We should be thankful for Sandy
How Steve Cohen would have shaped the Dodgers.
Catch me up in 30 seconds…
Mets have shown interest in veteran catcher Yadier Molina, per Jon Heyman.
Rays GM Erik Neander is “almost certainly” not leaving Tampa Bay for the Mets or any other club, per Ken Rosenthal.
Dominic Smith finished 13th in NL MVP voting.
David Newman is returning to the Mets as s Executive VP and Chief Marketing, Content & Communications Officer.
Thor is throwing off the mound again, shirtless, mind you.
Cohen: "Enjoyed our conversation Noah today. Good luck with the rehab and can’t wait to see you back on the mound next year."
A quick thing
I wrote extensively about Marcus Stroman’s decision to accept his qualifying offer yesterday. I decided to focus on the big picture implications rather than getting into a discussion about how he fits on the roster for next season.
However, I want to share with you a post from FanGraphs that details the Mets defensive improvements last season, which, given the likelihood they bring back most of their infield in 2021, could be a promising sign for Mr. Stroman. As Mets fans know, the right-hander relies on his sinker to induce ground balls. If he doesn’t have people behind him to turn those grounders into outs, he’s in trouble.
In 2019, the Mets turned only 5 out of 52 double play opportunities for Stroman. Despite coming home to Long Island, the right-hander had no best friends during his first stint in Queens. To put that statistic in context, his double play percentage (simply, double plays divided by double play opportunities) was just under 10 percent, half of what he has garnered during previous campaigns in his career.
For all of the talk of bad infield defense, though, and FanGraphs quantifies how bad it was in their recent article, opponents hit only .176 on ground balls against Stroman after he arrived from Toronto, nearly 100 points worse than they did when he was pitching north of the border. Sample size has something to say about that. But only 16.5 percent of his grounders were hit hard, a stark decline from 30.1 percent while he was a Blue Jay to start the season.
So while the Mets defense didn’t exactly help Stroman during his eleven starts in blue and orange, ground balls weren’t the problem. His .337 batting average against on balls in play were a product of hard hit balls in the form of line drives and home runs.
Sandy to the rescue!
So Tony La Russa has been making headlines. And if you’ve been following the stories out of Chicago, it might give you flashbacks to what it was like to be a Mets fan under the Wilpons—you know, like two weeks ago.
Even before La Russa got into trouble with the law, the decision by the White Sox to hire the 76-year-old manager was met with extreme skepticism. Then it came out that the team knew about his second DUI arrest prior to hiring him … yeah, not a good look.
In response to all of this, a Twitter user asked Mets starter Marcus Stroman, how much money would it take for you to play for an old and seemingly racist alcoholic? Stroman responded, “no amount of money honestly.”
The right-hander's comment came one day before he lauded new Mets owner Steve Cohen while announcing his decision to accept the team’s qualifying offer, potentially passing up on a larger total sum of money over multiple years to remain in New York.
Mets 1 White Sox 0
The connection between the Mets and La Russa doesn’t stop there, though. In a surprising development, Jon Heyman reported on WFAN on Thursday that the Mets interviewed the former Cardinals skipper before deciding on Carlos Beltran last year. Imagine that! And it’s particularly interesting news when you consider Steve Cohen is now in charge.
Did you know that when Cohen finished runner-up in his bid to purchase the Dodgers in 2012 that he planned on hiring La Russa as head of baseball operations?
“Hedge-fund billionaire Steve Cohen emerged Wednesday as the strongest bidder to purchase the Dodgers,” per a USA Today report at the time. “And plans to hire Tony La Russa to a key front-office position, according to two Major League Baseball officials familiar with the process but unauthorized to speak publicly.”
Obviously, that never happened. The Dodgers were sold to an ownership group fronted by local hero and business mogul Magic Johnson. The team would go on to hire Andrew Friedman away from the Rays. And the organization has turned into the best in baseball, winning eight consecutive division titles, and breaking their 32-year World Series drought with a championship this past season.
La Russa eventually found an executive role with the Diamondbacks, before being demoted after a 93-loss season two years later. As Friedman was putting the bricks in place to build a model franchise in Los Angeles, La Russa was turning a division rival upside down, relying on an expert in veterinary medicine to lead their research branch—seriously, this is true!
Who knows what would have happened if Cohen had been successful in purchasing the Dodgers, but what we do know is that if the rumors about La Russa being his hand-picked choice to lead the organization were true, things probably wouldn’t have turned out as well in Chavez Ravine as they have over the past several seasons.
We can hope that Cohen noticed all of this. When he was asked during his introductory press conference if there was a team he would like the Mets to emulate, he said, “I like what the Dodgers are doing.”
All of this is to say that after it was known Steve Cohen would become owner of the Mets and news broke that Sandy Alderson would be returning to the organization as president of the team, while it sort of felt like hearing your gastroenterologist would be planning your birthday party, it should be viewed as a positive first step.
Alderson initially came to Queens at a time when the team was bleeding money and needed a surgeon to pull something out of their ass to build a winner—which he somehow did. He returns under an entirely different mandate.
Cohen has admitted he knows very little about running a baseball team, so his success will depend on the people he hires to lead the club.
Money can fix a lot of problems, but if you look at what the Dodgers have done out West, it is their scouting and development that separates them from everyone else. It wasn’t until after they built a rotation entirely from their farm system and developed a powerful lineup from their own draft selections, that they spent big on a superstar in Mookie Betts.
With Alderson in place, the Mets still need to fill out the rest of their front office after cleaning house last week. We learned yesterday that former Miami Marlins executive Michael Hill was the first candidate to be interviewed to run baseball operations. We will leave an assessment of Hill for a separate newsletter; the main point to focus on here is that Cohen is trusting a baseball executive in Alderson to make the pick.
If you’ve ever watched a car commercial around the holidays, you have seen the version where a mom or dad wakes up on Christmas to find a car with a giant red bow on top of it waiting for them in their driveway on a tree-lined suburban street. I always wonder where one would actually find a bow of such size: do they sell them at Party City? And then I roll my eyes over the idea that anyone would actually purchase someone a fully-loaded Lexus as a present.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so skeptical, because waking up to the news of Steve Cohen becoming owner of the Mets is like finding a new sports car in the driveway. Fans are understandably excited to take the shiny new thing out for a spin, to feel the power under the hood. The ten-year-old Honda CR-V doesn’t purr the same.
But before that can happen; in other words, before the Mets can start spending money lavishly on new players, they need a front office in place to decide which car to purchase: Porsche 911 Turbo S or Ferrari Portofino?
The Mets have money. But they still need to know how to spend it. They need the right people making those decisions. Lucky for the Mets, Cohen decided to trust an executive with a track record in Sandy Alderson rather than blindly handing the keys to a well-known name with no experience on the job.
Thanks for reading! Look out for the next newsletter on Monday! And please check out our newsletter about the Knicks, too.
Great read, very insightful.
Great read !