SerpApi.Org
The New York Mets have built their history out of high-jinks and failure. This is a franchise that once saw its mascot give fans the finger and had two teammates blame a heated argument on a disagreement over the difference between a rat and a raccoon.
But since hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen bought the club in late 2020, he has made it his personal mission to change that by throwing obscene amounts of money at the roster.
Cohen’s fortune allowed the Mets to have the highest payroll in the sport at the start of this season. Only they have now gone on to make history in the exact opposite way of how he envisioned.
This group has turned out to be the biggest waste of money baseball has ever seen.
The Mets enter play Wednesday with a 43-59, the 5th-worst mark in the league. That puts them on pace for 68 wins over the course of Major League Baseball’s 162-season, or a price of $5.2 million per victory.
Even adjusting for inflation, that’s the highest figure for any team since at least 2000, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of payroll figures. What’s even more telling about the state of the franchise is that the Mets are breaking their own record—the previous high-water mark for inflation-adjusted dollars per win also belonged to the Mets, in 2023, at $4.8 million.
Baseball history is dotted with teams that have managed to reach the postseason with modest payrolls such as the “Moneyball” era Oakland A’s or the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, who reached the World Series with one of the smallest budgets in the sport.
Then there are the teams that win, but pay through the nose to do it. The Los Angeles Dodgers are the only franchise that spends in the same stratosphere as the Mets these days, but they have back-to-back titles to show for it.
This year’s Mets are in the worst of all categories: spending like champions and playing like cellar-dwellers.
At the same time, a healthier dollars-per-win ratio isn’t necessarily a sign of something good. In fact, the nine most efficient teams on that basis all missed the playoffs and merely managed to be not completely terrible on shoestring budgets. The 2006 Marlins paid just over $300,000 for each of their 78 wins thanks to a payroll of $24.9 million in today’s dollars. The entire team’s budget was less than what five individual Mets are making this season alone, even accounting for inflation.
If the crosstown Yankees represent old money in MLB, the Mets are the opposite. Cohen quickly took the franchise from middle-of-the-pack spending to breaking payroll records. That influx of money allowed them to sign the likes of superstar outfielder Juan Soto, who left the Bronx for Queens on a historic 15-year, $765 million contract last year.
But for the Mets, this has gone as well as trying to navigate the Van Wyck Expressway at rush hour. In Soto’s first season, the team collapsed down the stretch, falling from more than 20 games over .500 in June, to miss the playoffs on the final day. (The Reds, with a payroll just over a third of New York’s, took the final spot instead.)
The Mets responded with more big spending this past offseason, and it has gone disastrously. Infielder Bo Bichette, who signed a deal worth $42 million annually, has struggled. The team’s other marquee acquisitions—would-be ace Freddy Peralta, closer Devin Williams, infielder Jorge Polanco and outfielder Luis Robert—have also flopped. Those five acquisitions combined have provided the Mets fewer wins above replacement than Bobby Bonilla this season. Bonilla, of course, hasn’t played for the Mets since 1999 but is famously still on the books through 2035 thanks to his deferred contract.
Combine all of that with injuries to Soto and shortstop Francisco Lindor and you get the disaster known as this year’s Mets, who endured a 12-game losing streak in April and a six-error game in June.
“I don’t believe that our record on the field this year is indicative of some of the advancements that we’ve made in the organization,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said after firing manager Carlos Mendoza last month. “But clearly our record is nowhere good enough.”
To be sure, there have been bright spots during Cohen’s tenure. In 2022, high-priced additions like future Hall of Fame pitcher Max Scherzer helped the Mets win more than 100 games for the first time since the 1980s. In 2024, after a moribund start, they surged to reach the NLCS. Mets fans, always a rational bunch, attributed the turnaround to Grimace throwing out the first pitch at a game and a journeyman infielder who moonlights as a Latin pop singer by the name of Candelita.
It’s almost certainly too late for that type of comeback this season, with playoff projections giving the Mets a roughly 1% chance. But at the very least, the team could get cheaper in the coming weeks—they’re expected to be sellers ahead of the upcoming trade deadline.