Alex Rodriguez Makes Bold Prediction About Mets' Championship Odds Across Next Decade
Two is better than one.
Former New York Yankee and former prospective New York Mets owner, Alex Rodriguez has made a bold prediction: the Amazin’s will win not one but two championships in their future.
During Yankees’ broadcaster Michael Kay and Rodriguez’s “KayRod Cast” on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, Rodriguez lauded the Mets and called two trips down the Canyon of Heroes in the next 10 years.
“The Mets are in a honeymoon, they’re spending a lot of money, here’s what I like about what the Mets are doing, Chris,” Rodriguez said to Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, who was a guest on the broadcast. “They’re a hybrid of analytics and old school. What I mean by that is: they have 31 people in their analytics department, the R&D department.
“That looks more like a hedge fund than a major league front office. That’s great. Good job there.”
Rodriguez, however, was more impressed by the hire of veteran skipper Buck Showalter.
“Better job is, they have, what I think, is the best manager in the game in Buck Showalter,” Rodriguez continued. “Again, this is low hanging fruit, where I just mentioned Lou Piniella, Billy Martin and Joe Torre as my favorite (managers) of all-time.
“A guy like Buck Showalter, with a very varying coaching staff, I think that mix is going to do very well, and I’m going to say it here: the Mets will win two championships in the next 10 years. That’s my call.”
Rodriguez and his former partner, Jennifer Lopez, headed a group of investors that attempted to buy the Mets when Sterling Equities put the team for sale in 2020.
According to Lopez, their group’s offer was similar or “better” to that of Steve Cohen, who ultimately purchased the team for $2.4 billion.
After Rodriguez’s pursuit of the team came up short, the former infielder revealed in a Sportico article series called “Business Beyond the Game” that baseball would have been just a small part of the purchase.
“When we looked at the Mets, we looked at it as an intellectual property,” Rodriguez said in the 2020 piece. “We looked at it like an entertainment sports media platform, and we thought baseball was just a small part of it. But through Jennifer, we could drive the music with Live Nation business at Citi Field. With e-commerce, we thought we had Mark Lloyd, best in class, what he’s done with Walmart, we could do the same with the Mets.
“We then thought that we could energize and turbo-charge the network by changing and mixing up programming a little bit, and by even getting better and higher talent.
“So baseball was a small part of it, it wasn’t everything. And we felt we could buy this for $2.35 billion and over time make this a $10 or 15 billion holding company, much like the Fenway Group has done in Boston.”
Rodriguez is originally from Washington Heights and grew up a Mets fan living in Florida. After beginning his career with the Seattle Mariners in 1994, Rodriguez hit the free agent market in 2000 and signed a mega contract with the Texas Rangers, before being traded to the Yankees before the 2004 season.
In 2018 during a Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN, Rodriguez said if he could turn back time, he’d prefer to have signed with the Mets instead of the Rangers.
“Growing up in Miami, I was a huge Mets fan,” Rodriguez said. “Keith Hernandez was my favorite player. And I thought I would make great concessions to go play for the Mets. And I thought it was just a great story for baseball, it would’ve been a great story for me to play for the team I grew up watching. And I thought Mets-Yankees would have been a great story.
"I would just say this: If I was to do it again, I would just take control of my career a lot more.”
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