There may be huge changes on the horizon for the Mets, as minority owner Steve Cohen is reportedly in talks to become the franchise’s control person by 2025. That could be good news for Mets fans, many of whom have been fed up with current majority owners Fred Wilpon and Jeff Wilpon for years. David Waldstein, Kevin Draper and James Wagner of the New York Times just profiled the Wilpons, and if you’re a Mets fan who reads that, you’ll probably grow even happier that the team could change hands in the next several years. As part of a piece that seems to list one damning Wilpon tidbit after another, Waldstein, Draper and Wagner note that the Mets have lost $60MM-plus in each of the past two seasons. That helps put them “at the limit of debt allowed by Major League Baseball rules,” they write. It’s unclear what that will mean as far as making changes to the roster this offseason goes, but as MLBTR’s Jeff Todd explained back in October, there doesn’t appear to be much spending room.
- The Astros are one of the clubs “monitoring” free-agent right-hander Josh Lindblom’s market, Jon Morosi of MLB Network tweets. The 32-year-old struggled in the majors before heading to Korea and thriving there over the past couple seasons. Now that he’s on the open market, MLBTR predicted at the start of the offseason that the Astros would sign Lindblom, a spin rate darling. That’s something the Astros seem to value. Plus, with Gerrit Cole and Wade Miley currently unsigned, the Astros have openings in their starting staff.
- Almost half the league has shown some level of interest in free-agent infielder Travis Shaw since the Brewers non-tendered him Monday, as he told MLB Network Radio. The 29-year-old has gotten bites from “probably already 13 or 14 teams,” he said. There has been “significant interest,” though nobody has made an offer to this point. Shaw has primarily been a third baseman thus far, but he indicated that he’s glad he broadened his horizons by lining up at other positions (mostly second) over the past couple years. The newfound flexibility’s nice, but Shaw’s offensive issues in 2019 – during which he hit an ugly .157/.281/.270 in 270 plate appearances – will limit his earning power in free agency.
- Right-hander Jordan Lyles agreed to a surprising two-year, $16MM contract with the Rangers on Friday. The Twins were among those who inquired about Lyles before then, per Darren Wolfson of 5 Eyewitness News. Minnesota may have gotten more serious about Lyles had it not re-signed righty Michael Pineda to a two-year, $20MM accord on Thursday, Wolfson suggests. However, even with Pineda and Jake Odorizzi (who accepted the Twins’ qualifying offer) back in the fold, they still have a need for starting help. Pineda, Odorizzi and Jose Berrios are the only in-house shoo-ins to occupy rotation spots in 2020.
How is it even possible for an MLB team to lose money? That doesn’t seem possible unless you are completely incompetent.
I think the Mets can be literally defined as incompetence at its finest…
Pittsburgh Pirates have entered the chat
Pirates don’t spend enough to lose any
The pirates are crazy profitable…. because Nutting makes sure bottom lines come first, second, and third. Winning is not anywhere in the mission statement
“….the Mets have lost $60MM-plus in each of the past two seasons.”
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Yet there are people on here that complain every year that the Mets (and every other franchise) should be spending more on payroll.
There is a major disconnect between the fans here that think gross revenue equals automatic obscene profits in the billionaires owners pocket and the reality of what ever increasing expenses in running a professional MLB team does to a team bottom line.
It’s been written that what precipitated the sale is that the minority owner wanted out, and the Wilpon’s couldn’t find another minority owner willing to pout up with indefinite losses. So they had their choice of selling out for billions,or hiding the fact that the team was bleeding money.
Make no mistake. Their situation is hardly unique among MLB ownership groups.
I was about to say the same thing. What kind of idiot would an owner have to be to increase overhead on a business that loses $60 million a year. Everyone will have conveniently forgotten this article when they start bashing owners because they aren’t willing to lose even more money.
They received at least 50 million in 2018 from the BamTech sale. I highly doubt they lost 60 million that year. Creative accounting for sure.
and they had roughly 350 million in revenue NOT counting the sale proceeds. The numbers don’t add up.
Not sure were you get your numbers from but until the books are opened, don’t believe anything you read. All MLB teams made a killing when MLB sold their tv/internet operations. Separately, teams like the Yankees, Mets and Red Sox which own a huge share of their tv regional network hide money by undervaluing those transactions.
google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/…
You are talking about the Wilpons people who have been duped at Ponzi scheme. Ironically they are pulling off a Ponzi scheme of their own by owning the Mets and somehow conning fans this will be their year.
I couldn’t open it but saw on Forbes, in April the team was valued at $2.3B, a 10% increase over the previous year. The agreement with Cohen has a higher value. Look at what they paid for the team. Clearly, they have been a gold mine if not a cash cow year to year.
Conversely, what kind of idiot would a fan have to be to believe anything the Wilpons assert?
It’s not about annual profit, which can easily be manipulated, it’s about franchise value, I’ll bet they net at least $1 billion on the sale
Yes thank you for explain the larger economic gains to Samuel who thinks the Mets owners are losing money.
Fred Wilpon first bought 5% of the Mets in 1980 when the franchise was valued at $21M. Then got to 50% in 1986 when it was valued at $80M.
Sorry @samuel, but you’re a fool if you’re believing self-reported losses by the Wilpons.
Even on a surface level: they had 2.5 million people attend games last year. Even at $20-25/ticket, that’s between $50-62 million right there. Then there’s SNY, merchandising, licensing, etc. There’s no way they lost $60 million.
There is a difference between revenue and profit. How hard is that for people to understand
You’re talking about a team that is still paying Bobby Bonilla.
Yeah but to be fair…they are only paying him for another 16 years…or 34 years after he retired.
Because that money was deferred without interest, the Mets are actually coming out ahead doing it that way, rather than paying it all when he was an active player.
Ah someone who understands time valuation.
It’s not without interest. The interest is built into the annual payments and computes to around 8% over and above the original total. In short, Bonilla has been collecting an 8% return during a time where inflation has almost disappeared and when 7 major European banks within the last couple of years were offering negative interest rates on one year bills.
It’s not really possible. The Wilpons could be paying themselves $20 million a year in salaries. Buying condos in Costa Rica and Mexico. And selling the team for 200 times what they paid for it. We should all have such problems.
Creative account, that’s how it is possible.
“Waldstein, Draper and Wagner note that the Mets have lost $60MM-plus in each of the past two seasons.”
You have to be a special kind of stupid to believe this.
I guarantee you the Wilpons have been banking $150 million per year after taxes for the past decade.
The Mets are in New York. They own SNY. They have Yankees money.
Just being in NY does not make all franchises equal. The Yankees revenues are roughly double the Mets. Every single year. Look it up, it’s easily attainable information. They do NOT have Yankees money, any more than the Nets have Knicks money or the Islanders have Rangers money.
And read the article being cited here, the Mets aren’t declaring some 60 million dollars in losses as an accounting trick to hide gains- the reported losses are hurting them, and forcing them to sell the team, which they never wanted to do.
IMHO, when it is all said and done, the mistake that will have been the Wilpon’s fall was Citifield. It’s a beautiful park, but they spent a billion dollars to construct a park that, because of capacity, isn’t able to generate as much revenue as Shea was.
BS. Fred Wilpon has already said it’s a financial planning situation. If it were anything else, he could sell another small share say 10% for $220m or so (premium is being paid to gain majority ownership). Also, the team only paid 1/3rd the cost of CitiField. I’m in the minority but I actually liked Shea. I was going to see a game. They could have improved the food concessions and I would have been happy. Instead, once the City announced a deal with the Yankees, the Mets said me too. Was great for the construction industry.
Well, except it wasn’t a “deal” between the City and the Yankees and Mets; it was billionaires running private, monopoly-protected businesses bribing politicians and getting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stadium in return for those bribes.
As for “BS. Fred Wilpon said…” just reverse the order of those two fragments and you’ll have it right. Ask a Wilpon the time and he’ll lie to you just to stay in practice.
“Just being in NY does not make all franchises equal. The Yankees revenues are roughly double the Mets. Every single year. Look it up,…”
It’s amusing you think you can get away with pretending the Wilpons’ incompetence over decades justifies their failure to spend money, They weren’t bright enough to take full advantage of the cash cow that is a monopoly protected MLB team, therefore they didn’t generate enough revenue to plow back into the team, which generates further revenue, which… etc. Have someone explain Business 101 to you.
The Wilpons also didn’t spend anything even resembling a billion dollars to build Citi. Since that information is readily available, your intent must be to deceive, to the point where you sound like an Mets intern ordered to post here and corrupt the site during your coffee break. .
Accounting records for a private company (not independently audited) are meaningless. They could have lost 60 mil because they paid 80 mil in “management expenses” to Jeff Wilpon, for example.
Salaries and bonuses being pulled out in excess.
Lyles getting 8 per is enough to tell you the market for pitching is gonna evaporate soon.
Good things come to MLB teams that develop their own players – particularly pitchers. Need at least 8 starters today to get through a year due to limiting pitchers innings and injuries. Few teams come close to that.
Every off-season individual teams changes for the coming season make it perfectly clear to fans and the media who the contenders will be. By the 3rd week of May what was accepted going into spring training has already been shaken up regarding most teams, and by June 15 reality sinks in. Those that develop guys we never heard of to get production are the teams that contend. Those that pay retail by throwing money at free agents or take on salary of established players in trade come up short. Teams like the Phillies and Padres that haven’t developed most of their young players, are surely not going to magically keep their expensive free agents and players brought in via salary dump trades tuned.
Those writing 2020 obituaries on teams such as the Rays, Indians, and Brewers need to watch and learn.
A lot of pitchers getting good money
The twins have to get madbum or ryu but preferably Madison
Not surevif there is anything to it but in another article Shaw mentions that a reunion with Boston “matches up on paper.”
sports.yahoo.com/travis-shaw-says-return-boston-21…
The Twins need Bumgarner, Ryu, or Keuchel. I doubt they would get Strasburg or Cole, but a rotation of Berrios, Odorizzi, Pineda, Graterol, Smeltzer won’t be good enough to get to the ALCS.
I want Shaw back the the Bosox. He’d be a great low cost replacement for Mitchy two-bags. Between him, Chavis, Pedroia, and Marco Hernanadez the first base and second base base positions will be solidified.
Those players don’t solidify those positions. Just a bandaid
Driftcat. Getting under the luxury tax is probably going to require a few low-cost “band aids”.
How the heck are the Mets “losing” money!!?? More accounting tricks?
I have a friend like you.
We drive down the boulevard and look at customers and clients entering business buildings. To him each one of those is making money. I’ve done accounting work for people and know the reality. There’s nothing I can tell him.
Samuel, see my above post. Yes accounting tricks with the TV contract with SNY. Also the league sold their multimedia operations I think for $3B. Even after subtracting start up and operational costs, each team made $$$ bucks.
I’m not an accountant and don’t know the tricks they use, but I do know that selling off a business isn’t the same thing as increasing revenue.
You operate a business to increase its value. How many years would the Wilpon need to run the team to make to earn this money on operating income?
Shaw back to the Red Sox? Could be a nice reunion
So the ownership of the Mets will transfer from the Wilpon’s, who were involved with Madoff and the greatest financial scandal of our lifetime, to Steve Cohen, a hedge fund trader who was fined $1.8B (let that sink in) for insider trading and was barred from trading for two years.
He’s hated on Wall Street. Will MLB owners actually approve a sale to him?
Isn’t he a minority owner already?
Only difference is the negative items about Cohen came out after he invested in the team. My guess is they’ve already preliminarily informally vetted him and barring new discoveries, it’s a yes.
That sounds right. If Cohen’s issues (he wasn’t found criminally guilty, fwiw) were serious, the owners’ group could have compelled him to sell.
He’s probably okay to own the Mets, but that might be wishful thinking on my part.
Of course they will.
Who do you think owns the Tampa Rays?
Anyone rich enough to own a baseball team is probably a thief.
Nice guys stay in the mailroom.
If they lost money, i guess they still must be investing with Bernie Madoff. Sounds like there will be massive layoffs. Oh no, i forgot, this is baseball.
The Mets said they would be willing to put a young player with one they want to rid themselves of: How about D.Smith and Lowrie to Detroit they need a 1b for Boyd this solves their SP situation and if LAD loses out on Rendon & Donaldson what about JD Davis and Familia for C Will Smith or Ruiz and with the $$ saved they can use it on the bullpen.
Det wouldn’t do Smith for Boyd straight up, let alone take on Lowrie.
I’m shocked the Mets aren’t being sold to Mr. Petersen.
Aren’t you?
Aren’t you shocked that the Mets are being sold to a Cohen?
Will the Tampa Rays ever be sold to a Mr. Petersen?
the Mets deal does not include SNY. So, he’s paying for a team, not the extras included. I wonder if he can start his own network and really screw these JERKOFFS. Quite honestly, the deal is all in their favor, undeservedly so.
Mets losing $$$$ get the crying towel out for them here we go again no $$$$ to sign anyone just lies over and over yr after yr smoke screens aplenty so far this offseason all you will see are dumpster pickups and castoffs 4th place finish and at seasons end a firesale
The notion that the Wilpons lost $120MM is pure fantasy. The mets have long had one of the lowest payroll to revenue percentages in the league. They frequently report payroll without accounting for Wright and Cespedes insurance policies. And the idea of reporting this but ignoring the TV revenues is plain old nutty. Sure, you can jigger the math to come out however you like.
So too is the silly blaming a $70 MM payment to Madoff (a fraction of fake PROFITS) 10 years ago for their refusal to invest for over a decade in a team in the largest media market in baseball.
The Mets have some SERIOUS liabilities on their balance sheets, but that is due to their own mismanagement of restructured debt. There have been some articles in the past that got into it, but the gist is that the Mets ballclub and SNY are kept completely separate, on purpose. The restructuring led to balloon payments, which are hugely problematic to the Wilpons and the minority owners. Huge debt was passed to SNY, though also all of the revenue.
The team budget/payroll looks high, but they have gotten SIGNIFICANT $ back each year for Wright and now for Cespedes. Here is some napkin math….
The standard insurance coverage is usually returning 75% of value, minus 60 continuous days on the DL before the policy qualifies for payments.. The % could be a bit lower or higher, depending on the term, position, if there are exclusions, etc. The baseball season is now set at 187 days (183 up to 187 for the past 2ish yrs), so about 1/3 of the season is lost to the waiting period.. The napkin math for just 2019 yields: $19.72m ($29m x .68) 60/187 = .68.
The typical premium for a MLB player is usually 3-8%, maybe up to 10%….the higher-end being pitchers who have a higher likelihood of getting hurt, the lower-end being position players. Let’s put it at 7% to be overly generous, which yields: $2,030,000. So the approximate payment back to the Mets from the insurance company just for 2019 Cespedes was ~$17,690,000. That went DIRECTLY into the pockets of ownership.
Then there was insurance for Ces for 2018 and 2017. Add in David Wright missing nearly all of 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018…totaling 623 days, which including 2 years of 183 days seasons and 2 of 187 yields 736 “season” days…so he missed ~84% of all games of the contract and he was out for large stretches of time to qualify for the 60 day consecutive requirement. That doesn’t include 2019 or 2020, which factor into payroll and against lux tax limits, artificially inflating both.
Then there is the Lowrie contract, which probably had insurance….
I wouldn’t be surprised if their account was…..massaged to show what they want.
Good work. Then there’s the matter of the Wilpons dumping players at the deadline for a majority of seasons in the past decade and typically taking as much cash as they could get rather than maximizing the return in minor league talent–just one more reason the farm was only middling before Wags got his fat, foolish hands on it.
Speaking of money, if the Mets had to lose in 2019 I was just sorry that dealing Vargas to a division and second wildcard rival wasn’t what bit them in the arse. They picked up all of his 2019 salary when they dealt him to the Phillies just to get out from under the 2m cost of declining his 2020 option, and dealt him to a team with one of the worst back ends in the NL, improving their runs allowed by 2 per 9 compared with the pitchers Vargas was replacing. They were actually 5 games behind the Phillies when they improved them by giving them Vargas.
It wasn’t given enough (any) notice at the time, but before this has a team pretending to contend ever actually improved a division rival ahead of it in the standings? It may be a literal first.