Is Mets’ Steve Cohen really the villain among MLB owners?

As the saying goes, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Well, Steve Cohen has definitely seen both ends of this prophecy since becoming owner of the New York Mets.

To Mets fans, he has been a beacon of hope and a breath of fresh air, bringing his billions of dollars to the team as they’ve spent record amounts of money on player acquisitions. This represented a noticeable shift from the days of the penny-pinching, Ponzi scheme-languishing Wilpons.

But to the rest of baseball, he’s been something of a pot-stirrer since entering the fray. Particularly when he’s making comments like this:

Mets owner Steve Cohen doesn’t believe he’s wrong for spending his money

Maybe Steve Cohen is a villain to the small-market owners in the game like the Reds’ Bob Castellini and the Pirates’ Bob Nutting. And perhaps to deep-pocketed owners who refuse to spend gobs of money like Oakland’s John Fisher or Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox, the latter of whom complains publicly about Cohen’s spending.

Or, Cohen is finally here to change the narrative about player spending and what it really takes to win. After all, in his words, “They’re putting it on me. Maybe they need to look more at themselves.”

Talk is cheap. And owners do plenty of it as they’ve ridiculed Cohen for his free-spending tendencies and how he’s made light of baseball’s luxury tax system. But the rules are the rules, and no one in baseball has said you couldn’t spend above a tax threshold, only that you have to pay it. That new Steve Cohen tax? As long as he pays it, he’s just following protocol.

Baseball has never been like the other sports. It doesn’t have a salary cap or a floor. It doesn’t impose hard limits on player movement. And Steve Cohen is illustrating just how much you can take advantage of these “rules.”

None of these baseball owners can cry cheap. They’re all worth millions, if not billions, of dollars. If they really cared about improving their on-field product, they’d do what Cohen is doing. Or John Middleton of the Phillies, or Ray Davis of the Texas Rangers.

To this end, owners have gone over the luxury tax before. But all of a sudden, it appears to be a crime when Steve Cohen does, and to the extent that he does. Or maybe, it really is time for baseball to look in the mirror. Because Cohen is just following the (written) rules.