The New York Mets and the Need for Luck

Owner Steve Cohen had some really insightful and smart thoughts about the team going into the 2026 MLB season.

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That’s baseball is a common expression that every baseball fan knows all too well. The Atlanta Braves won the NL East fourteen years in a row and won one World Series. That’s baseball. The Tennessee Volunteers had the most dominant regular-season college baseball team this century and didn’t make it out of the Super Regionals. That’s baseball. The San Diego Padres have tried and tried to win the NL Pennant over the last half-decade, but no dice. That’s baseball. Unless you’re a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, all 29 other fanbases understand that this sport, particularly the postseason format, is unpredictable. Ultimately, you want to be in the mix more often than not and let the chips fall where they may.

Interestingly, that seems to be how New York Mets owner Steve Cohen sees things. ESPN’s Jorge Castillo wrote a really good piece on the Mets and all of their offseason changes. At the end of the story, Cohen is quoted as saying the following:

“The longer I’ve been here, the more I’ve realized that all I can do is commit the resources, allow my baseball people to pick the places, and a lot of it goes year-to-year,” Cohen said. “It’s dependent on injuries, it’s dependent on a lot of things. And it’s really hard to predict the future.”

Cohen is completely correct, of course. Not only is he completely correct, but he also showed that he has the best attitude an owner can have in sports. The best three things a team owner can do are provide the resources necessary to compete, hire the right people, and let it all play out. You can do all the right things as an owner, but a bad injury here or a bad match-up there can pop up at any turn. The Mets smartly pried Juan Soto away from their crosstown rival last offseason, and they missed the playoffs. New York missed the postseason last year for a litany of reasons, most of which Cohen and the front office hope don’t repeat themselves in 2026 with so many offseason changes.

But you never know.

Indeed, Cohen and the Mets’ front office don’t know for sure if all of these changes will lead to the results they’re ultimately after. You can only continue to spend some money, take smart swings at the plate, and see what happens.

It was Seneca who once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” The Dodgers needed some luck last year to beat the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series. The latter needed some luck to get by the Seattle Mariners in the ALCS. The Braves needed some luck from role players Jorge Soler and Eddie Rosario to win the 2021 World Series. The Philadelphia Eagles won a Super Bowl the same season their franchise quarterback was injured in Week 14 of the 2017 NFL season and was lost for the entire postseason run. If you simulate the Atlanta Falcons’ 28-3 collapse in Super Bowl LI against the New England Patriots 100 times over, how many versions end with the Falcons still losing the game?

For whatever reason, the word ‘luck’ has a negative connotation oftentimes in sports, but it shouldn’t. The Mets need some luck to get where they want to go this season after their roster overhaul, as the Dodgers do with so many of their key pieces well into their 30s now. Atlanta lost their entire opening-day starting rotation last season. What were the chances of that ever happening? A great owner understands this, but they then continue to provide the necessary resources when Lady Luck forgets to smile on them. They continue to employ the right people. They continue to trust in the preparation.

Then you hope some luck finds your team.

For Cohen, if he can maintain that mindset, there is nothing more a Mets fan can ask out of their owner. In 2023, Buck Showalter was the team’s manager and Billy Eppler was the team’s general manager. That feels like forever ago now. The Dodgers were sold in 2012, but the team did not win its first World Series with their stacked ownership group until 2020, nearly a decade later. Before the last two seasons, Los Angeles had won one championship in their first twelve seasons under this new vaunted ownership group. It may or may not take that long for the Mets to win their first championship under Cohen. They may never win one, too, but that’s baseball.