Under Steve Cohen, money won't hold the Mets back any longer

When talking about the Wilpon Era Mets, it’s best to take nothing for granted. Which is why we could understand another round of cautious optimism regarding Steve Cohen’s now-exclusive window to purchase the franchise.

Just look what happened a day earlier in Flushing. All the Mets had to do Thursday to take a unified, teamwide stand on racial injustice was not play that night’s game against the Marlins.

Stay home, see you tomorrow.

But as we’ve seen too often from this current ownership group, the most honorable of intentions end up getting twisted somehow, adding senseless obstacles where none need exist. Ultimately, it was the players — aided by general manager Brodie Van Wagenen’s pushback on his own boss, chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon — who made sure to do the right thing: a unique, powerful on-field tribute with the Marlins.

Even then, the Wilpons couldn’t just let the moment shine. Hours after the day’s narrative had shifted in the Mets’ favor, from Brodie’s hot-mic video to the perfectly executed Citi Field ceremony, both Fred and Jeff released joint statements that not only scolded Van Wagenen, but incorrectly spelled his name, “Brody.”

We bring this up again in light of Cohen’s winning bid for a few reasons. One, to be wary of the Wilpons finally completing the sale of a team they’ve had control of since buying out Nelson Doubleday Jr. in 2002. Their reluctance to ease that grip over a built-in five-year transition period is what led to Cohen backing out of his $2.6 billion purchase attempt earlier this year.

The good news? There is no such clause this time around. And for people familiar with Cohen’s business acumen — he’s now worth an estimated $13 billion — you can expect a far different vibe around the Mets than the circus atmosphere that tends to set up its Big Top in Flushing far too often.

The two adjectives that seem to come up the most about Cohen?

“Smart and competitive,” one friend said.

That’s a great baseline. As is ultra-wealthy, and the Mets, should this sale go through, will be piloted by the richest owner in Major League Baseball. This would be a total paradigm shift for the franchise, even beyond the pre-Madoff years when the Wilpons were consistently among the sport’s top bidders for free-agent talent.

But those days have been over for a while. And if Cohen can finally navigate through the Wilpons this time around, the last roadblock would be approval by 75 percent of MLB’s owners (23 out of 30). Back in December, Manfred sounded welcome to the idea of Cohen buying an 80% stake, at $2.6 billion, and it was impossible to imagine the other owners balking at a price that would significantly raise the value of their clubs.

Though it’s unclear what Cohen’s winning bid was Friday, he put up $2 billion to advance past the first round, and certainly needed plenty more to topple the other finalists: one group headed by Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez; the other the private-equity duo of Josh Harris and David Blitzer.

Of course, Cohen’s greatest advantage was cash. The only impediment? That depends on how MLB views some of the problematic behavior of his business holdings. His former company, SAC Capital, paid a $1.8 billion penalty for insider trading and received a two-year ban. It was later shut down and replaced by Point 72 Asset Management, a firm with 1,000 employees that trades only Cohen’s own fortune.

Currently, Point 72 has been named in multiple gender-discrimination lawsuits, obviously a very serious red flag as MLB prepares to begin financial and personal background checks as part of its due diligence. The Mets have yet to provide a timeline for Cohen’s path to ownership, and until those details are completed, MLB must wait on its own approval process. How long that takes depends on just how complicated the nature of the purchase.

When you factor in the staggering losses of this virus-affected season to the more than $50 million the Mets already lose per year, it becomes crystal clear why the Wilpons — and MLB for that matter — needed someone like the mega-billionaire Cohen to bail everyone out. Cohen grew up a Mets fan in Great Neck, and already owned an 8% share, so that strong bond to the franchise suggests this probably won’t be operated strictly by the bottom line, as it became with the Wilpons.

In the bigger picture, MLB is catching a break with Cohen stepping up again, even if he’s bringing less than the original $2.6 billion to the table. All 30 teams are heading into a scary financial future, regardless of how long COVID-19 continues to have a dramatic impact on professional sports. And Cohen’s purchase price for the Mets is all but certain to crush MLB’s previous record of $2 billion, which is what the Dodgers went for way back in 2012.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to get a majority of owners to sign up for that boost to their franchise value. As for what Cohen has left over, put it this way: money won’t be something that holds back the Mets any longer. And neither will the Wilpons.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

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.