Is the Steve Cohen deal to buy 80% of the New York Mets dead? Is it on life support? Is Cohen walking away from the table a negotiating tactic? Or is it a last-ditch effort on the part of Jeff Wilpon to maintain control of the team out of sheer desperation and a grifter’s skill at survival?

No one seems to know with any certainty, so anything is possible.

The idea of a Twitter poll was floated to use in conjunction with an assessment of the latest embarrassing moment in the history of the Mets since they have been under the stewardship of the Wilpons. The poll, had it been used, would have asked whether the fans want Wilpon to stay on as owner. Even with the inherent lunacy of Twitter in general and #MetsTwitter in particular, there was no point. The results would look similar to a poll held by Pravda under Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union with the sole difference being that said results of any Mets poll are an accurate gauge as to Jeff’s standing among Mets fans.

Miraculously, as a byproduct of the Mets having had some success over the Wilpon’s tenure and the failures of other franchise ownerships in New York, it could be argued that Jim Dolan has been worse at running the New York Knicks and Woody Johnson has been worse at running the New York Jets. The New York Giants have been in such disarray that John Mara and Robert Tisch are working their way up the ladder as well.

Still, the epitome of perception of ownership ineptitude in New York has been the Wilpons. Some of it is unfair. It’s not as if the Mets do not spend money at all – they currently have the eighth highest payroll in Major League Baseball; they do try to please the fans and run the team the “right” way, whatever that means. The combination of off-field scandal and allegations of multiple financial misdeeds cast a shadow over anything they have done correctly.

Now, just when the fans and media thought they would be done with the Wilpons, the snag came about. As understandable as it is for the skeptics who were just waiting for the deal to come undone and who expect the Wilpons to have control of the organization forever (and ever, and ever, and ever) the reality of them moving forward with a sale at all indicates that there is no going back.

They must sell.

This is just another example of not knowing when it’s time to leave and that the final, desperate attempt to attach themselves to the business like a barnacle will ultimately fail. They will be scraped off and dragged out, eventually. That could be – and presumably will be – by Cohen. If not, it will be done by another billionaire.

Since co-owner Saul Katz wants the money from the sale; Fred Wilpon went along with the sale; the heirs all seem to want out to avoid an extended battle over their cut; and Jeff being the only one who is holding out, the sale is inevitable.

The problem is that Jeff is returning to his playbook to change the terms, remain in charge and use Cohen’s money to do it. It’s a familiar trick and one that the seasoned financial professional Cohen is wise to. If Jeff thinks he’ll bully Cohen, he’s wrong.

Regarding the five-year window in which Jeff will stay on as chief operating officer, who in their right mind thought a financial titan like Cohen would sit quietly by and allow Jeff to use his massive cash infusion as finance? Add in that when an embattled individual in any area of life requests a finite amount of time and wants to “stay just until…” they have no intention of abiding by the agreement and leaving. They’re staying. It’s a method of kicking the relevant issues down the road; trying to find another source of cash; figuring out later, later.

To their grudging credit, the Wilpons have managed it for more than a decade after Bernie Madoff and scores of other scandals. This time, however, Jeff is standing alone and trying to outfox a wolf. It won’t work.

The inevitable trade of Mookie Betts was finally completed as the Boston Red Sox sent him and David Price to the Los Angeles Dodgers for outfielder Alex Verdugo. The Minnesota Twins sent their top pitching prospect, Brudstar Graterol to Boston. Kenta Maeda went from Los Angeles to Minnesota.

This deal has elicited over-the-top reactions with some fans and media entities going so far as to compare it to the sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees a century ago.

That catastrophic deal aside, let’s take an objective look at this trade.

Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox are punting the 2020 season.

Is this news?

They’ve been telegraphing their decision to do so since they fired Dave Dombrowski, made clear they were not spending big to fill glaring holes, were intent on reallocating funds and getting their payroll under control.

Aesthetically, trading Betts might not be preferable, but it was necessary when accounting for the various moving parts. What good does he do them in 2020 when they have done nothing to improve from their disappointing 2019 campaign; have a new head of baseball operations in Chaim Bloom whose sensibilities trend more to spreading money out and holding onto prospects, draft picks and international spending money; needed to fire their manager because of his role in the Houston Astros and Red Sox sign-stealing; and had a bloated payroll with a declining farm system?

When a club is trading a star the magnitude of Betts, it’s next-to-impossible to get a return the fans and media will be happy with. When that star is set to be a free agent at the end of the season and will cost as much as $400 million to re-sign, getting even an acceptable return is difficult.

If he was not going to sign an extension and the Red Sox – trapped in the American League East with the loaded Yankees and talented Tampa Bay Rays – knew that a championship run was unrealistic, why bother? Betts starting the season with a compromised Red Sox team was a risky distraction. Sure, they could trade him at midseason, but would probably get less than the offer on the table. The attachment of Price’s contract was a financial windfall for an aging pitcher with a lot of wear on his tires who was not well-liked in Boston. They could have held onto Betts and hoped he would return after testing free agency, but that could leave them with nothing.

Rather than hold out for a package of prospects listed among the best in the arbitrary minor-league rankings, the Red Sox chose to get two well-regarded young players, clear Price’s salary, and get this over and done with so they can deal with the next issue on their list: hiring a manager to replace Alex Cora.

If Betts is dead set on trying free agency, the Red Sox can sign him after 2020 for the same amount of money it would have cost them to get an extension and they’ll also have Verdugo and Graterol.

As for the fan reaction to the trade, the club cannot worry about that. It wasn’t that long ago that the most hardened, jaded and worn down denizens of Fenway Park would have traded anything and anyone to get that elusive World Series win. They won it in 2004; won another one three years later; and suddenly, anything short of a preseason projection for a championship was not good enough. Most non-Yankee fans would be thrilled with one championship in their lifetime. The Red Sox have won four in 15 years. Is it too much for the organization to say they’re retooling and want to get the payroll under control after allowing Dombrowski to spend whatever was needed in money and prospect capital to win another title in 2018?

Betts is one of the top five players in baseball, but he was essentially useless to the Red Sox given the club’s construction and realistic expectations. It was better to settle this now, take the beating and move on. All in all, they did well in getting Verdugo, Graterol and clearing half of Price’s money off their ledger. To insinuate that John Henry and Tom Werner are being “cheap” is preposterous. They’ll spend to get better when the time is right. That time is not now.

Los Angeles Dodgers

After consecutive World Series losses in 2017 and 2018 and then getting bounced by the Washington Nationals in the 2019 National League Division Series, there was an argument for the Dodgers to drop a bomb in the clubhouse and make a dramatic change to shuffle the deck. Instead, they sat by quietly and made no major acquisitions…until trading for one of the best players in baseball and a starting pitcher who should thrive in the Dodgers’ sheltered, laid-back, stat-centric, defense-first environment. Boston always seemed slightly too intense for him. In Los Angeles, he won’t live every day hearing about how he wilts every time he faces the Yankees…at least until October.

As talented as Verdugo is, that he and Maeda were the only pieces the Dodgers surrendered to get Betts is amazing and shows the value of not panicking to quell fan anger. Verdugo was an extra piece on a team loaded with outfielders. In context, it’s a small price to pay. Maeda was versatile and productive for the Dodgers, but they squeezed out about as much as anyone could have reasonably expected from an unheralded signing from Japan. He’s not making a lot of money ($3 million per year through 2023) and he’s replaceable.

Had the Dodgers surrendered a massive prospect haul for Betts and not taken Price, the deal could have been scrutinized further. Did they need Betts? Not desperately. They have sufficient depth and versatility that they would score enough runs to stay in contention through the trade deadline when they can address specific needs with their deep farm system. This, however, was a preseason strike to get the player who would have been on every contender’s list at the deadline. He improves an already superlative defense; he adds power, speed and has postseason experience. Singing for his free agent supper puts the pieces in place for another Most Valuable Player-caliber year. The Dodgers have the money to retain him, but if it doesn’t make sense, they will let him walk without having surrendered the entire farm system to acquire him.

Minnesota Twins

Trading prospects – even the “top” prospect in an organization – is rarely done without reason. The Twins, under president of baseball operations Derek Falvey, do not make moves haphazardly. Rest assured, there is a reason they traded Graterol for a middling arm like Maeda. It’s just hard to see what that reason is.

There is an assessment floating around that Graterol is better suited to the bullpen. He throws in the triple-digits, averaging 99-mph on his fastball and sinker. Still, it’s not out of line to ask why the Twins would trade him for Maeda. They certainly had a need for another arm, but the best pitching prospect in the organization is an uneven return for someone like Maeda. It’s not crazy to compare this move to one the Twins made at the 2010 trade deadline trading top catching prospect Wilson Ramos to the Washington Nationals for reliever Matt Capps. This failed deal was a main reason then-GM Bill Smith got fired. The explanation that they already had a star catcher in Joe Mauer did not justify trading their best prospect at a difficult-to-fill position for a mediocre relief pitcher.

Even well-regarded prospects have concerns. It’s important to remember that the prospect assessments are not from the clubs themselves, but from outside entities who are not privy to all the information that a club has on its own talent.

The decision to trade such a key young player for Maeda is the most puzzling part of a deal that is understandable from the perspectives of the main cogs: the Red Sox and Dodgers.

After Kris Bryant’s service time grievance was decided in favor of the Chicago Cubs, he said he holds no ill will toward the organization. True or not, he likely knew the inevitable outcome when he filed. If he remains with the Cubs for the duration of his years of team control or is traded, he will not be a free agent until after 2021. Had the decision been in his favor, his free agency would have been after 2020.

The club’s clear attempt to keep him under team control for an extra year was done intentionally. Had there been a clear and fair performance based analysis, Bryant’s spring training numbers in his rookie year of 2015 warranted nothing less than him being on the major-league roster from day one.

In 14 spring training games, he posted a slash of .425/.477/1.175 with 9 home runs. Nothing more needs to be said as to what the Cubs were doing. The goal was to maintain that year of team control by keeping him in the minors long enough so he would not reach the service time cutoff for a single year.

Bryant was recalled from Triple-A once he could not reach the number of days where he would garner a full year of service time. He won the National League Rookie of the Year; the Cubs made the playoffs – a year earlier than Theo Epstein’s front office expected; and advanced to the National League Championship Series before being eliminated.

From the Cubs’ perspective, there is no denying that it was a successful strategy. Developmentally, it did not hurt Bryant. He won the Most Valuable Player in 2016 and the Cubs won their elusive World Series.

Still, Bryant’s displeasure with how the Cubs manipulated his service time led to the grievance. Experts and analysts knew how the grievance would be decided and they were right as it ended in the Cubs favor. However, Bryant’s move – while not self-sacrificing on the level of Curt Flood as he protested being traded and fought baseball’s reserve clause – will impact future players.

A year before the Cubs and Bryant even became a story, the Houston Astros (remember them?) were accused of using worse tactics with George Springer. At the time, the Astros were in year three of their rebuild and were on their way to losing 92 games. This was a 19-game improvement over 2013. Springer, 23 at the time and a consensus top-20 prospect in baseball, had been approached about a pre-promotion contract extension in 2013, which he rebuffed.

According to him and his agent, the Astros responded by keeping him in the minors to stop him from accruing service time. This would not have been an issue had he signed the contract extension. In the end, he did not file the grievance, but this is something the players were aware was happening and have been clearly seeking methods to prevent.

This illustrates the cold-bloodedness and acceptance of reality that is the hallmark of most MLB front offices in today’s game. Keenly aware of their right to use this sleight of hand and knowing they will not face punishment for it, there’s no reason not to do it. And once there’s no reason not to do it, teams will push further and further to the extreme.

Before contract and finance experts were employed by every front office and whose sole function was to manipulate the rules, if teams even thought about this sort of maneuvering, they kept it to themselves and were opaque in how it was done. Nowadays, success is not defined by winning a championship, but by the number of books written about how that championship was won; whether that front office formulated an innovative strategy; and if the owner spent as little money as possible to win it due to direct action on the part of that front office, ethical or not.

The spirit of the service time rule was not so teams could base their decision to recall a player based on how long they would keep his salary as low as possible. It’s doubtful that the MLBPA negotiators – or even the MLB negotiators – even considered that as an alternative. When the highly educated financial whiz kids entered baseball and sought to maximize profit while minimizing spending. Part of that was exploiting an enormous loophole.

The question is: Can the loophole be closed or would a viable solution simply be another challenge for front offices to decimate?

Bryant’s case was clear-cut since he demolished the ball in spring training. But not all cases are that obvious. Certainly, teams can do what the New York Mets did with Pete Alonso in spring training 2019 when they told him if he earned the right to be on the roster to start the season, he would be on the roster to start the season. He did and he was.

In the long run, the argument could be made that the Mets would have been better served to send him to the minors for two weeks to get that extra year of team control just like the Cubs did with Bryant. To their credit, the Mets did accrue some capital with players throughout baseball when general manager Brodie Van Wagenen told Alonso he’d be judged on merit and, with ownership approval, followed through. Had the Mets demoted him to save a few bucks, would Alonso have hit 53 home runs, posted a .941 OPS and, as a rookie, walked into a clubhouse full of veterans and took over as the team’s unquestioned leader like Derek Jeter did with the Yankees in 1996?

Maybe.

But it would also have caused an unnecessary fissure between the sides. Perhaps the Mets’ treatment of Alonso will end up saving them more money due to the player’s potential agreeableness in signing a reasonable contract extension and not squeezing the team for every dollar to recoup what he would have lost.

Most teams will not do what the Mets did while they have the option to save some money.

Change can only be achieved by adjusting the rules. While there are parameters that MLB and the MLBPA must adhere to, there will be attempts to circumnavigate them. The current CBA expires after the 2021 season. The negotiations are bound to be contentious not only because of service time manipulation, but accusations of collusion to keep the salaries of mid-level free agents in line.

Due to clear displeasure among the rank and file player, the MLBPA will take a hard line against this behavior in the next labor deal. Currently, the options are as follows:

• Change the template for service time by, for example, cutting the number of days in the first year in half so the player’s absence from the big league roster will damage the club.
• Let players receive salary arbitration after two years instead of three.
• Let the players be free agents after their fourth or fifth year instead of after the sixth.
• Give the players a legitimate process to complain with a panel to hear the case and decide when the reason for the demotion is so blatant that the club doesn’t even deny what it is doing.

The adversarial relationship between club and player is the worst it’s been since the days of collusion in the late-1980s. The difference is that back then, the teams were clumsy about what they were doing, unabashedly flouted the free market and the CBA to smother free agency, and left the courts with no choice but to decide in favor of the players. It ended up costing them exponentially more than it saved.

The problem is that front offices are no longer that clumsy and outright stupid.

Blaming Epstein for sending Bryant to the minors is too simple. The benefit to do it was there, the Cubs did it, and it worked. It’s a technicality that the MLBPA negotiators never considered. Now, they not only need to consider it, they need to fix it too.