Steve Cohen's purchase of Mets will take a while, but that's not unusual

On the field, the Mets are sort of a disaster, toiling at 20-24, two games back of the eighth and final National League postseason berth at the start of their day off Thursday. They open a three-game series with the Blue Jays in Buffalo on Friday to begin a two-week stretch in which all of their opponents currently hold playoff spots.

Off the field, though, the Mets are moving toward the most momentous development of their year: The sale of the franchise to hedge-fund multibillionaire Steve Cohen, a Long Island native and a lifelong fan of the team.

Cohen's talks with the Wilpon and Katz families are progressing "smoothly," a source told Newsday on Wednesday. But this part of the process — slow, kind of boring and almost entirely private — could drag on, and it could take until November for Cohen to officially take the reins.

What takes so long? Well, turns out that a $2.35 billion deal — as this one is reported to be — is super complicated. But rest easy, Mets fans. Slow doesn’t mean bad.

“There’s no delay. This is the normal time it takes to do a transaction,” said David Samson, a former longtime president of the Marlins. “The Mets’ offseason will not be deleteriously impacted by a change of owner in November versus October.”

Samson is something of an expert on this corner of the baseball world, having overseen the sale of the Marlins to Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter in 2017 — a process that was similar to the Mets’ in its length, breakdowns and famous names. Although he isn’t privy to the specifics of this sale, Samson can tell us what goes on during these seemingly final talks between current team owner and likely future team owner.

The answer is … quite a bit, even if we don’t hear about it.

As Cohen and Sterling Equities work toward a purchase agreement — more on that later — MLB vets Cohen, as well as any new minority owners, Samson said. That happens alongside the sale talks, not after them.

“They’ve been vetting any potential owners from the beginning,” Samson said. “Vetting is a big boy word that means making sure he has the money and making sure they have the votes … It’s much more formal — it’s not like a credit check from Experian.”

About those votes: Once Cohen and the Wilpons finalize their deal, he still will need to be approved by 23 of the other 29 club owners. Although there are questions about Cohen — including the $1.8 billion insider trading fine paid by his former hedge fund, SAC Capital — Samson has reason to believe he won’t have an issue getting the necessary support.

A new proposed owner not being approved would be “very rare,” Samson said. There is value to MLB in having an owner as rich as Cohen, whose estimated $13 billion net worth suggests he won’t have a problem paying for the team or running it.

“My personal view is the Mets would not give exclusivity to Steve Cohen if they didn’t know he had the votes,” Samson said. “There is a huge interest in Major League Baseball in having an owner of the Mets who is not at all like the Jeter-Sherman group, where they cobbled the money together.”

Cohen entered exclusive negotiations with the Mets on Aug. 28, when the Mets decided to talk only to Cohen, not other bidders (Alex Rodriguez/Jennifer Lopez and Josh Harris/David Blitzer).

Whereas Cohen is an extremely wealthy individual, the A-Rod group of investors has the same vibe as Jeter’s Miami effort, when it took him months to find enough investors to make an appropriate bid.

Entering exclusive talks with Cohen is the Mets signaling that the end of the process is near.

“My guess is, if an actual exclusivity was given, it was given at an agreed-upon price,” Samson said. “But there are still adjustments that need to be made. It is very likely that everything had to be negotiated.”

No, really, everything. That the would-be deal values the Mets at $2.35 billion does not mean Cohen will pay that much. It is prorated — he already owns 8% of the team and won’t end up with 100% of it — and other line items, so to speak, get deducted.

If Cohen is taking on all of the Mets’ debt, that amount might get subtracted. So too might some of the Mets’ financial liabilities — such as, for example, the approximately $18 million they owe Bobby Bonilla through 2035. If Cohen is to become responsible for that, perhaps he pitches Sterling Equities on subtracting that amount from the purchase price. And then maybe the Wilpons want to keep, again just for example, use of a suite or season tickets or a couple of parking spots for some length of time.

“All these things get negotiated,” Samson said. “They’re not that small, because they all add up. There are tens of millions of dollars being negotiated right now. At least.”

And on and on it goes.

“For a team like the Mets, there’s probably a hundred issues that need to be dealt with,” Samson said.

Eventually, after all those side items are negotiated, there is a final sale price.

“That is the number that is given by the purchaser to the seller,” Samson said.

Once the purchase agreement is ready to be signed, MLB sends the other owners a memo — detailing everything about this transaction — and schedules a vote.

“Officially, Mets would call MLB and say we would like to propose to the 29 teams a change of control to ‘blank,’” Samson said. “But you don’t do that if you don’t have the votes.”

One other thing: Fans should be wary of potential owners that make gigantic promises.

“I don’t think any new owner will ever stand up and guarantee a World Series victory. It’s silly,” Samson said. “Steve Cohen is too smart to stand up and overpromise and underdeliver.”