Steve Cohen’s Mets spending spree and the ramifications for the rest of the league - The Athletic $

As baseball’s wealthiest owner, Cohen is better positioned to assemble a super-team than any other. But the fraternity of owners does not usually look kindly to those who break from the pack, particularly when it raises costs for them.

“I think it’s going to have consequences for him down the road,” said an official with another major league team who was not authorized to speak publicly. “There’s no collusion. But … there was a reason nobody for years ever went past $300 million. You still have partners, and there’s a system.”

Cohen’s choice to hike his payroll to upward of $380 million before luxury-tax penalties — with a 12-year, $315 million agreement with Carlos Correa his latest prize — has already polarized the industry. He’s not just blowing past $293 million, which is the fourth and highest tier of the competitive balance tax — the penalty level introduced to the sport in March, which was immediately dubbed the “Steve Cohen tax.” He’s taken his payroll to a total level the sport hasn’t seen ever. And relative to his peers’ spending, Cohen is an outlier the game hasn’t seen since George Steinbrenner.

For at least two other groups, Cohen is a blessing: Mets fans, for one. And players. Cohen wants to win, which players love. But his spending also grows their overall markets and their haul.

...

“If an owner is willing to spend 90 percent tax over $300 million, no CBA would solve for that absent an actual cap,” a person on the league’s side said Wednesday.

Nonetheless, as the players’ side has reckoned with in the last five years after the 2016 CBA, the result is the result, no matter the intent. The “Cohen tax” isn’t doing much of anything to deter its namesake, and Manfred might have some increasingly unhappy owners to calm down because of that.

And this is where Cohen’s spending could have a deeper effect. It’d be a little hyperbolic, a little cheeky to already be asking: Where were you when Steve Cohen started the 2026 lockout? But Cohen may have lit the fuse on perhaps the most quintessential behind-the-scenes fight in baseball: the big market versus the smaller market.