For a few decades you could hang your hat on one thing – man if we could just get rid of the Wilpons then everything would be better. Well. you got your wish and you got the Cool Billionaire who was willing to spend $300,000,000.
That didn’t work.
Now what?
Well, we seem to be in some sort of half-ass rebuild where we’re collecting shortstops under the vision of Billy Eppler. Eppler is the man that gave Washed Up Matt Harvey $11,000,000 to pitch for Anaheim, and oversaw whatever else went down in Anaheim that year (google words like death and drugs and Anaheim and let me know what you find.)
Steve can choose to build around Francisco Lindor who is best known for this…
…which is not a great way to market me in to spending money.
You could build around Pete Alonso, who is in one of his home run cluster hot streaks that winds up with his power numbers looking strong (chicks dig the long ball) and makes everyone forget the 3 week stretches where he’s nearly useless (remember a week ago when everyone was done with him?)
Pete would bring you back pieces from a stupid GM (hey, some people give Matt Harvey $11M) – but that won’t help Steve’s PR ratings, so they will be afraid to do it, and that will drag Pete into his Boras Driven Final Year and some sort of declaration that they won’t negotiate in the season – and THAT means either Pete walks and they get nothing, they get two month rental value one year from today, thus wasting a year of this rebuild – or they panic and sign him to a ten year deal and make his captain, and we will wind up with Vulgar Pete for ten years.
All these leads us to 80s Steinbrenner Mode. The owner who wants to be liked and will spend money – but no real plan.
We’ll eventually have the New Manager. The media will tell us that The New Manager is a breath of fresh air and how the clubhouse its refreshed and this is the best hire of the Cohen Era. We did that with Mickey Hodges, anointed by none less than Howie Rose who made the comparison to Gil, and then Luis Rojas. Meanwhile, the Fresh Face New Manager often doesn’t work out. I’d personally stick with stable old Buck for a decade and if you think that’s crazy then google Dusty Baker.
The New Manager comes with The New Culture. The New Culture is committed to sustained winning, not just this year but every year. If that sounds familiar, yeah, you’ve head that back to the hiring of Sandy Alderson.
Of less importance to most people, is the branding. Dark Times usually come with messing with things….
One of the most important things you can have is a BRAND. See Twitter / X if you don’t believe me. Why wear the traditional uniforms when you can mess around and quite possibly let the inmates run the asylum. (By the way, didn’t the Mets hire some executives like 18 months ago who were going to work on “new fonts” and stuff?)
The New York Mets, which were acquired before this season by billionaire financier Steve Cohen, have brought in Range Media Partners to “evolve” the baseball team’s brand.
Range is a startup management firm founded a year ago with initial funding from Cohen’s Connecticut-based venture fund, Point72 Ventures. The company has two key partners in the Mets branding effort: sports marketing and analytics specialist 4FRONT and branding agency Base Design. (via Deadline)
Oh and lest you think anything is ever about the fans, don’t gloss over that sentence you just did. It read “Range is a startup management firm founded a year ago with initial funding from Cohen’s Connecticut-based venture fund, Point72 Ventures.”
What I’m getting at here is this is a mess. I have stopped watching baseball, even with the new rules. What would I watch here? My favorite Met WAS Max, although I wasn’t that attached, I just liked that he raised money for animal shelters and seemed like a cool dude. My favorite Mets player right now? Let me check the roster….
Mark Canha I guess? And he might be gone by the time you read this sentence. Nimmo after that. (Can he have Pete’s C? Or can NOBODY have Pete’s C?)
So look folks, enjoy your August. There’s nothing here to watch, and in the past I’d be all Let’sGo Mets and stuff but at the core of that is a guy that wants to drop an F in the middle and this guy…
I lived through 1977, but even then we had guys like Lee Mazzilli for John Stearns that we could hang out hopes on. Now, all I see is that picture above this paragraph Steve. You do yo, I will be at the beach.
So turn off the TV (if you even still get SNY, I don’t on YoutubeTV) enjoy August outside, and then you can watch Aaron Rodgers find out just how cursed the Jets are.
Who knows, maybe STEVE will sell to an even richer billionaire willing to spend $400M and things will get better. Good luck!
