Steve Cohen lectures Steven Matz’s agent on professionalism in absurdly unprofessional tweet

New York Mets owner Steve Cohen subtweeted Steven Matz and his agent for signing with the St. Louis Cardinals at the last minute. 

The Mets have had a rough time of it this offseason.

No one wanted to be their president, they just landed their GM Billy Eppler after an excruciating search, and now, players appear to be backing out of deals at the last minute.

The Mets are still in the hunt for a pitcher, and it seems they were ready to finalize a deal with Steven Matz. At the last minute, Matz signed a four-year, $44 million deal with the St. Louis Cardinals. Eppler told Matz’s agent, Rob Marin, that he was “upset.”

Clearly, the Mets camp wasn’t happy with the way Matz’s agent handed the negotiations, but Mets owner Steve Cohen took the situation to another level when he subtweeted Marin on Twitter.

“I’m not happy this morning,” Cohen said. “I’ve never seen such unprofessional behavior exhibited by a player’s agent. I guess words and promises don’t matter.”

Steve Cohen lectures Steven Matz’ agent on “unprofessionalism”

The irony is that for all his posturing on professionalism, Cohen’s public critique of Marin is seen as unprofessional itself. Hot 97 radio host Peter Rosenberg even told Cohen to “stop talking and handle your business.”

But not everyone agrees that Cohen should have restrained his Twitter fingers this morning when he heard the Matz news. Sports editor Howard Megdal argued that Cohen’s tweet is “providing real-time windows into ownership’s thinking.”

The issue with this argument is that Cohen’s tweeting may not inhibit his ability to sign players, but it could potentially prevent players from wanting to sign with his team.

The whole reason that the Mets have struggled to bring anyone to their organization and continue to overpay players to stay is because of their reputation as a dysfunctional organization. If the owner is tweeting about his unhappiness with agents, then MLB agents across the league will be less likely to negotiate with him.

Cohen’s tweet just made Eppler’s job that much harder, and it puts a strain on an organization that is already struggling to improve their reputation.

If Cohen is already subtweeting agents in November, this is going to be a long offseason for the Mets.