The New York Mets held on to a small but not insignificant division lead for most of the season. That has completely imploded in recent weeks, and owner Steve Cohen is not thrilled.
The team is currently riding a five game losing streak to the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers. They swept the lowly Washington Nationals in three games before that, but prior to that series, were swept by the Philadelphia Phillies, lost three of four to a bad Miami Marlins team, two of three to the Cincinnati Reds, and three of five to the Atlanta Braves.
At 59-60, the Mets are now under .500 for the first time since May 5. More importantly, they’ve fallen all the way to 4.5 games behind the Braves, and 2.5 behind the Phillies in the NL East.
While the pitching staff has had to deal with some issues, most notably the injury to Jacob deGrom, the lineup has been the major issue. Cohen laid into his team’s batters with a tweet that is far more scalding than what you’ll usually see out of a team owner.
It’s hard to understand how professional hitters can be this unproductive.The best teams have a more disciplined approach.The slugging and OPS numbers don’t lie.
— Steven Cohen (@StevenACohen2) August 18, 2021
Cohen isn’t wrong. Outside of Brandon Nimmo and Pete Alonso, basically every Mets position player is well below their expected production for the year. Even when the team was playing well and in first place, the bats were pretty quiet, though the struggles could be chalked up to a crazy rash of injuries earlier in the year.
The Mets are 26th in the majors in home runs, and 28th in runs scored. The team’s .235 batting average is tied for 23rd in the league, and in the two stats that Cohen cited—slugging percentage and OPS—the Mets rank 25th and 24th, respectively.
There’s still a fair amount of baseball to be played, but with the Braves and Phillies improving since the trade deadline, the New York Mets need to turn things around in a hurry to keep this from being a pretty horrific midseason collapse and another year without a playoff berth for the franchise.
At the same time, plenty have argued that it isn’t appropriate for Steve Cohen to fire off tweets like this, even if he’s trying to fire up his team. Others echo his concerns.
My take: Not a fan of the Steve Cohen tweet. Doesn’t help matters. The time for him to show he won’t stand for losing is in the offseason when it’s time to remake this roster and bring in a big-time baseball executive to run the show. #mets
— Zach Braziller (@NYPost_Brazille) August 18, 2021
It doesn’t make me mad, but Steven Cohen tweeting about the Mets being bad is performative and useless. It has the same energy of politicians in power tweeting about how bad the government is and then doing nothing to fix it. https://t.co/MnpOPsGUWj
— Mike Gianella (@MikeGianella) August 18, 2021
I am not sure if what Steve Cohen said on Twitter will be helpful or not, healthy or not. It could easily back fire, or it lights a fire under the team.
What I do know is, the #Mets are 3-12 in August, and now 1 game under .500. Its time for change, time for action.
— Michael Baron (@michaelgbaron) August 18, 2021
“Cohen’s Twitter presence is a source of both concern and amusement for certain rival executives, some of whom will text each other his tweets in a ‘Can you believe this?’ sort of manner.” From last week…https://t.co/0d2SRyaRGS https://t.co/tfKIF7t96b
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) August 18, 2021
If things don’t turn around, we should see plenty of major changes in Flushing this offseason.
The post Mets Owner Steve Cohen Rips Team After Recent Slump appeared first on The Spun.
Leave a Reply