Whatever New York Mets owner Steve Cohen does next, he can do so with a clear conscience, his sense of fairness fully intact. Because a lot of those hired since he was welcomed into the owners club have turned Cohen's first year at the helm into an unprecedented embarrassment.
The guy initially brought in to be the Mets' general manager, Jared Porter, was banned from the sport earlier this year for sending sexually explicit text messages. And now the guy promoted to replace Porter, Zack Scott, has been arrested on a charge of driving while intoxicated after he was found sleeping in his car early Tuesday morning. Scott allegedly refused to submit to a Breathalyzer test. The front office has been disastrous, and that's not even taking the baseball part of the baseball business into account, which, for the Mets, has been extraordinarily disappointing.
The team had a 4½-game lead in the National League East on July 31, and by Aug. 31, the Mets had collapsed to third place, seven games behind the Atlanta Braves. When the Mets didn't hit well early, team president Sandy Alderson and Scott fired their hitting coaches, and there's been no change in performance. Francisco Lindor has struggled all year, with a chronically slow bat, and Michael Conforto, Dom Smith and Jeff McNeil have underperformed. Jacob deGrom has been hurt repeatedly; and even after weeks of doctor visits and treatment, no Mets employee can predict with confidence whether deGrom could give them 10 innings or 110 next year. DeGrom been the best pitcher we've ever seen by consistently throwing harder than any starting pitcher ever, and nobody can even say for sure whether he can continue in that vein or whether his best chance to be productive is to dial back his velocity.
Kumar Rocker was the first first-round selection in Cohen's time as owner this summer, and the Mets apparently ignored some of the red flags that scared other teams away from the right-hander -- and chose not to sign him after reviewing the results of Rocker's physical exam. The Mets blamed Rocker's agent, Scott Boras, but no matter who was responsible, it was a missed opportunity for a player-development system in desperate need of talent.
And in the midst of all this, circumstances compelled Alderson to stand up in the middle of the Mets' clubhouse and explain to the players that it's a bad idea to tell the paying customers how they should act, as Javier Baez did on a Zoom call with reporters on Sunday as he explained his thumbs-down gestures. (Baez and Lindor subsequently apologized.) The Mets' best offseason move, the signing of Taijuan Walker, was something of a fortunate accident: The team pursued Walker after it failed in its pursuit of Trevor Bauer.
Cohen would be justified in firing Scott, and he would be justified in benching Alderson, the person who hired Porter and Scott. He'd be justified in just about any choice he made at this point, including the move that many rival executives expect -- the pursuit of someone experienced and accomplished to run his baseball operations.
As the Mets' awful year has worsened and officials in other organizations have rubbernecked with fascination, a name mentioned often within the industry in recent days: David Stearns, the president of baseball operations for the Milwaukee Brewers.
Stearns' name came up last year when Cohen took over the Mets as someone who might naturally fall into the team's chain of command underneath Alderson. Stearns, 36, is a New Yorker who grew up rooting for the Mets. And after finishing at Harvard, Stearns got an advanced front-office degree with the Cleveland Indians and moved to the Houston Astros, before he was hired as general manager by the Brewers. Milwaukee has consistently contended for the playoffs in Stearns' tenure, and he is highly respected by his peers.
The most important question for Cohen: Could he get access to Stearns, to offer him the kind of compensation and power that almost certainly would vault Stearns into the upper echelon of the game's executives?
According to sources, Stearns' current agreement with the Brewers runs through the 2022 season. Some of his peers believe that if Stearns wants to pursue the Mets' job -- to work in a big market, in his hometown, with the kind of enormous resources he would never have in Milwaukee -- he is close enough to the end of his deal with Milwaukee owner Mark Attanasio to have a conversation about what's next.
"If he's told he can't [pursue the Mets' job]," one longtime front-office executive said of Stearns, "he could tell [Attanasio] that he won't sign an extension after next year. The Brewers and Mets could work out a deal. He's been there long enough, and they've had enough success with him where he could have a pretty honest talk about what he wants to do."
An executive cited the precedent of Theo Epstein leaving the Boston Red Sox a year before the end of his contract to go to the Chicago Cubs, with grudging permission from Boston ownership.
The first questions any prospective candidate would have about working for the Mets these days would be about Cohen, whose activity on social media is viewed by experienced baseball ops executives with great curiosity -- and some concern. There are natural questions about how involved Cohen intends to be and whether he could be constantly meddling in player personnel decisions.
But after the ignominious showing of some of his employees, Cohen might feel like he has no choice but to get involved, for a franchise course correction.