Rosenthal: Grumbling about owners like Mets’ Steve Cohen? MLB needs more of them - The Athletic

Do you know what this offseason tells me about how teams view longterm contracts? Nothing. Until time exposes a trend, it’s a blip, an outlier. I can say one thing, Steve Cohen is every bit the owner so many other owners feared letting into their club.

Don’t get me wrong: I wish there were 30 Cohens, one for each franchise. Not likely, obviously — Cohen is one of a kind, the 38th richest man in America according to Forbes, with a real-time net worth of $17.5 billion. But in an industry mostly content with profits, Cohen is obsessed with winning. Middleton and Seidler share his obsession, which is exactly what fans should want.

This is a new breed of owner, operating under a new collective-bargaining agreement that reflects the union’s success in raising the luxury-tax thresholds and staving off harsher penalties. Cohen took over the Mets in late 2020. Seidler became the Padres’ control person not long after that. Middleton became a 48 percent shareholder in the Phillies in 2014 and their control person in 2016. With any luck, the Nationals and Angels, both currently for sale, will be bought by like-minded individuals or groups, and the turnover will continue with the Reds, A’s and Pirates, to name three clubs that need a change.