Steve Cohen Reshapes Mets With Billions, Juan Soto and MetsGPT
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Steve Cohen Reshapes Mets With Billions, Juan Soto and MetsGPT
Giles Turner
Updated 4 min read
(Bloomberg) — When Steve Cohen made his pitch for free-agent outfielder Juan Soto to join the New York Mets, he talked about his career as one of the world’s best-known hedge fund managers — even though the baseball team is looking less and less toward its owner’s financial empire for an edge.
The 68-year-old billionaire has been credited with using trading-floor savvy and technological expertise to help run the Mets, New York’s baseball underdog. This week, he made his biggest move so far, luring Soto away from the crosstown rival Yankees with a record 15-year, $765 million contract.
The team will introduce its new star slugger on Thursday at a Citi Field news conference.
Cohen has long been one of the most dominant figures in the hedge fund industry, building a fortune that has financed a spending spree on marquee baseball talent. The Mets had the sport’s largest payroll last season, and including the Soto deal, Cohen has committed $1.6 billion to player salaries since taking over the team in 2020.
Along with his billions, Cohen put a small army of talent from his Point72 Asset Management hedge fund business to work on making the Mets better. Yet some of those workers have returned to their old jobs, according to people familiar with the situation.
Point72 and the Mets still share some crossover. Some on the Mets payroll have even invested with the fund, according to people familiar with the matter.
About six people now have shared roles between Point72 and the Mets, down from dozens when Cohen first bought the franchise, one of the people said. Those employees focus predominately on management and philanthropy, not crunching baseball stats.
The reason for the change is many of the projects worked on by Point72 staff have been completed, and the Mets have since built out their own data team, the person said.
The Mets have also brought in experienced baseball executives. Former Milwaukee Brewers executive David Stearns was hired as president of baseball operations after a disappointing 2023 season, when big bets the Mets placed on a pair of seasoned free-agent pitchers didn’t pan out.
With Stearns in the fold in 2024, the Mets had their best season under Cohen, reaching the National League Championship Series before losing to the eventual champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
For all the promise that integrating one of the world’s greatest investing minds and his legions of math whizzes into a long-struggling baseball franchise would seem to hold, Cohen may also have arrived at an essential truth in sports: Data is important, but winning also involves hiring good coaches who get the best out of players.
A spokesperson for Point72 declined to comment.
Big Data
When Cohen bought the Mets for $2.4 billion, many assumed he would employ his staff at Point72 to crunch data and improve infrastructure.
Initially, he did. Traders and analysts with backgrounds in artificial intelligence and data engineering, including Sameer Gupta, then the head of data solutions at Point72, and Chief Technology Officer Mark Brubaker, lent their quantitative expertise to the club.
Baseball has a long history with data. Statistical analysis, known in the sport as sabermetrics, helps shape everything from lineups to where an outfielder should stand to which pitch should be thrown to which batter. But the tech talent available to Cohen stood him apart from his rivals.
A team within Point72 called the Tech Innovation Team, which works on “quantum technology, applied artificial intelligence, machine-brain interfaces, heterogenous architectures,” also worked with the Mets.
Other groups focused on the development of neurotechnology research initiatives. Recruiters at Point72, used to hunting for the best tech talent, worked on hiring for the Mets. Middle and back-office staff helped clean up internal data sets on players and performance.
They even built MetsGPT, an internal function that mimicked AI chatbot ChatGPT, giving staff the ability to pull up anything of use to the Mets.
Temporary Strategy
Cohen’s early outlays forced Major League Baseball to introduce the ‘Cohen Tax’ penalizing excessive spending on talent. After bringing in Stearns, the team shifted from high-priced free agents to more under-the-radar role players such as 34-year-old journeyman infielder Jose Iglesias. Soto’s signing is a sign that strategy may have been temporary.
Over 2024, key hedge fund staff who had been helping the Mets returned to focus full-time on Point72. Gupta stopped working with the Mets in April and has since left the firm.
Adam Symmons, head of data technology at Point72, stepped back from his role at the Mets in June. He was previously head of data engineering technology for the Mets, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Some key Point72 staff have stayed with the Mets. The team’s head of security works at Point72. Summer interns at Point72 will still get the chance to cheer on the Mets at Citi Field.
And the Mets staff still uses MetsGPT.
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