The 'WITCH HUNT' Comes for the New York Mets
After a disappointing season, the Mets find themselves on the wrong side of a messy scandal.
Dear readers,
When one of our favorite teams becomes the subject of a major controversy, like the New York Mets did this week, the first emotion we feel is dread. The second feeling, however, is excitement — that we will at least have some lively fodder for Southpaw. We hope you enjoy reading about the cause of Calder’s latest Mets-induced agony.
-Ian and Calder
On Monday, despite the conclusion of one of the most disappointing seasons in 15 years, things were looking up for the New York Mets. The team was set to introduce analytics wunderkind David Stearns as its new President of Baseball Operations, a position at the top of the organizational chart that reports directly to the owner. In his years running the Milwaukee Brewers, Stearns became known as one of the best executives in the game — and, as an added benefit, he’s a hometown boy, having grown up in New York as a died-in-the-wool Mets sicko. In his introductory press conference, he signaled his sympathy with the team’s long-suffering fan base, telling reporters, “I grew up listening to Gary Cohen and Bob Murphy and Ed Coleman every summer. I’ve ridden the rollercoaster of disappointment and hope along with every other Mets fan.”
That was, perhaps, a diplomatic way of saying what every Mets fan knows in his bones: the Mets are cursed.
The latest evidence of that curse came only days later, as Stearns and the rest of us learned on Thursday that his number two executive, General Manager Billy Eppler, would be stepping down from his post.
At first, Eppler indicated that he had decided to step aside to give Stearns a “clean slate.” But subsequent reporting suggested that Eppler was leaving due to an ongoing MLB investigation into the Mets’ use of a tactic that’s commonly known as the “phantom IL,” in which teams covertly place healthy players on their injured list in order to open up a roster stop or help with roster construction.
Reportedly, Major League Baseball caught wind from someone inside of the Mets organization that the team was pulling this sort of stunt and that Eppler was responsible for it. (We still don’t know for sure who tattled on Eppler, but Buck Showalter, the Mets’ former manager whom Eppler recently fired, is a prime suspect.)
Then, on Friday, The New York Times reported that MLB was looking into what Mets owner (and noted white-collar criminal) Steve Cohen knew about the scheme — and when he knew it. Newsday has since reported that Cohen is not a direct target of the league’s probe, but the message remains the same: Cohen is on notice.
Until the league releases the findings of its investigation, it’s impossible to know exactly what Eppler did and who else within the Mets organization might have been involved. But judging by players’ own public comments, it’s pretty clear that all 30 MLB teams use the Phantom IL to some degree — and with good reason. The Phantom IL helps teams by giving them greater flexibility on their rosters, and it can actually benefit players as well, since they’re able to continue making their major league salary rather than get released or sent down to the minors when they’re not playing.
Nevertheless, Major League Baseball wants to crack down on this illicit practice, and as such is interested in making an example out of the Mets. So, did the organization just get unlucky once again? Some below-the-fold details in the Times report suggest otherwise.
The Times reports that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has developed some beef with Cohen, who has also reportedly failed to win over other MLB owners since he bought the Mets three years ago (with Manfred’s support). That’s not exactly a shocking revelation, given Cohen’s willingness to publicly violate baseball’s “unwritten rules,” such as the tacit prohibition on doling out ever-larger contracts to players. In fact, one of the final hurdles in the negotiations over the league’s most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement was the imposition of what became known as the “Cohen tax”: an extreme financial penalty for teams that have sky-high payrolls. Cohen, however, was undeterred by the punitive measures, and he went ahead with constructing the highest payroll in the league, pissing off both the league and his fellow owners, who are forced to compete with his apparently bottomless pockets.
So, with both the league and its owners unhappy with Cohen, he’s a natural target for an investigation: Manfred can make an example of him and his organization, satisfying the owners and signaling to league executives they need to stop using the Phantom IL so blatantly. If it wasn’t likely to be misinterpreted as a defense of another very famous financial criminal who’s currently on trial for fraud, I would be indiscriminately tweeting “WITCH HUNT!!!” every few hours.
Don’t get me wrong: Cohen is a terrible man and a patently obnoxious owner. But the intra-league dynamics that this episode shines a light on are still worth paying attention to. When the players’ union steps in to demand things like minimum salaries for minor leaguers or more favorable profit-sharing arrangements, the league and its owners denounce the measures as unreasonable interventions in their (artificial and highly regulated) market. But when an owner comes along who’s actually willing to inject a little economic competition into the league, owners — and especially “poor” owners of small-market teams — quickly line up behind league-sanctioned efforts to punish him for infractions that they probably all commit
We’d be a little more sympathetic to their plight if they were first willing to extend the same grace to their employees that they’re asking for from Major League Baseball.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
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