The New York Mets are in the process of an ownership change that will see the Wilpon family give way to Steve Cohen, a hedge fund billionaire with a lifelong dream of owning the team at some point in his life.
There is already an agreement between the current owners and Cohen, but to make things official, MLB owners would need to approve the sale.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said during the Big Time Baseball podcast with Jon Heyman and Tony Gwynn Jr. that he expects the process to be fast and swift, even using the words “as quickly as possible.”
“With respect to the (ownership) change, all I’m gonna say on that one is we’re gonna try to process this as quickly as possible,” Manfred said. “It’s up to the owners, ultimately, as to whether Mr. Cohen will be approved.
“I think given the time of year, we would like to move this along as quickly as possible so that the Mets have certainty as they go into the offseason (and it’s) absolutely clear who’s making the decisions about how the roster is gonna be put together, what the budget is, and what the 2021 version of the New York Mets is going to look like.”
Will the new Mets’ owner be approved?
Word around the baseball industry is that the New York Mets’ new owner would be approved during the annual Winter Meetings, scheduled for November 2020, but it would appear that Manfred wants it to be official even sooner.
When Cohen gets the green light to take over the Mets, he already announced that he will appoint old friend Sandy Alderson, who was the general manager between 2010 and 2018, as the team president.
SNY’s Andy Martino recently reported that while there is not a sure thing that Cohen gets approved by the owners, the presence of Alderson in his team increases those odds, as it “should create the needed support to win the vote.”
Manfred also praised current Mets owner Fred Wilpon.
“Fred Wilpon has been a great owner of the Mets for a substantial period of time,” Manfred said. “He’s really well-respected among the other owners. Whatever the outcome, the result, nobody wanted to win more than Fred Wilpon. He desperately wanted to deliver a winner on a consistent basis to Mets fans.”