Steve Cohen wants to turn the page on the Mets' season. Again.
Mets owner Steve Cohen before a game at Citi Field on April 22, 2026. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The last time Steve Cohen spoke publicly to a group of reporters, the Mets owner was camped on a dugout bench in Port St. Lucie during spring training, when he declared the “table stakes” for his $380 million team this season was making the playoffs.
Six months later, Cohen was back on a dugout bench before Wednesday’s matinee at Citi Field — with his Mets sitting 13 games under .500 (57-70) and 11 games behind the Padres for the NL’s third wild card.
The manager, Carlos Mendoza, had been fired in late June. Everything of value that could be sold off by the Aug. 3 trade deadline was shipped to contending teams.
All that remained was David Stearns, his much-maligned president of baseball operations, and the bloated roster of baseball’s most disappointing team. And those must-make playoffs Cohen mentioned in mid-February? Fangraphs had updated the Mets’ chances to 0.0% by the time Robert Stock delivered his first pitch Wednesday.
This dismal scenario was so far beyond what Cohen could have possibly imagined on that sunny morning in Port St. Lucie. Yet, when asked about the road back to respectability, he stood behind the embattled Stearns while admitting in the same breath that serious miscalculations were made by taking big swings in 2026.
“I’m committed to David,” Cohen said. “I thought we had a great trade deadline. Listen, David is smart. He knows what he’s doing. He’s very adaptable. He learns from mistakes. That’s what I want in a leader.”
Stearns is only in Year 3 of a five-year contract that pays him as much as $12 million annually, according to a source. This past winter, he was given free rein to remodel the Mets to his liking and that turned out to be a blueprint for disaster despite Cohen footing the bill for MLB’s second-highest payroll.
His expensive Flushing imports were either injured (Jorge Polanco, Luis Robert Jr.), plagued by underperformance (Freddy Peralta, Bo Bichette, Devin Williams) or both (Marcus Semien).
Losing Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto for extended periods also proved to be crippling with more than $1 billion invested in those two franchise stars, but the gamble of retooling the roster with potential high-ceiling but recently low-floor players blew up in the Mets’ faces. Not to mention a complete overhaul of the coaching staff.
“When you add enough risk to something, all of a sudden you can have a dispersion of results,” Cohen said. “I equate it to running a portfolio. The more risk you take in a portfolio, yeah, you can have major upside. But also your downside can be bigger, and so you can have a bigger variance in results. I think that’s what happened here.”
So with Stearns back, and a sizable chunk of the roster locked in for next season — the Mets already have $255 million on next year’s estimated payroll — what avenue does Cohen have to reverse the course of the franchise? He explained there’s “no magic bullets out there” and instead leaned hard into the process, which to date is now most likely to result in two consecutive dark Octobers at Citi Field.
“Free agency is a negative-expected value game,” Cohen said. “It just is. If you got to constantly dip into free agency, and you do it enough, that can come back to bite you. And so I’ve always said the goal is to create a sustainable farm system that's producing players like we did this year. We’ve produced multiple players that are going to be around for a while here. And I think that’s how you build a team.
“I know the fans like it, right? I think that would be my preference. But if you have to fill in holes, you have to fill in holes, too. So you got to be tactical.”
Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing have emerged as outfield cornerstones for 2027. The Mets also are in the midst of successful auditions for next year’s rotation (Zac Thornton?) as well as the bullpen (Nate Lavender, Daniel Duarte, Kodai Senga as closer?). Stearns also did a decent job restocking the farm system at the deadline by trading eight Mets for a dozen prospects, enough to reshuffle the top rungs of the organization.
As far as digging out from this year’s mess, at least the Mets are getting a few shovels in the ground. But one of the more impactful do-overs for 2027 is going to involve the manager’s chair, and Cohen reiterated that Andy Green — who’s filling that role on an interim basis — is not being considered a candidate at the moment, at his own request.
“I’m going to take him at face value,” Cohen said. “He’s telling us that he wants to go back to the front office. We’re going to do a managerial search, and if it turns out he wants to throw his hat in the ring, that’ll be great.”
Then what about Alex Cora, who was fired by the Red Sox in April?
“I don’t know,” Cohen said. “I’m sure there’s a bunch of names out there. They’ll do a managerial search and they’ll figure it out then.”
Despite this season’s crushing failure, Cohen offered none of his spring training ultimatums. When asked if he was “annoyed” by another year without a title — as Cohen mentioned in February — he shrugged off the sentiment.
“I’ve already passed the annoyance part,” Cohen said. “Now I’m in the acceptance part. What am I going to do? Here we are. It’s obviously disappointing. We only have 35 games left and hopefully we continue a winning kind of spirit and keep it going, which I think will bode well for next year. But at some point, you’ve got to turn the page.”
There’s been too much page-turning under Cohen. Not enough winning. And the only thing the Mets’ owner convinced us of Wednesday was how far the Mets seem to be from changing that anytime soon.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
