Steve Cohen has turned what he was ‘given’ into his new Mets beginning

PORT ST. LUCIE — Steve Cohen said something late Sunday morning that struck me. He was speaking in the home dugout at Clover Park amid a group of reporters when within the context of responding to a question whether the Mets are where he imagined they would be entering Season 4 of his ownership he offered this:

“I was given what I was given.”

That was a pleasant way to never mention the Wilpons and yet acknowledge the mess he inherited of anti-modernity, problematic morale and a sketchy farm system. Cohen’s initial instinct was to see if he could paper over the problems. Could he use his money to construct an entertaining/winning major league squad to provide time and camouflage to fix and restructure all that needed attention.

He was slowed initially because all the top executives he sought to run baseball operations were either scared of his reputation or New York or were just happy where they were. Within the organization, Cohen refers to that first ownership year as his “hazing” season. So much went wrong from “thumbs-down” to two heads of baseball operations — Jared Porter and Zack Scott — having to be moved out for off-the-field transgressions.

In the 2022 season, the money played. The Mets were generally healthy. It bought and brought 100 wins, but also frustration at the late division fade and early playoff exit. The response was to pump even more into the major league product — a record payroll … and not by a little.

But by midseason 2023, Cohen had evolved to an epiphany. He was “given what he was given” and fully understood that throwing money at the major league roster was not going to be enough. He needed, in his mind, to redouble efforts toward his long-term vision of a replenishing organization that provides the bulwark for sustained success. Thus, namely, he redirected a bulk of the contracts of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander to essentially buy prospects at the trade deadline. He finally got his man in David Stearns to steer baseball operations in the offseason. And he lowered the temperature from championship-or-bust to simply making the playoffs being a successful season.