Steve Cohen was right there on top this week, you better believe he was. Just not with the Mets. In a world where Cohen is his own general manager and manager at the same time, he held the top position in Bloomberg’s annual ranking of the highest-paid hedge fund managers. It didn’t do him any good with the Dodgers, of course, or with the Phillies in the National League East, but the guy sure did pull in an estimated $3.4 billion with Point72 Asset Management.
Now we see what happens with New York Mets Asset Management in the 2026 season.
Now we see if his baseball management team and his baseball players can finally put the Mets on top, first in the NL East and then in the National League and finally, if an awful lot of things break right for them, in what would be the franchise’s first World Series win in 40 years, and its first appearance in the Series in a decade.
Cohen is entering his sixth season as owner of the Mets. He made it clear when he bought the team that he planned to beat all those other hedge funds. It hasn’t happened. Cohen’s Mets have been to the postseason twice. They’ve won 101 games a few years ago when Buck Showalter was the manager before blowing the division at the end and then losing in the first round to the Padres. The year before last Cohen did watch one of his teams make a run, all the way to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series against the Dodgers, who are owned by Guggengheim Partners, a financial giant. The difference between them and Cohen — at least so far — is that their team has made it to four World Series in the last nine seasons, won three of them, now won the last two.
Over this past baseball winter, the Dodgers signed two free agents Cohen’s Mets coveted, one of whom — Edwin Diaz — had become the most dominant closer the Mets have ever had. The other free agent was Kyle Tucker. Cohen spoke in Port St. Lucie the other day about being “annoyed” at losing Tucker, then added this about Bo Bichette, to whom the Mets pivoted after Tucker became a Dodger:
“I actually feel Bo might be a better fit for the team.”
That’s one more thing we’ll see about, as Mets fans will also find out what kind of replacement for Diaz that Devin Williams will be now that Diaz decided to go sit at the big kids’ table at Dodger Stadium.
Here is what Cohen had to say about losing Diaz:
“I did find that one perplexing. I’m not sure exactly how Edwin arrived at that decision.”
Not long afterward, Diaz cleaned that up for his former owner in this quite respectful way from the Dodgers’ spring training home in Arizona:
“I think the Dodgers did a great job recruiting me. At the end of the day, I chose to be here.”
So it was the same with Diaz as it was with Tucker: Cohen and the Mets got Guggenheim-ed. The Dodgers, against whom every other operation in the sport is measured, continue to beat Cohen and everybody else both on the field and off. Do they out-spend everybody because they can under the current system (one that will likely shut down baseball after this season)? They do. Did they figure out a way to game the system with deferred money? Absolutely they did.
Cohen is the richest owner in baseball still. But for now the Guggenheim Dodgers are the best at spending their money, have the best head of baseball operations in Andrew Friedman, have the hands-down best manager in Dave Roberts. I’m not sure that Cohen could have imagined, when he did buy the Mets — breaking a record for the purchase price set by Guggenheim when the company bought the Dodgers in 2012 — that somebody else’s money would be better than his. But it is.
“[The Dodgers are] formidable,” Cohen said the other day. “They have the ability to spend. So do I, by the way.”
When asked his feelings about the Mets having not yet won the third World Series in franchise history on his watch, he said, “Each year it goes by, I get more annoyed.”
Imagine how Mets fans feel.
Mets fans want this to be the year when it turns out Cohen hasn’t just out-owner-ed the Dodgers, but Hal Steinbrenner and John Middleton in Philadelphia and everybody else, and have their team be the first New York team back to the Canyon of Heroes. They want David Stearns to have done with the Mets what Friedman has done with the Dodgers since signing on with them in 2016. They want Stearns and Carlos Mendoza to turn into the kind of partnership that Friedman and Roberts have been in Los Angeles.
But what Cohen — a lifelong Mets fans with the very best of intentions — is finding out is that you have to have another plan other than money-whipping the competition. You have to spend smart, too, especially on pitching. Cohen’s Mets tried to do that not long ago, they just tried it with AARP All-Stars like Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander.
We know, just because of Bloomberg’s rankings, that Steve Cohen can make making money look easy. But the business of Cohen’s baseball team calls to mind the famous show business line from the actor Edmund Gwenn. When he lay dying a friend asked if dying was hard. Gwenn replied, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Maybe Cohen has found out that baseball is much harder than he thought it would be, even knowing that there is more bad history with the Mets than good.
The Mets do have a chance to be good this season, and perhaps very good, even without Pete Alonso and without Diaz and with Francisco Lindor, the team’s beating heart, hurt right now. Stearns made a terrific trade for Freddy Peralta to bolster his own pitching and it may turn out that Nolan McLean is going to turn out to be a starting pitching phenom to join the line of them we have seen from the Mets all the way back to Tom Seaver. And maybe, just maybe, Bichette will turn out to be a much better fit for the Mets than Tucker would have been, and a much better player. Maybe Luis Robert, in center, is about to remind everybody why he was considered one of the bright young talents in the game not so long ago.
Maybe this will be the year when the owner stops being annoyed. And his baseball team will finally be the asset he wants it to be, and put the owner’s money where his mouth is.
LOAD MANAGEMENT HITS THE COLLEGE GAME, CADE MAY BE MVP & REMEMBERING THAT NIGHT IN LAKE PLACID …
Darryn Peterson, the star Kansas guard, pulled himself out of a game the other night, early in the second half, complaining of “cramps.”
Already this kid, as gifted as he is, is known as “DNP.”
Before he gets to the NBA, he is already elevating load management to an almost breathtaking art form.
And it makes you ask a question:
How long before a star player like Peterson elects not to play in March Madness the way college football players now opt out of bowl games?
Cade Cunningham is a wagon, isn’t he?
Jalen Brunson is the Knicks’ MVP, without question.
But Cunningham might turn out to be the MVP of the whole league.
One of these days there are ought to be a banner raised to the Garden rafters with two things on it:
Marv Albert’s name.
And a microphone.
Speaking of the Albert family, Kenny has done an absolutely masterful job on Olympic hockey.
I think I might have blacked out, but are the NBC announcers still telling us how hard the guys were playing last Sunday night?
I don’t care what a good guy Tony Clark was as a player.
The Major League Baseball Players Association will be better off without him.
We need Larry David back on television.
So if Jeff Bezos continues to absorb these losses with the Washington Post, what, he’ll only be able to spend $25 million on his next wedding?
People continue to love to blame Karl-Anthony Towns when anything goes wrong for the Knicks.
But guess what?
He had a much better night against the Pistons on Thursday than his coach did.
How long before Marco Rubio wants to name Yankee Stadium after his boss?
Finally today: It was 46 years ago, on this date in 1980, that a bunch of hockey kids from this country beat the Soviets, 4-3, in Lake Placid.
I wondered on that Friday night, after I’d left the arena and after I’d written my column for the Daily News, if there would ever be a sports story quite like it.
And all this time later, there never has been, not for me.
It was Michael Eruzione’s goal with 10 minutes left — 10 that felt like 10 years — and it was Jim Craig making every save he had to make.
Before that, it was Mark Johnson scoring the goal with a second left in the first period to tie the game at 2-all.
Later, all of us who were there would find out about Al Michaels shouting, “Do you believe in miracles?”
And you need to know it was walking around the town long after the game was over and seeing small groups of Americans singing the National Anthem or “America the Beautiful.”
Out of all the nights, in all the sports, this was the one.
You had to be there.
You had to hear — and feel — what that arena sounded like in those last few seconds.
Oh, man.
Did you ever.
