Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

No matter what happens come October, World Series or no World Series, deep postseason run or no deep postseason run, this has been a transformative year for the New York Mets in more ways than one.

While the Mets are threatening to stumble across the finishing line with a 7-7 record against teams under .500 in September, there is no doubt that 2022 has been a resounding success on the diamond and away from it for a franchise that couldn’t get out of its own way for decades. While this team now looks like a legit World Series contender that can mount a serious playoff challenge, the work that has been done to repair a damaged organization’s reputation and standing within the baseball world is perhaps more important.

That has been detailed in an in-depth story by Stephanie Apstein for Sports Illustrated as part of their Daily Cover feature, and it is a deep dive that will also feature in the October issue of the magazine. In a wide-ranging story that picks every single bit of meat off the bone and uncovers every figurative dead body left behind by the Wilpons, Apstein paints a picture of a franchise that has executed a miracle-like facelift when it comes to their public perception. Apstein also does an excellent job of illustrating how the Cohens, along with team president Sandy Alderson and manager Buck Showalter, have made Queens a place players want to be again.

That all takes some doing given the wreckage left behind by the Wilpon family. As Apstein leads off in her story, Jeff Wilpon needed little excuse to cut the cost of anything, and the Mets rapidly became known as the lowball specialists in Major League Baseball. Having seen the damage done by slashing pay across the board, Alderson spoke to owner Steve Cohen, and before long, “the overwhelming majority” of employees had received a significant bump in salary. Several people within the organization even went as far as to say that the raises dished out were “life-changing.”

“Lots of people are willing to do whatever it takes, including working for nothing or for a small amount to get their foot in the door,” Alderson told Apstein for SI. “But eventually it wears off. Eventually it becomes a job. A job with a certain amount of cachet, but you can’t eat cachet and you can’t support a family on cachet. So at some point you owe it to your employees. If you’re going to demand excellence, then you have to be prepared to acknowledge it.”

Improving staff morale was noted in the story as a massive win for the Cohen family, especially because of what team employees had to suffer through before their arrival. Apstein goes into exhaustive detail about the plethora of mishaps that took place under the Wilpons, from asking Cougar Life to sponsor former third baseman David Wright‘s All-Star Game campaign in 2013, to LHP Jason Vargas threatening to fight a reporter in 2019, to honoring two still-living players during the in memoriam portion of the 1969 team reunion.

Yes, all of that and a lot more did really happen. As Apstein so perfectly and succinctly put it; the Mets tweeted more photos of dildos (1) than it had won titles (0) since the Wilpons took control of the team in 1987. That hilarious but all-too-true fact excellently encapsulates the chaos of the previous regime and the deeply infected wounds caused by owners who simply stopped caring. The New York Mets were run more like a circus than a professional baseball team.

Of course, Cohen didn’t escape the usual embarrassing storm that comes with the Mets during his first year of owning the team. From players sticking thumbs down to their own fans to the team inventing a fictional hitting coach, Donnie Stevenson, the Mets remained the same old Mets even under new ownership. The fact that GM Zack Scott was fired for allegedly driving under the influence after leaving a team fundraiser after his predecessor, Jared Porter, was fired for sending explicit, unwanted text messages to a female reporter summed up the toxic culture that Cohen had inherited.

That leads us into the second part of the story where the miracle of what has been achieved really takes root. The Mets were seen by the outside world as a laughing stock, a dumpster fire that was the gift that kept giving and giving and giving. As a result, it was no surprise that players with even the smallest shred of self-respect would be alarmed by joining the Mets. Veteran starting pitcher Chris Bassitt, who was acquired from the Oakland A’s during the offseason, perhaps spoke for all players when it came to the perceived state of the team.

“It sounded like it was a mess,” Bassitt told Apstein. “Then I got to spring training and was like, Oh, this isn’t like that at all.” That’s what happens when you hire experienced, competent people to run your baseball operations. Cohen and Alderson hired long-time baseball executive and student of the game Billy Eppler to be their new general manager. Eppler in turn then hired the vastly experienced, well-respected, and much-loved Buck Showalter to be the team’s manager.

Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY

Those two hires have proved to be the backbone upon which this new-look Mets team has been built. With two respected figures now guiding the ship, things have rapidly changed. There’s been no in-fighting within the team, no embarrassing storyline to dominate the front pages and keep the team away from the back pages of the newspaper where they belong. Instead, Eppler and Showalter, with the full support of Cohen and Alderson, have built a clubhouse based on respect, leadership, accountability, and knowing the only mission is to win.

Showalter has been a revelation in the dugout. He has helped cultivate a clubhouse culture that has led to good results on the field, putting his trust in proven leaders like Max Scherzer who has dominated in his first year in Queens. In fact, the additions of Scherzer, Starling Marte, Mark Canha, and Eduardo Escobar have proven to be home runs not just for their production on the diamond, but also for what they offer in the clubhouse and away from the ballpark. This is a team that is on the same page and all pulling in the right direction.

It is no surprise that the likes of Pete Alonso, Edwin Díaz, Jeff McNeil, Luis Guillorme, and Francisco Lindor are having stellar years. They have been put in the best possible position to succeed by Showalter who has been in this game long enough to know what it takes to get players on board and all aligned with the same mission. It can be argued that hiring Showalter could end up being one of Cohen’s best-ever moves.

“There were so many different things last year. It wasn’t a professional organization, I felt like,” Lindor told Apstein. “Guys go about their business the right way (this year) – you ain’t gotta worry about it – and then once they’re done, they turn the page. Professional. I like that. A lot of guys got arbitration for the first time, or second or third. They got a little more money. They realize it’s not just the money. It’s gotta win. So it’s a big mix of a lot of things.”

“It starts with Buck,” starting pitcher Taijuan Walker told Apstein.

Apstein details how Showalter has made it his mission to put the players first and ensure they are turning up to work in a happy and professional environment that is conducive to success out where it matters the most. There are anecdotes of Showalter allowing Alonso to put a pool table in the clubhouse, along with working with Alex Cohen, Steve’s wife, to revamp the family room and make it a far more welcoming and relaxing place for the players’ families.

Little touches like that go a long way. Scherzer was quoted in the story as saying: “My kids are never gonna watch me pitch again!” when he saw the new and improved family room. Going the extra mile for the players is something that is commonplace within most organizations in Major League Baseball, but it was an area in which the Mets consistently fell short under the Wilpons. Showalter has driven that significant change because he knows the players are just human beings too, after all. “If it’s important to the players, regardless of how trivial it is, it better be important to you,” Showalter said in the story.

From adding proven winners like Scherzer to the mix and improving the tools players have at their disposal with pitching machines and other top-of-the-range equipment, the Mets have gone all out to act like a professional baseball team this year. That may not seem like a big deal given that they are, indeed an actual professional baseball team, but they were anything but that under the Wilpons. That’s why the Cohen family, along with Alderson, Eppler, and Showalter, all need to be applauded for the sizeable roles they’ve played in making the Mets a respected franchise once more. One that is all about baseball and not about drama. These are no longer your Wilpons’ Mets. And the baseball world is starting to take notice.

“It’s creating an environment in which professional communication is appreciated,” Alderson told Apstein. It used to be we’d meet in the lunchroom and it’d be a bunch of grab-ass and what have you. This is all business.”