On Thursday, we found out the Mets hired Daniel Schoenfeld to be their minor league analytics coordinator, and that the Mets would have an analyst with every minor league affiliate. This is a continuing trend for the Mets since Steve Cohen took over the team, and actually one that Brodie Van Wagenen got underway when he was the Mets GM.
As recently as 2018, it was reported that the entirety of full-time employees in the Mets analytics department was a miniscule six people. Meanwhile, teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, and Rays all had at least 20 people in their R&D departments. All three of those teams have done their fair share of winning games in the last decade.
A short time after Cohen purchased the Mets, he said he wanted the franchise to become more like the Dodgers in multiple ways. Not long after that, the Mets hired Harvard grad Ben Zauzmer from the Dodgers to be the director of baseball analytics. That’s when things really started taking off for the Mets in the research and development area. And they already saw the benefit on the field in 2021 as one of the best –and most aggressive– shifting teams in baseball.
When the 2020 season started the Mets had about 12 people working in the analytics department, and when asking a few people in the organization recently they said that number is hovering at 30 right now. That number is only going to grow with the Mets in the hiring process right now and still have a few jobs listed. When I asked a member of the front office to nail down an exact number, they said, “If I told you now, it’d be outdated tomorrow.”
Steve Cohen is certainly using his wealth to help the Mets this offseason put guys like Max Scherzer on the field, but let’s not forgot how he can also use his resources to improve the franchise like trying to build one of the best analytics departments in the game.
