Let’s just talk about Aaron Judge and Steve Cohen’s Mets now

This is going to be a thing, so let’s just talk about it now.

Given Steve Cohen’s financial aggressiveness over the past two seasons, and the way that it has begun to remake the Mets’ image in New York, folks are wondering: Will he swoop in this fall to offer Aaron Judge a megadeal that Judge can’t refuse?

The answer for today (which comes from a combination of new reporting and observing the Mets organization during Cohen’s tenure to date) is don’t count on it, because the thought represents a reasonable misreading of Cohen’s plan.

When he first purchased the team, Cohen needed to establish his credibility with fans as a big spender. He did that and then some, lavishing a 10-year, $341 million contract on Francisco Lindor and a record-setting three-year, $130 million deal on Max Scherzer.

That created a perception that Cohen will always behave in that manner, but I can tell you definitively that he will not. The plan is to make like the Los Angeles Dodgers under the Guggenheim Group’s ownership: Use his financial advantage to remain competitive in the early years, while investing in player development and infrastructure to pay off later.

Neither Cohen nor Billy Eppler nor Sandy Alderson believes that overpaying on extensions and in free agency is the path toward perennial contention. It is an interim step.

Cohen’s Mets will always have a high major league payroll, but will not imitate the worst of George Steinbrenner’s Yankees by constantly chasing top free agents.

As such, paying Judge enough to leave the Yankees does not fit the plan (and by the way, the first blush of reaction out of the Mets organization after Judge turned down the offer was shock, and a sense that Hal Steinbrenner had made a strong push. Other league executives agreed, and agents were a bit more measured).

Could Cohen or Eppler get itchy in six months and make a play for Judge?

We’ve learned not to rule anything out in this business. But paying Judge into his late 30s would be counter to the path that the Mets are trying to walk.