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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Wednesday, October 27, 2021Brewers GM Matt Arnold latest to say no thanks to Steve Cohen, Mets as front-office search continues to flail
RoyalsRetro (AG#1F)
Posted: October 27, 2021 at 01:45 PM | 62 comment(s)
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1. Zach Posted: October 27, 2021 at 02:56 PM (#6049396)Maybe that guy should be in charge of the GM search.
Wilpon 2.0
I will again express my willingness to take on the job for a very reasonable guaranteed salary. No need for an interview, simply scroll through my previous brilliant diagnoses of the Mets' problems over the last couple of decades via my BBTF posts. As long as the checks clear, I am happy to let Mr. Cohen interfere as much as he likes.
It was one things for guys like Epstein or Sterns or Beane to turn them down - either cause they have enough money or power already - but this now makes the 3rd different GM that is declining to go for a promotion. Something is fishy here. Maybe those 3 weren't really candidates for POBO and wouldn't be getting the same power/money/whatever* as the first 3 big names so the reporting is just not precise enough. Or maybe those guys are leaking their names in a bit of self-promotion. Because I don't care how bad things are with the Mets - and honestly, they're not that bad - it's not passing the smell test for me that so many guys would pass up a legit opportunity like this (I think we got a little bit of a family excuse for Harris, but it's not like he's a SF lifer as he was with the Cubs before his current role in SF; I don't know as much about the other 2).
*Obviously they couldn't command as much money
If he gives you a 5-year contract, there's nothing he can do to you except give a long, paid vacation.
From following on Twitter, it seems like the NY media don't have the type of inside sources within Cohen's Mets that they did under Wilpon. And they really seem to resent it.
They appear to have no idea what's going on with the search, will repeat anything that anyone tells them, and then change their story 5 minutes later. And then they criticize/ridicule the team based on that "information."
There's simply no point in paying attention to any of it until the Mets announce who they've hired.
I understand that. However the people he has apparently contacted already are successful in their own right, it's not like he's giving anyone their big break. Sure, there appears to be a promotion for a few of the names mentioned, but it's not a huge step and so far doesn't seem worth it to any of those spoken to already.
All billionaires are pretty ruthless, I just think this guy's past is something a little beyond that and this is being considered and hence the lack of interest thus far.
Or as mentioned above, by Inge, the press is just making stuff up.
I’m concerned about Bryn Alderson.
It's the Mets. My chances can't be worse than 50/50.
If it's not me, you know they're gonna break up the broadcast team by hiring one of them and you don't want that do you?
Looks the the only way to outbid Walt is to promise to not even show up for work for the 5 years of the contract.
Silly whippersnappers. If you don't even bother to show up, the press are gonna be calling you every day. Not worth it. Just roll in around 3 pm before night games, 10 am the rest of the time, be sure to show up for the press conferences in some over-priced polo. Load a waiver wire app. Buy a copy of OOTP so its AI can screen your trades -- you guys don't mind if I trade Nimmo and McNeil for 12 of the Cubs' #21-50 prospects do you?
Individually, this and all of the other explanations make sense. But *all* of these people — who have scratched and clawed to get *near* the top of their profession — are turning down becoming President of Baseball Operations for the Mets, for family reasons? Doesn’t add up. And I also have trouble believing it’s because “Steve Cohen is a jerk.” He probably is, but it’s not like he’s a jerk to such an extent that stories are leaking out of the Mets organization. There has to be some maliciousness by other owners at work here.
Lots of people worked for Steinbrenner back in the day.
But he's not from there, he moved there to work for the Cards. And also, as people point out all the time, working in baseball (or sports) is not comparable to "most people" and their jobs. I also don't think any job in baseball is a "job for life."
There has to be some maliciousness by other owners at work here.
That's a helluva conspiracy theory. It's much more likely the press is just wrong/overstating.
What really successful MLB FO executive wouldn't want to leave their current position to go work for an overbearing convicted criminal?
Yeah, I don't think Cohen is that bad, especially compared to most pro sports owners these days.
It's also a lie, for whatever that's worth these days.
Then he's probably not offering enough money.
"What, me collusion?"
Uh, overruled?
He would absolutely sue you for the balance, though. Or stop paying and make you sue him.
Cohen is a slimy, unscrupulous shitbird, but so are most hedge fund guys, and there are other hedge fund guys in baseball that don't inspire this response.
It's entirely possible that people inside the game know something about him that we don't.
The guy you go after is the assistant GM who's blocked by the top guy.
Cohen aside, the ability to work in New York with a New York budget has got to be appealing to someone, right?
that's a pretty enticing opportunity, one would think.
it's a relatively fickle "town," potentially, and one-upping the Yankees in the #1 market in the US - is there a bigger draw?
I think that *is* the GM these days. The person who does the stuff GMs used to do is now POBO.
So even with these and a host of other really great opportunities for taking the job, not one of these insanely competitive people has stepped up yet.
So it might be a combination of Cohen is crook, Cohen's going to be a huge pain in the arse, the money isn't differential enough to what these guys are already getting paid. There's something(or a few things) there that are stopping these guys from taking the role.
I think "Cohen's a crook with a track record of doing crooked things that get people into trouble" is enough to make the other, underlying problems make most people say, "This isn't worth my trouble."
Yes, it's obviously a conspiracy . . . against the New York Mets, a sports enterprise that nobody gives a #### about.
Well surely the Rays have some pimply-faced work experience kid they can throw a few million a year who'd jump at the chance. Everyone that comes out of there seems to know their stuff.
Of course he'd have to get his mom's permission first before moving out of her basement. She would probably yell at the poor kid for choosing to work for "that crook Cohen", whilst shaking her fist.
That's how it's working these days at the managerial level -- maybe you make a big offer to an established manager, otherwise you give some newbie a 2/$2-3 deal and move onto the next guy if this guy isn't a success ... or maybe even if he is but demands a raise to $3 per year. If the statnerds are telling you that the manager rarely makes a big difference, if the manager is mainly a personnel manager, managers look fungible. Well, if you think a PBO/GM is mainly an asset manager then Cohen and his buddies know more about that than some shclub from Milwaukee.
In short, if they had approached the Brewers' GM (or whoever) with a 5/$20 guaranteed offer and convincing assurances they are the #1 guy on the baseball side, this search would be over. Instead it's some combination of low-ball offers with little security and the impression that Cohen will really be running the team. The latter would also explain why Theo, etc. dropped out early. The simplest explanation is that Cohen is the next Angelos/Moreno and any serious candidate will try to avoid a meddlesome owner ... and not consulting baseball people on the search is a big red flag as to how ownership views baseball people.
All of them? I mean, knowing is easy - anyone at that level is going to do some research on the place they're potentially interviewing at, and there's enough people coming and going between clubs that it's not out of the question that you've heard stories second-hand from your staff. The upper echelons of this business is a small world, and a lot of these guys probably have college friends who have been in the hedge fund world. If there's something toxic about the Mets or its owner, the small pool of candidate is going to know.
Seriously. These guys aren't interviewing for jobs at the Plaid Pantry.
Literally the opposite of the right way to do it.
What Cohen is offering -- or should be offering, if he knows what he has, which I doubt -- is entry into the top tier. The way you play that hand is to find the very best guy in the second tier and offer him a shot at the big time a few years earlier than he would get it on his own.
Offering first tier guy first tier wages = piss off, I've already got what I want.
Offering second tier guy second tier wages = piss off, I'm going to get a better offer than that in a couple of years anyway.
Offering second tier guy tier 1b wages = loyal acolyte for life, will work his butt off even if he suspects the boss is objectively a scumbag.
This is *not* intended to go in a Godwin's law direction, but read up on how Stalin came to power sometime. He would constantly give young up and comers their first real shot at the big time several years before they objectively deserved it.
Other people had the glory positions under Lenin. Stalin was the personnel guy.
I'm pretty sure if Cohen offered 5 years guaranteed, $3M p.a. salary. $10M/1 year extension if you win a pennant, $20M/2 year extension if you win the World Series, he'd get the best of the non-POBOs interested.
It's more than a couple of years, IIRC - he's been a minority owner of the Mets for a while before buying the majority stake, and while he probably couldn't influence much, he could have been around enough for there to be scuttlebutt about him around the upper echelons of baseball management. There's an old saying about how when you go in for an executive-level job interview, you're deciding whether you want to be part of the organization as much as they're deciding if they want to hire you, and I suspect that goes for the vetting process. These guys are going to do as much research on the Mets organization as it's doing on them.
I don't necessarily think all these GM candidates are making moral choices, as much as pragmatic, but there's still reason to be concerned on that front. If Cohen has a reputation for being toxic as a boss, or the Mets organization has a similar reputation without Cohen having cleaned house, it's a red flag. I wouldn't be shocked if Alderson still being around in some capacity makes candidates wonder how much autonomy they'll have (he's stepped aside before, then stepped right back in). Perhaps they're hearing that they're not going to be able to do much in terms of filling out their own staff because of situations like the Christies and fell like having their hands tied like that is being set up for failure. Possibly they look at the volatility of the stock market these days and think that Cohen might take a big loss or get hit by the FCC and decide the baseball team is the part of the organization that's going to try and pinch pennies. They've got access to information that fans and the press don't, even if it's gossip.
Maybe the reports of candidate disinterest are exaggerated, but it sure seems like something is keeping a bunch of highly-competitive people from even interviewing for a job on a bigger stage with a position and salary bump and a lot of resources, with Cohen and the Mets organization the common denominator. I suspect these guys are also approaching these jobs a bit more warily than they used to, since it is more likely to be their only bite of the apple than it used to be (fired GMs were once automatically looked at as top candidates for the next job opening because of their experience, but now they're more likely to seem like failures compared to someone looking for a promotion who might be the next Theo Epstein). Heck if I know.
Drinking with the boss is usually great for you career; getting ####-faced with the boss and committing a crime that attracts negative publicity is the problem.
If it's a work event, you go, have your two drinks, make sure you talk to the boss a decent amount, and leave before anyone has the chance to get foolish.
perhaps double "fwiws" there
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