WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT NEW METS INTERIM MANAGER AFTER CARLOS MENDOZA'S FIRING

Mar 30, 2026; St. Louis, Missouri, USA; New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza (64) looks on before a game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-Imagn Images

Fans of the New York Mets can exhale now that Carlos Mendoza has been let go.

But who is the Mets’ new manager, and what is New York getting in interim manager Andy Green?

Green, the former Mets player who has been a coach since 2012, is taking over for Mendoza, who was fired Friday after the Mets went 34-47 in their first 81 games.

Mets fans of a certain age will remember Green from his one-season tenure in Queens (2009) or his three seasons as a player for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Or you may recall his three-plus years as the manager of the San Diego Padres.

Andy Green Played for the Mets and Managed the Padres

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New Mets interim manager Andy Green finished his playing career with the Mets and managed the San Diego Padres for four seasons between 2016-19.

Green came up in the D-backs system as a scrappy 5-9, 165-pound infielder who was chosen in the 24th round of the 2000 MLB Draft — a round that doesn’t even exist anymore.

So you can bet Green will want to push the Mets to be scrappier, hungrier and more intense over the second half of this season.

The Mets will be Green’s second role as a major-league manager. He spent three-plus seasons managing the Padres (2016-19) and finished with a .428 win% before he was fired with one week remaining in the 2019 season, posting a 69-85 record before being let go in September.

The Padres then made the playoffs in the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season, going 37-23.

Green only played 140 big-league games and finished his big-league career with a .547 OPS and two home runs. His attitude was enough to earn a job in the D-backs system as the manager in Missoula of the Pioneer League.

He won the title there in 2012 then was named Southern League manager of the year in 2013 and 2014 before being promoted to D-backs third base coach.

The Mets’ Manager Search is Officially on

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Alex Cora is likely to be high on the list of candidates for the Mets’ manager role.

The Mets may have put Andy Green in place to ride out the rest of the season, but you can bet they will leave no stone unturned in their pursuit of their next manager.

Mendoza was well-thought-of candidate from the New York Yankees organization that pushed all the right buttons in 2024, when they went to the NLCS. But owner Steve Cohen has already flexed his financial might in signing Juan Soto and luring David Stearns from the Milwaukee Brewers.

You can be sure he’ll do the same when finding his next manager.

So Alex Cora immediately comes to mind as the top candidate for the Mets job. He, of course, was fired by the Boston Red Sox in April then turned down the Philadelphia Phillies role, which ultimately went to former-Yankees great and 2020 NL manager of the year Don Mattingly.

Cora could again be a candidate for the Phillies role, which makes it imperative that the Mets at least bring him in for an interview — especially with the Phillies playing well under Mattingly.

Cora, of course, won the World Series in Boston in 2018 and boasts a .534 win% over his 1,161-game tenure as a manager. Other candidates will arise, including Mattingly if he is not retained by the Phillies.

But Cora has to be the first option for the Mets.

- Pat Pickens

'IT'S JUST BUSINESS': HOW STEVE COHEN RAN A HEDGE FUND LIKE A BASEBALL TEAM

Billionaire's decision to step back from trading and focus on running Point72 underlines redemption since SAC insider trading.

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Steve Cohen used to charter a yacht in the Mediterranean with friend and art dealer Larry Gagosian. But he never really switched off.

“We’d be in the middle of a wonderful dinner in Italy and he’d have to race back to the boat to trade,” said Gagosian, recalling how the hedge fund billionaire would have screens installed below deck to create a de facto trading floor.

“I said, Steve, I love you, and I love taking trips with you, but it’s not the most relaxing.”

However, after an investment career spanning almost half a century, Cohen, 68, announced this week he was stepping back from trading at Point72, the hedge fund he set up a decade ago, to focus on running the firm.

Point72, which manages around $35bn, rose from the ashes of an insider trading scandal at its predecessor SAC Capital that cost $1.8bn to settle, with Cohen subsequently barred for two years from managing external investors’ money.

As the firm has grown rapidly over the past few years, the relative size of Cohen’s trading book has shrunk — a letter to investors this week said it was less than 1 per cent of the firm’s overall portfolio.

“He believes his strategic guidance and intervention will have a greater impact” than his individual trading on the firm’s investment performance, the letter said.

Cohen has many other interests, ranging from ownership of his beloved New York Mets and philanthropy supporting veterans and children’s health to an art collection worth more than $1bn that includes works by Pablo Picasso, Jeff Koons and Alberto Giacometti. What distinguishes him as a collector is that he “is just as interested in seeing a new artist as going after a trophy”, said Gagosian, which is “not always the case”.

This week’s move underlines how Cohen is preparing Point72 to outlast him. The firm said he would be “taking a break from trading his own book”.

Born in 1956 and raised in Great Neck, New York, the third of seven siblings, Cohen credits playing poker at high school with teaching him “how to take risks”.

He began his investment career in 1978 trading options at brokerage Gruntal & Co before setting up SAC Capital in 1992, named after his initials.

The hedge fund industry was in its infancy and the early SAC was known for its cut and thrust atmosphere, juicy payouts for those who did well — and a disposable approach to talent.

Cohen was even known to fire people on the spot if they disappointed him, according to one person who used to work with him at SAC.

“Steve treated the business like a baseball team — if your shortstop is not performing then you trade him for someone else,” the person said. “There’s no personal relationship, it’s just business.”

Cohen surrounded himself with the top moneymakers but sitting close to him could be intimidating. He expected his employees to share his ferocious work ethic, quizzing them during Sunday meetings to prepare for market opening the following day.

“He is not an easy gentleman, he is not a wallflower,” said a second colleague from the SAC years. “He’s a very complicated individual but very smart, a very good trader and knows how to reinvent himself.”

Supporters of Cohen say his edge came from a seemingly instinctive ability to spot market patterns and, as the years rolled on, his experience.

“Whatever’s going on, he’s seen it all before . . . he has seen it and every iteration of it,” said the first person who worked with him.

From 1992 to 2013, SAC boasted annual returns of about 30 per cent, making it one of the world’s top performing hedge funds.

Investors clamoured for access, coughing up an annual management fee of roughly 3 per cent and up to an enormous 50 per cent performance fee, far higher than the industry standard “two and 20”.

Growing to manage more than $15bn at its peak, SAC’s returns seemed almost too good to be true. They were.

In 2013 a team of New York prosecutors led by US attorney Preet Bharara brought several charges against Cohen’s SAC Capital and affiliated firms. It alleged that insider trading at SAC was “substantial, pervasive and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry”.

They said numerous portfolio managers and research analysts obtained “material, non-public information” from “dozens” of listed companies and then traded on that inside information.

SAC incentivised portfolio managers or analysts that brought “high conviction” trading ideas to Cohen where they had an “edge” over the competition, the indictment said, with portfolio managers and analysts encouraged to pursue “industry contact networks” — but without effective controls to make sure they were not receiving inside information.

SAC Capital pleaded guilty in a $1.8bn settlement, the largest ever for insider trading. But prosecutors ultimately stopped short of charging Cohen — who did not admit personal fault — with criminal or civil insider trading charges, believing they did not have enough evidence.

For a time he appeared to retrench, managing his own money in Point72, which was set up as a family office.

By 2018 he had opened it up to external investors and after a difficult first year when the fund was flat, Point72 began, in Cohen’s customary baseball lingo, “hitting doubles” — gaining more than 10 per cent in every year except 2021.

Those who know him say that as the hedge fund industry has become more institutional and straight laced, Cohen has also mellowed with age.

But he still has his quirks. Ahead of one visit to the London office, the fridge was stocked with Dr Pepper, Skittles and Post-it notes warning “do not touch”, according to a person familiar with the situation, while the local team made sure the air conditioning was suitably cool for the boss.

Point72 employs 2,800 people, runs more than double the assets of SAC at its peak and marks one of the hedge fund industry’s greatest redemption stories.

In an unforgiving industry, Cohen is notable for his longevity, and regarded as a pioneer of the so-called multi-manager hedge fund approach, alongside Citadel’s Ken Griffin and Millennium Management’s Izzy Englander.

Like Pete Rose, the baseball player whose legacy was later soured by sports gambling, Cohen’s brush with the law means even the “best hitter ever” has a “little asterisk” next to his name, said one rival hedge fund manager who knows him.

But they added: “Stevie can still have another chapter.”

Cohen and Point72 declined to comment.

For Gagosian, his friend’s shift from player to coach may mean their holidays can resume.

“We stopped chartering boats together,” he said. “Maybe now we’ll do it again.”

- Costas Mourselas and Harriet Agnew 

METS HIT WITH RECORD $101M LUXURY TAX

Steve Cohen. USA TODAY Sports 

With the league's highest ever tax payroll, the New York Mets top the list of an unprecedented eight Major League Baseball teams that owe a luxury tax for the 2023 season, according to multiple reports.

Owner Steve Cohen's Mets owe a record luxury tax of almost $101 million, according to numbers finalized by MLB this week and obtained by the Associated Press. The Mets' $374.7 million tax payroll tops the previous high of $291.1 million by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2015.

The money spent didn't help the Mets, who finished at 75-87 and in fourth place in the National League East.

It would have been even worse for the Mets if not for their selling bonanza over the summer, trading Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, David Robertson and Mark Canha. Those moves reportedly saved the team $18 million and prevented them from jumping past the next tax threshold and owing an even higher luxury tax.

SOURCES: JAPANESE STAR YOSHINOBU YAMAMOTO GOES TO DODGERS FOR 12 YEARS, $325M

Japanese star Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in agreement on a 12-year, $325 million contract, sources told ESPN on Thursday, ending a frenzied free agency with the largest deal for a pitcher in years and value in Major League Baseball history.

The deal, for which Los Angeles will pay an additional $50.6 million posting fee to Yamamoto's previous team, the Orix Buffaloes, pushed the Dodgers' free agent spending this winter to more than $1 billion, following the 10-year, $700 million contract they gave to Shohei Ohtani, Yamamoto's countryman.

Yamamoto, who has a pair of opt-outs in the contract, will receive a $50 million signing bonus, sources said. Unlike Ohtani's deal, in which $680 million is deferred 10 years out, Yamamoto's contract does not contain any deferred money.

The deal, which is pending a physical, comes after a wild 48 hours in which the Dodgers outlasted the New York Mets, who offered a similar contract, and the New York Yankees, who were long the favorite but ended up offering $300 million, sources said. The Philadelphia Phillies, San Francisco Giants, Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays were in the bidding, too, but couldn't overcome the Dodgers, who have now accounted for more than half the spending across MLB in free agency this winter.