On Dec. 8, 2024, Juan Soto shocked the baseball world. The four-time All-Star and five-time Silver Slugger took a $765 million trip from the Bronx to Queens to join the New York Mets. A couple of weeks before the Soto news dropped, another Dominican player made waves by exiting a New York City ball club: Luis Severino signed a three-year, $67 million contract to leave the Mets and join the Athletics.
These two signings represent opposite ends of the MLB owner spectrum. On one end, Mets owner Steve Cohen inks a young superstar to the most lucrative deal in professional sports history. Since Cohen bought the team in 2020, the Mets have never had less than the eighth-highest payroll in the league. They spent more than every other team in 2023 and 2024. On the other end is John Fisher and his Athletics. Although the Severino signing represents the largest contract in Athletics history, Fisher most likely only authorized it to qualify for MLB’s revenue-sharing system, which divides a portion of the league’s total profits between the 30 teams. Fisher has exploited this structure to reap profits, despite the A’s languishing in the bottom of the standings and struggling to sell tickets.
Cohen embodies what every fan wants from their team’s owner: someone who can accept some financial losses to spend what it takes to win on the field. With a net worth of $20 billion, Cohen is the richest owner in the league and acts like it — he has leveraged his deep pockets to consistently attract high-end talent to his team. Since he bought the Mets, they have signed future hall-of-famers Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, and, now, Juan Soto. They also traded for Francisco Lindor and signed him to a 10-year, $341 million extension. While some of these moves panned out better than others, Cohen’s aggressive spending resulted in a team that pushed the eventual champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, to six games in the National League Championship Series. With the addition of Soto, the Mets are poised to contend in the National League for years to come.
Cohen did have to part ways with a considerable amount of money to accomplish this success, as the Mets reported $138.5 million of losses in 2022, the highest mark in MLB that year. However, just like every other owner in the league, Cohen is a billionaire who does not necessarily need to make a profit from his team. What separates Cohen from many other MLB owners is that his goal is purely to win. Signing Soto was a financially risky move that Cohen was willing to take in order to help the Mets win games.
Cohen has more money to spend than the 29 other MLB owners, but all of them are ultra-wealthy individuals. Many of them could own better baseball teams if they were willing to spend more. Smaller market teams like the Cleveland Guardians and Kansas City Royals deserve credit for signing their superstars — Jose Ramirez and Bobby Witt Jr., respectively — to large extensions. While their balance sheets might look prettier without these deals, these signings demonstrate a commitment to winning that cultivates trust and support from fanbases.
Not every owner can be as audacious as Cohen and the Mets. However, they could adopt a similar strategy of pursuing on-field success over monetary gains — perhaps scaled down to their respective market sizes and financial situations.
While it is a truism to say that baseball teams would be better if their owners spent more money, the key point is that the main distinction between the higher-spending teams and the lower-spending teams is not how much money they have but how much of it they are willing to spend.
No one represents this more than John Fisher. His greedy penny-pinching has sucked the soul out of one of the most vibrant fanbases in sports, and now he has ripped the team away from these fans. Since Fisher bought the A’s in 2005, they have been at or near the bottom of the league in payroll. Throughout his tenure, several A’s fan favorites have been traded so Fisher could avoid paying costly contract extensions. Players like Josh Donaldson, Matt Chapman, and Matt Olson captivated the Oakland Coliseum throughout the 2010s, but there was always a tacit understanding that they would not don the green and gold for long. A’s fans became understandably disillusioned with the organization’s blatant disinterest in winning, leading to low attendance and the team’s move from Oakland to Sacramento this year — and eventually to Las Vegas in 2028.
Fisher’s business model is to spend as little as possible and profit through the MLB’s revenue sharing system. He could not care less if the A’s win one game or 100; he would happily pay the lowest payroll in the league as long as he brings in more money than he spends. In 2022, he exploited this system to post the fifth-highest profit in the league despite the A’s having the lowest average attendance in the league and the second-worst record in MLB. Fisher undoubtedly considered 2022 to be a great year for the 60-102 Oakland Athletics.
On the surface, the Severino signing seems like a departure from this strategy. It could be a sign that Fisher wants to compete now that the A’s have left Oakland and will soon have a new stadium in Las Vegas. However, upon closer inspection, it is clear that this is a continuation of the same tactic.
Sports Illustrated reported that the A’s are under mounting scrutiny from the MLB Players Association over their misuse of revenue-sharing funds and are required to raise their payroll to $105 million for the 2025 season in order to continue receiving revenue-sharing money. With this information and Fisher’s reputation, the signing seems more like begrudging obedience to the MLBPA than a genuine effort to compete.
Nevertheless, Severino is a talented pitcher who will help the A’s, who have some intriguing bats but a desperate need for pitching. Perhaps they will improve with him and whoever else the A’s bring in to hit the $105 million mark.
Even so, these games will be played in a minor league park in Sacramento in front of a handful of indifferent onlookers searching for something to do in the dog days of summer. As soon as the MLBPA is satisfied with the A’s efforts to compete, Fisher will trade away the team’s valuable assets and erase any semblance of progress — as he has done many times in the past. This is the result of an owner who exclusively looks out for himself and does not care about the team he owns nor its fans.
