Mike's Mets - Seriously, Dude, It's Not the Ballpark

 

By Mike Steffanos November 7, 2020

There was a piece today by Daniel Kaplan today in The Athletic about Steve Cohen's purchase of the Mets. My first instinct upon reading it was to dismiss it as a bit of contrariness and fluffery, but in thinking about it afterwards I thought it would serve as an excellent starting point for today's post. It was clear from the beginning of the piece that Kaplan was trying to pour some cold water on the mostly positive coverage — at least so far — of Cohen's takeover of the club.

As I noted in my update to Thursday's post, and as I'm sure you're well aware, Cohen and Sandy Alderson became official yesterday, with somewhat predictable results for Brodie Van Wagenen and his top lieutenants. Before I move on to Kaplan's article, I'd like to pause for a moment and acknowledge that, although I agree with these decisions and like the swift decisiveness displayed, I take no joy in anyone losing their job in this current economic reality. I have complicated feelings about Omar Minaya in particular, who ultimately failed but did manage to carve out one of the few Mets bright spots of the 21st century. I hope Omar and everyone who was dismissed find new opportunities for themselves.

Back to Kaplan's piece. Early on he quotes an unnamed source that Cohen will run into a lot of difficulty competing with the Yankees, who have much higher revenues than the Mets. So let's start there. Unless you're someone who refuses to acknowledge the obvious, you can't dispute that, where things stand right now, the Yankees are in a much better financial position than the Mets. That's been the case for about a quarter of a century, and it's not likely to change drastically anytime soon. If there is one consistent talking point of those who want to take the negative view on the possibility of a Mets revival, it's questioning how they can compete with the Yankees in New York.

My simple answer to this is simple. They can't. But let me ask you a question. If you were dumb enough to get into a fight with someone, and the guy was much bigger than you, stronger than you and more physically gifted in general, would you try to fight the guy by just charging into him head on? If you do, I can only hope you are masochistic enough to somehow enjoy a severe beating.

If, on the other hand, you entertain hopes of actually surviving that contest, you'll try to figure out a different strategy than trying to beat your opponent at his own game. Maybe you're a little quicker and a little smarter than your opponent, and logic tells you that you need to compete in a manner that plays to your strengths rather than his.

Judging by what he's done and said up to now, particularly hiring Sandy Alderson, I don't see much chance that Cohen is just going to throw a ton of money at the problem and try to "beat" the Yankees that way. That's good. If the Mets try to compete with the Yankees by just being a free-spending club with much lesser revenues things will go quickly downhill, and all we'll get is a replay of the Wilpons before Madoff.

Going back to our fight analogy, there's also a third alternative. While fighting your opponent on your terms rather than his is preferable, the best possible alternative is to avoid the fight completely. Here's a wild thought, what if we just decide that the largest city and metropolitan area in the whole country can support more than one successful team? What's holding the Mets back is not the success of the Yankees, but their own lack of success. It really doesn't matter if the Yankees continue to enjoy a lot of success. I always thought one of the Wilpons' biggest problems, both before and after Madoff, was not carving out their own niche and competing on their own terms. Fred and Jeff wanted to give the illusion that they were equal to the Yankees, and all it got them, using our fistfight analogy, was beatings and ridicule.

So yeah, if Cohen went hog wild and loaded up on some big names next year while ignoring the systemic problems of the Mets, they probably will succeed a little but not enough. Eventually even a billionaire will get tired of bleeding money, and the honeymoon will be over for Steve Cohen and us. On the other hand, a man who built a multi-billion dollar fortune on his own might have some different ideas that don't involve pointless pissing contests with that team in the Bronx.

Sometimes you get the feeling when you're reading something that the author started out with a point of view and only included facts and opinions that supported it. While I thought the Yankees comparison in revenues was valid, if rebuttable, this part of Kaplan's piece was just silly:

Even with a normal attendance paradigm, the team's stadium, Citi Field, has never been a great draw, and not just because the Mets have struggled on the field. "To the north of the building, you have a bay, to the south Flushing Meadows Park, to the east junkyards and then Flushing, and then to the west, working-class neighborhoods,” the finance source said. "It's hard to get to and if you look at Yankee Stadium, and where it is, three of the four wealthiest counties in the New York metropolitan area have easy access to it."

The point is that it's tough to sell out Citi Field regularly. A great team might help, but to get there quickly requires free-agent spending that likely leads to more losses.

 

Citi Field opened while the franchise had only begun to deal with repercussions of the Wilpons' heavy investment in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Most of the Mets teams that have called the place home have been bad. However, it's located yards away from the late, great Shea Stadium. Ugly, ancient, falling apart — it was the place to be whenever the Mets had a real competitive team. Indeed, even Citi rocked in 2015 when Yoenis Céspedes almost single-handedly turned the Mets into a must-see down the stretch of that season and throughout the playoffs.

The Mets don't need to break the bank on free-agent spending to get people back into Citi. They need to put a consistent winner in there. Then the real regret won't be the location of the ballpark, it will be the more than 15,000 seats that the current ballpark shed compared to Shea. (Thank you, Wilpons, for thinking small, as usual.) I can guarantee you, regular competing will solve attendance problems. Time and time again, free agent spending has proven to be one of the least efficient ways to build a winner. Alderson and company need to emulate teams like the Red Sox, Dodgers and even the Yankees and build a winning organization. If they do that, people will find that ballpark, I promise.

Now, that's not to say going forward that there doesn't have to be a lot of upgrades to the area adjacent to the ballpark. That was supposedly in the works until the Wilpons went cash poor. There needs to be shopping and entertainment surrounding the park. There needs to be a nice hotel in walking distance where Mets fans who live in other parts of the country can come to stay, enjoy a weekend of baseball, shopping and entertainment without getting into a cab. It's a massive opportunity which was, basically, the one thing that A-Rod's bid had going for it. Someone is going to cash in on that opportunity. I'd be shocked if, ten years down the road, the whole area around the ballpark wasn't alive with the sounds of cash registers ringing.

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