Steve Cohen, in a lengthy interview with the New York Post, stressed that he believes the Mets’ struggles are a bump in the road, and doesn’t see their rough season to this point as being a reason to make major changes, or to “blow up” in a show of emotion to try and wake up his $364 million team.
“When things get really bad, I’m not going to blow up,” Cohen told The Post. “I don’t think that’s the proper response. I don’t think it solves anything, other than it gives people a one-day story. But it doesn’t really solve anything. There’s plenty of blame to go around from a performance point of view. So blowing up, I’m not sure it solves anything. It would demonstrate, ‘Oh, he really cares. He’s one of us.’ But the reality is it’s not going to solve our problems. And I think in some ways it can be demotivating.
“I’m trying to be thoughtful about this. And not reactionary. Because I’ve got enough experience, whether in my business or even in baseball now, to know that when things are going great, you are never as great as you think you are, and when things are going really bad, you are not as bad as you think you are. Things can turn around fairly quickly.
“It’s a moment in time, and it doesn’t look good. It looks pretty bad right now. But this is not a bad team.”
Cohen mainly pointed to pitching as the reason for the team’s struggles, and did point out that his group seemed to be making a lot more mental mistakes in the field than they did last year. Still, he didn’t use it as an opportunity to call out Buck Showalter, and also voiced his continued belief in general manager Billy Eppler.
“I speak to Billy all day, especially when things aren’t going well,” Cohen said to The Post’s Joel Sherman. “Some of the stuff is hard to fix at the moment, because of the time a year. We’ve made significant investments in our pitching staff. And we’ve had some negative mean reversion with some of our younger pitchers where they haven’t performed up to what we thought they were capable of and what they did last year. You sort of have a mix of problems here that could change. But I still keep coming back to, it’s a pitching problem.”
So, if anyone was expecting a George Steinbrenner-esque reaction from Cohen amid frustrations that his record-setting payroll has led to a team with a record of four games below .500, it doesn’t seem to be on the horizon.
“We have good players,” Cohen said. “They’re talented, they’re smart, they’re passionate, they’re veterans. We have some Hall of Famers. I’m not writing these people off. Their record is too strong to just write them off. I know these guys. I have conversations with these people. I know how much they care. I know how much they want to win. This is a smart group. It’s actually a good, smart, thoughtful bunch. So, if I were to bet, I would bet that they’re going to right the ship, and that’s what I firmly believe. So yeah, am I frustrated? Of course, I’m frustrated. We’re all frustrated. It’s hard to watch your team get blown out or lose leads, but I don’t think that’s going to continue the whole season.”
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
Follow WFAN on Social Media
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Twitch
Listen live to WFAN:
Audacy App | Online Stream | Smart Speaker (just say ‘Play W-F-A-N’)