A new world in Big Apple baseball: Steve Cohen, Hal Steinbrenner and the battle for NYC supremacy

NEW YORK -- As the Yankees and Mets meet for another round of the Subway Series -- this time in Queens -- the dynamic between New York City's two franchises has reached a point that those who have lived the rivalry were skeptical they'd ever see.

"The Mets have kind of turned the corner from being that little cousin or little brother or sister to the Yankees," said Buck Showalter, whose nearly half-century in professional baseball was bookended by two decades in the Yankees organization and two seasons with the Mets as their manager. "They're on firm standing. They don't have to take a backseat to anybody. And I don't think it's that the Yankees have gone back. I just think the Mets have pushed forward."

The teams have followed parallel paths so far this season -- strong starts to the top of their respective divisions, followed by ugly recent stretches that have them both limping into the weekend. But they still have the same objective within reach: a World Series title. After a tense three-game series at Yankee Stadium in May, they'll clash for what each team hopes are three bounce-back games starting Friday at Citi Field, where an unfamiliar sense of optimism has grown over the past five years.

There have been fleeting times when the Mets were the toast of New York baseball -- the 1969 Miracle Mets and their golden years in the 1980s, among the brightest epochs -- and seasons when both franchises were championship contenders. But what is happening now is different. The Mets have joined the Yankees as a baseball superpower, a metamorphosis that originated when Steve Cohen purchased the club from the Wilpon family for $2.4 billion in November 2020.

"The Mets were kind of a joke at that point," said reliever Adam Ottavino, a Brooklyn native who joined the Mets in 2022 for three seasons after previously spending two years with the Yankees. "They were always looked at as a joke that made a lot of bad decisions."

Now in his fifth season as owner, Cohen, 69, has revamped the organization, under the hood and on the field, alongside his wife, Alex. A franchise that people around the sport and in its own fan base dismissed as a running gag is now widely considered a first-class operation.

Sustained success is still the chief objective -- the Mets failed to reach the postseason in two of Cohen's first four seasons, including a spectacular flop in 2023 with the most expensive roster in baseball. But the culture change is indisputable. Brandon Nimmo, drafted by the Mets in 2011, is the longest-tenured player in the organization. He has seen the transformation firsthand.

"It kind of fell into my lap," he said. "They came along and just put us in a totally different direction. And it feels really, really good."

Across town, the Yankees, under Hal Steinbrenner since he assumed day-to-day control from his father, George, in 2009, have remained steady winners, even as the industry has undergone constant evolution. They've accrued 32 straight winning seasons, tied for the second-longest streak in any of the four major North American sports leagues, and are on pace for a 33rd. Only the Yankees' 39-season run from 1926 through 1964 was better. They're coming off an American League pennant. They have Aaron Judge, the best hitter in the world, signed to a long-term deal as their captain. Expectations from a fervent fan base have not lowered with the 55-year-old Steinbrenner in charge.

"[Hal] wants what's best for our players," said Brian Cashman, who started in the Yankees organization as an intern in 1986 and became general manager in 1998. "And that's something his dad obviously provided and he's continued to provide, obviously, in a completely new and unique environment."

That new environment includes deep-pocketed competition in his own town -- competition that challenged the Yankees for one of the most sought-after free agents in baseball history over the offseason and ... won.

Juan Soto's decision to leave the Yankees for the Mets -- what would have qualified as a preposterous notion before last winter -- seemingly cemented the Mets' new standing among the sport's premier franchises. But David Stearns, a lifelong Mets fan and the organization's president of baseball operations since October 2023, insisted it did not represent anything more than a team adding a great player.

"I did not see it that way in my position," Stearns said. "I saw it as we were able to sign and recruit one of our game's best players. And regardless of where he happened to be playing last year, that, in and of itself, is important for our organization, for our brand, for our team, that a player could have gone to any of the major markets, any of the flagship teams in the sport, and he chose the Mets.

"It is a true testament to what Steve and Alex have been able to accomplish over the last five years."

THOSE FIVE YEARS have been a crash course in MLB ownership for Cohen, who has reformed his public image from ruthless billionaire whose hedge fund agreed to pay a record $1.8 billion in fines for insider trading to beloved ballclub proprietor.

It started in 2021, when, in his first season as owner, he wondered aloud if he should be an owner like the famously passionate and hands-on George Steinbrenner, according to a source who heard Cohen pose the question.

He learned he was more emotional than he expected and tweeted aggressively, occasionally calling out the team, which peeved front office members, according to sources. He eventually took a step back, though he still periodically shares his thoughts on social media. On Monday, after the Pittsburgh Pirates dominated the Mets in a three-game sweep that featured a mid-series players-only meeting and concluded a league-worst 3-13 stretch, Cohen tweeted he was "as frustrated as everybody else."

The Cohens became a consistent presence at Citi Field, occasionally working out of the stadium and regularly on hand for batting practice before watching games in their suite. Cohen peppered front office executives with questions about player performance and potential acquisitions. He was relentlessly curious and competitive, but not overbearing as he learned the game and found his style.

"He was, I wouldn't say hands-on, but he was interested and he was involved as much as he thought he needed to be," Showalter said. "He kind of let you do your job and asked good questions."

Early in that first season, Cohen invited players, their significant others and their agents to his home for private dinners, soliciting suggestions for the post-Wilpon era.

Nimmo recalled having dinner with his wife, Chelsea, and the Cohens after a Sunday day game at Citi Field. They ate for two hours before Cohen hopped on a work call for Point72, his hedge fund, while Alex showed them around the house. Nimmo emphasized three areas needing improvement: sports science, analytics and accommodations for families. Players found the owners genuinely receptive.

"They listen," Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said. "They don't make decisions based on the moment. They make decisions based on educating themselves. They talk to a lot of people and they make a decision. That's important."

Cohen was swift with changes. He quickly doubled the full-time analytics staff from 13 to 26. He tapped into his Point72 resources in data analytics, including bringing over the company's head of data solutions, Sameer Gupta, to assume the same role with the Mets, and incorporating a team of data engineers and analysts based in the United States and Poland. Gupta left Point72 and the Mets last year.

"Bob Dylan, 'The Times They Are A-Changin','" a source said, "you go through the lyrics in that song and that's how it felt."

Among its tasks, the group of engineers and analysts migrated the organization from a standard server on premises to a cloud-based, scalable solution to store files from new data sources. At one point in 2021, according to sources with knowledge of the situation, Cohen asked employees if he should just buy Driveline Baseball, the data-driven company at the forefront of pitching development over the past decade.

"The way I look at it is the Mets are playing catch-up big time, and they've already covered a lot of ground," Ottavino said. "You could really feel this sense that nothing was going to stop the Cohens from making the Mets one of the top franchises in the game. They were improving every department."

Cohen implemented pay raises across the board after sensing a toxic environment in which employees constantly pushed for promotions because they felt it was the only way to receive more compensation under the previous ownership. In 2022, after employees raised security concerns following a fight on the 7-train subway platform outside Citi Field, the team began offering money for rideshares to employees who stayed at the ballpark late into the night. This year, the team, at the behest of Alex Cohen, who has championed hospitality for player families, opened an expanded family room and day care center, which players have gushed over.

"He's the type of owner everybody wants his team to have," a source said. "He puts his money where his mouth is."

Cohen also renovated Citi Field from the outside in, and emphasized better incorporating the team's history into its present. Five players have had their numbers retired since Cohen bought the team, including Dwight Gooden's No. 16 and Darryl Strawberry's No. 18 last season. David Wright will join the list later this month. In September, the organization will host its inaugural alumni game.

Game production underwent an overhaul, with an emphasis on presenting Mets games as a party in direct response to the "corporate, buttoned-up" Yankees, according to sources. The Mets unveiled a 17,400-square-foot video board in 2023. They've added a dance troupe and a hype man to the in-game entertainment.

Last season, the team embraced an organic identity -- from finding a new good luck charm in Grimace to rallying around infielder José Iglesias' pop-reggaeton track "OMG" -- during an unexpected run to the National League Championship Series. This year, the Mets introduced a mascot race for every home game with each of New York City's five boroughs represented. The Bronx Giraffe, dressed in a dirty white T-shirt, has yet to win.

"There's no way the Wilpons would've done any of the Grimace-type stuff," a source said. "They were much more like, classic, put a baseball game in front of everybody instead of, like, turn this place into a nightclub."

With the makeover, however, came constant personnel churn that in Cohen's hedge fund world is common -- but is not often seen in baseball.

Cohen initially brought back veteran executive Sandy Alderson to oversee baseball and business operations. Alderson stepped down after the 2022 season, leading Cohen to hire Scott Havens as president of baseball operations in November 2023.

But Havens stepped down from his post in May after less than two years. Days later, the organization announced Lew Sherr, the CEO and executive director of the U.S. Tennis Association since 2022, as president of business operations. Sherr's tenure began Tuesday.

In addition to Havens, chief legal officer Katie Pothier, chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg, chief communications officer Nancy Elder and senior vice president of finance Peter Woll have left the organization since November. The shake-up, sources said, reflects Cohen's demanding nature.

"He's not afraid to change personnel, obviously," said Showalter, who was fired as Mets manager at the end of the disappointing 2023 season, shortly after Stearns was hired to oversee baseball operations.

Turnover has seeped into the baseball side, though not always at Cohen's discretion. Under Alderson, general manager Jared Porter was fired in January 2021, one month into his job, after sexual harassment allegations surfaced. Less than a year later, acting general manager Zack Scott was arrested on drunken driving charges and dismissed from his role, though he was later acquitted.

General manager Billy Eppler resigned in October 2023, two years into a four-year contract, while MLB conducted an investigation into whether he directed the team to fabricate injuries to vacate roster spots. MLB eventually suspended Eppler for the 2024 season. Carlos Mendoza, hired before last season from the Yankees, is the Mets' third manager since Cohen bought the team, following Luis Rojas and Showalter.

With Mendoza, who spent 17 years in the Yankees' organization and the final four seasons as manager Aaron Boone's bench coach, and Stearns, a 40-year-old Harvard graduate who shepherded the small-market Milwaukee Brewers to four postseason appearances in seven seasons as general manager, the Mets appear to have found some stability.

"Steve and Alex, they're very involved, but they have let David do his part, do his job, trusting him that he's the right guy," Mendoza said.

CONTINUITY, MEANWHILE, HAS defined the Hal Steinbrenner era in the Bronx, even as many fans have clamored for change during the Yankees' longest stretch without winning a World Series since the mid-'90s.

While Cohen's education has been on the fly, Steinbrenner's instruction began when his father bought the Yankees in 1973. He had a front-row seat to the winning and, people forget, the losing in the '80s and into the '90s. He watched his father's volatility -- the firings, the controversies and his brief banishment from the league.

In contrast, Steinbrenner retained Randy Levine as team president and has kept Cashman as GM despite an ongoing 15-year championship drought. While George Steinbrenner churned through 10 managers and 16 managerial changes in his first 15 years, including Billy Martin's infamous five terms, Boone is just the second skipper of Hal's tenure.

Unlike Cohen and especially unlike his father, Steinbrenner eschews the spotlight. He attends games and goes unnoticed by the public. Steinbrenner, like Cohen, declined comment for this story through a public relations official. Boone said he's a steady presence, stopping by his office to ask questions about the day-to-day machinations of the team, as he did three times on a recent homestand.

"He allows you to do your job, allows his people to do their job," Boone said. "But he's here. He's a presence. He's up here probably about half of our home games. He's not a big extrovert. He's obviously a little more reserved and likes to stay behind the scenes. That being said, he's around. He's invested. Always asking questions."

The job was different when Steinbrenner first took over. Front offices have expanded. The technology in the sport has rapidly advanced. The product itself, from strategy to rules, has evolved. Aggressive spending on players comes with harsher penalties.

"It's hard to compare the George era with the Hal era because there have been significant changes," said Levine, who was hired as Yankees president by George Steinbrenner in 2000. "The game has completely, completely been changed because the rules have changed, what's in the collective bargaining agreement has changed with luxury taxes and revenue sharing. So you've had to adjust based on that."

Through the ever-changing landscape, Steinbrenner has become more assertive in spots both publicly and behind closed doors.

While the Yankees have held tight to some traditions, including refusing to add a City Connect uniform to their rotation, Steinbrenner in February announced the organization would allow uniformed personnel to grow beards, amending the polemic grooming rule his father established in 1976. Days later, the club announced it would play Frank Sinatra's "(Theme From) New York, New York" -- a song synonymous with the franchise since the early 1980s -- only after wins, instead of after every home game regardless of the result.

Steinbrenner has also stepped in during franchise-changing contract negotiations, leading the charge to re-sign Judge and name him captain after the 2022 season, and the attempt to bring back Soto.

"He wants to be involved," Judge said. "He wants to know what's going on. Having that open line of communication, I think, helps a lot and only makes his team better."

The Yankees still spend large sums of money on players. Judge was kept on a nine-year, $360 million contract. Gerrit Cole was signed for nine years and $324 million. Carlos Rodon got $162 million over six years. Max Fried agreed to an eight-year, $218 million deal in December after Soto was offered 16 years and $760 million.

"I think there's been a real graduation of Hal's personal involvement in the franchise in the last five or so years," agent Scott Boras said. "Because of the fact that, I think, Hal has really grown to understand what a Yankee player is and what he wants in a Yankee player."

But they're not the Evil Empire that spooked foes at the turn of the century. A generation of players has entered the league not knowing the Yankees as a championship franchise; the Yankee mystique doesn't register to some. The days of the Core Four and outspending peers for the best players are far in the rearview mirror. As a result, Steinbrenner's continued belief in Cashman and Boone has drawn ire from fans.

The Yankees are now one of three big-market Goliaths -- along with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who beat them in the World Series last October, and their neighbors in Queens. While the Yankees have the third-highest projected competitive balance tax payroll in the majors this season behind the Dodgers and Mets, they have not blown through the fourth-tier luxury tax threshold -- known as "the Cohen tax" around the industry because it was seemingly aimed at Cohen when it was included in the 2022 collective bargaining agreement -- like their deep-pocketed peers.

The Dodgers, backed by billionaire Mark Walter's Guggenheim Baseball group, spend the most money on players and are a profitable entity thanks to unmatched attendance, an incomparable local television deal and a massively lucrative Japanese pipeline powered by Shohei Ohtani.

The Dodgers committed more than $450 million guaranteed to players this past winter and are projected to spend more than $561 million between player payroll and luxury tax payments this season, according to Spotrac. The Mets are in line for a $405.1 million bill while the Yankees are on pace for $360.5 million. The difference between his franchise and the Dodgers prompted Steinbrenner to bemoan, in an interview with the YES Network in January, that "it's difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kind of things that they're doing."

The comment produced eye rolls across the industry, but it was a reminder that the Yankees' place in the hierarchy isn't the same. The Dodgers had an operating income of $21 million in 2024 despite topping the sport with $456 million spent on payroll and luxury taxes while the Yankees operated at a loss of $57 million, according to Forbes.

"We really don't think about what the Dodgers do, what the Mets do," Levine said. "Steve Cohen has a very good relationship with Hal and me and [I] wish him well. We think there's plenty of room for two teams to operate in New York."

COHEN, A MAN worth $21.3 billion according to public figures and whose willingness to absorb losses to build a winner has shifted the paradigm in the country's largest market, spent $1.36 billion in payroll and luxury tax payments in his first four seasons as owner. But he has also asserted a goal is to decrease payroll under the highest tax line, which carries heavier penalties for repeat offenders, with an infusion of young, cheaper talent cultivated in the minor leagues under Stearns' direction. Forbes estimated the Mets operated at a whopping $268 million loss last year.

"I'd like to get below the Cohen tax," Cohen said during spring training. "We sure it's about me? There's a lot of Cohens out there. I was just saying to somebody before: I'm a pauper now compared to the Dodgers."

One way for Cohen to better compete with the behemoth out West hinges on politicians and the New York State Gaming Commission. Cohen, in partnership with Hard Rock International, has pursued an $8 billion mixed-use development across the street from Citi Field, modeled after several projects around the country. The project, called Metropolitan Park, calls for a 25-acre public park, a 5,000-seat indoor music venue, affordable housing, a food hall, retail space and improvements to the subway station that serves the area. Cohen claims the park and businesses would create 23,000 jobs.

In May, the plan cleared a major hurdle when the New York State Senate voted to allow New York City to rezone 50 acres of parking lots around Citi Field to allow the development.

The proposal, however, is contingent on the consortium being given one of three downstate gaming licenses for its hotel and casino.

Cohen and Hard Rock International submitted their casino license application June 27. A Community Advisory Committee made up of six members, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, will vote by Sept. 30 on whether to advance the application to the New York State Gaming Commission. The body is expected to award the licenses in December.

"It's an expensive piece of property to build on," Cohen said in February. "And it really needs an economic engine. Without it, it'd be impossible to make economic sense."

To many baseball people, handing Soto, a Hall of Fame-caliber hitter who doesn't excel in the field or on the bases, a 15-year, $765 million contract did not make much economic sense. But Cohen, as he did with giving Lindor a 10-year, $341 million extension in 2021 and signing veteran ace Justin Verlander to make a run in 2023, pushed for the expenditure. He met Soto twice in person -- the first time in his $32 million Beverly Hills, California, home and the second in his $21.6 million Boca Raton, Florida, house -- and came away from the second meeting convinced Soto would sign with the Yankees.

Two days later, Soto shocked the Mets with his decision. Soto has said the Yankees were the leading choice for much of the process. He enjoyed playing in pinstripes and the intense fan base. Hitting in front of Judge helped produce arguably his most productive full major league season. But the Mets -- beyond compensation that included a $75 million signing bonus and could escalate to $805 million -- offered various perks, including a luxury suite for all home games, four additional premium seats and security for him and his family. And a cultural twist.

Alex Cohen, the president of the Mets' foundation, is of Puerto Rican descent and was instrumental in Soto's recruitment. Her 93-year-old father, Ralph, a rabid Mets fan, flew cross-country for the first meeting with Soto. Family was central to the team's pitch.

"The Mets have gone a really long way to, in my mind, be very pro-Latino player," Ottavino said. "Just in every department, there's a lot of Dominican presence, Puerto Rican presence. ... If you're a Latin player, you're going to feel very comfortable with the Mets. And not to say you wouldn't in other places, but I think they've done a very good job of positioning themselves to be attractive to the high-level Latin player."

Five months after the decision, Soto returned to Yankee Stadium in mid-May for the Subway Series to merciless boos and jeers. It was a visceral reaction from a wounded fan base still not over the rejection. Of course, Soto's former team was in first place. The Yankees are still the Yankees, after all. But Soto left them for the Mets, and the Mets, for once, don't look like they're going anywhere, either.

"This is great for baseball," Showalter said.