All of this was very expected. There’s an owner in Major League Baseball who spends a lot of his money trying to see his favorite team – and now the team he owns – win the World Series. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, right? Sure enough, here comes the whining.

This is an anonymous MLB executive, from The Athletic:

“Our sport looks broken right now. We have someone who has three times the average salary and doesn’t care at all about the long term of any of these contracts, in terms of the risks attached to any of them. How exactly does this work? I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it.”

Yes, there he is. “risk.” Here’s another buzzword from another official from a different team in the same article:

“I think it’s going to have consequences for him in the future. There’s no collusion. But… there was a reason no one has been over $300 million for years. You still have accomplices, and there’s a system.”

Actually, I was wrong. There are many buzzwords out there. Archaeology. System. collusion.

hey wait. Talking about how there is an unspoken system in place to keep payrolls at a set rate sounds a lot like… collusion.

On that dirty word, the MLBPA declined to comment.

Like I said, this was expected. The Mets have spent an absurd amount of money this season re-signing Brandon Nemo and Edwin Diaz as well as bringing in Justin Verlander and now Carlos Correa. And the list goes on. It stretches back to the most recent season with Max Scherzer as well. Together, the Mets are set to have the largest payroll in MLB history, looking at the $380 million ballpark before luxury tax penalties. These “competitive scale” taxes would exceed $100 million.

I guess my biggest question with all of this is why. Why? Why do so many people care about how Steve Cohen spent billions of dollars?

It can’t be fan pricing, because supply and demand determine ticket prices. There can be no concern about competitive balance, because MLB hasn’t had a repeat champion since 2000 and people have been so spoiled with par that we’re debating whether winning a championship in 2017 and 2022 makes a team a “dynasty”. Plus, the highest-paid team has won the World Series once (the 2018 Red Sox) since 2009, and the Mets bounced back in the first round last year.

Are players’ salaries too high? Certainly, billionaires and men will not willingly pay employees more money than they can save. Welcome to capitalism, for anyone new here.

Will the “small market” teams be priced out of the market? You’ll have to explain to the Padres if you’re going with that line of thinking. The San Diego market is one of the smallest in Major League Baseball (this is a study that includes only Kansas City, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee as the smallest among MLB cities). The Padres are running over $200 million in payroll heading into 2023 and don’t seem interested in scaling back the operation.

The biggest “problem” here is that spending from the Padres exposes a lot of MLB owners for being too cheap to spend what it takes to star in free agent years. They care more about protecting their money than putting out the best product possible on the field for their fans. Kudos to those who think like Cohen and Padres owner Peter Seidler, who said there’s no such thing as a “window” for contention because he wants to spend like a winner every year. Remember when Phillies owner John Middleton said he wanted to be a little “dumb” about spending that much in free agency? These are the actual good guys, not penny-pinching like Pirates owner Bob Nutting or a family would. He told his snobby fan base, “Where [else] you will go? On opening day Or those who complain about potential “writing losses” or claim that “The industry is not very profitable. ”

For those angry anonymous Mets executives, let’s take a quick look.

riskSteve Cohen has an estimated net worth of $17.5 billion. That little “.5” is $500 million. I fail to see how running the Mets payroll lower than that would have any risk at all, especially since it’s wildly likely that the Mets will actually make money next year between TV deals, ticket sales, and everything else that comes with being that good. What an absolute joke to call any of this a “risk”. It’s a game for him.

Archaeologykisa: Again, I lost. What are the consequences? The only concern is the current contracts limit spending in the coming seasons, right? I can’t see that at this point. There is no maximum salary. Cohen clearly doesn’t mind paying the competitive credit tax. If he has some self-imposed limitations, we just haven’t seen it yet. In addition, the Mets only have three guaranteed contracts beyond 2025 in Korea (once it’s official), Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimo (Diaz and Kodai Singa have both dropped out). This is. Refer to this quote and describe all of this with “aftermath”. It just doesn’t make sense.

Each new superstar contract comes in staggering numbers, and sure enough, the natural response is rejection at seven zeros on a paycheck with no decimal places. If you think about it logically, there isn’t a lot of negativity when it comes to Cohen and the Mets. That is, unless you realize that this exposes a lot of other owners for being so cheap and caring more about the bottom line than their fans.