Livescore
Mets owner Steve Cohen met with reporters on Tuesday morning to discuss the state of the team as spring training kicks off this week in Port St. Lucie.
Here’s what he had to say…
On the luxury tax
The Mets are again running out one of the largest payrolls in baseball this season.
With the high-profile additions they’ve made — headlined by superstar outfielder Juan Soto and the return of Pete Alonso — they now sit at around $325 million, which is significantly higher than Cohen had hoped heading into the offseason.
Cohen certainly has the money to spend, and he’s shown he’ll do whatever it takes, but he also continues to emphasize that he’d like to see the Mets get back to a “more normal spending level” in the future.
“I take things year-by-year. I can finance it. But is it the most optimal way to run a team? Probably not,” he said.
“I’ve always wanted to be a little more measured in payroll growth, and then it’s never quite there. I have the ability to spend if I have to and I want to win and put the best team I can on the field, but free agency’s expensive, that’s just how it is.”
The best way to do that? Building up the young talent in the organization.
“It comes back to having a farm system that’s producing players because they are controllable and cheaper and you need a mix,” he added. “I think we’re gonna get there, and I hope we can get there soon. That makes it easier to get to a more normal spending level.”
…A hitting lab too?
We’ve heard all about the Mets’ famous pitching lab over the past couple of seasons.
Pitching coach Jeremy Hefner and the rest of the coaching staff have done a tremendous job of getting the most of their arms with the technology Cohen has provided them with
Cohen is hoping to be able to do the same things in the hitting department in the future…
“I want to be a team that can improve players,” he said. “I think from a pitching perspective we’ve been able to do that, but I think we’re still trying to figure that out from a hitting perspective — if we can do that, that would be a real leap forward.
“We’re always trying to improve the technology of the infrastructure, and if we can find new ways to deploy technology maybe using AI machines and learning new ways, that’d be exciting. There’s always new things to do and I leave it to the baseball people.”
Dodger deferrals
While some have had issue with the Dodgers continuing to defer money in deals over the past few offseasons, Cohen isn’t one of them.
He actually would prefer to take that route, if it were presented to him.
“That’s a bit of a red herring,” he said. “I think what’s really happening there is they are trying to balance out the signing bonus with the deferral. So I think people focus on the deferral and maybe not think about the fact that they are advancing cash at the beginning.”
Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner recently voiced his frustration, saying it’s difficult for other owners to spend like the big pocketed Dodgers — but Cohen actually praised how they operate.
“They’ve built a great business over there,” he said. “Their revenues are significantly higher than other teams. That gives them the ability to do things other teams can’t do, so kudos to them, they’ve built a great organization.”
Expectations for the 2025 Mets…
After such a busy and productive offseason, Cohen is setting his expectations high for this group:
“We have to make the playoffs, that’s the minimum,” he said. “After getting a taste of being in the league championship, we want to go to the World Series and we want to win.”
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